Africa remixed

DJs discover Fela Kuti

by Michael Endelman

In the summer of 1997, Nigerian musician, politician, and spiritual leader Fela Kuti was scheduled to appear in London for the first time in five years. I eagerly awaited that performance, but it never materialized, since Fela died from AIDS-related complications in early August. This past January I returned to London to find that Fela Kuti maintains a spectral presence over the city's music scene. In his lifetime, he was popular among the world-music crowd for his iconoclastic vision, his fusion of traditional Yoruban music and '60s soul and funk laced with black-nationalist and anti-establishment lyrics that landed him in jail more than once. But since his death, his music has been adopted by the denizens of London's vital club scene. There are discos where DJs spin Kuti grooves alongside the latest white-label house singles. "Shrine," a Fela-inspired night at the Brixton club Fridge, borrows the name of his club/compound in Lagos. There's even a handful of recent 12-inch dance singles inspired by Kuti's legacy.

Hip-hop hoisted James Brown onto a pedestal in the '80s through its voracious sampling of his back catalogue at a time when the Godfather had vanished from the music scene (he was in jail, remember?). DJs are now doing something similar with Fela, namely sampling his seminal '70s work, producing tribute albums dedicated to his memory, and forging a new market for reissues of his seminal albums.

It's somewhat troubling that whereas many of the hip-hop acts who dug into Brown's bag of rhythmic goodies upheld his legacy of black nationalism, most electronic dudes seem gleefully ignorant of Kuti's agit-pop roots. Recently in Spin, the French house duo Cassius referred to one of their tracks as "a tribute to Fela's hypnotic and sexy rhythms. He was ever-ready to smoke a joint, ever-ready to have sex." Kuti did campaign to legalize "natural grass," and at one point he was married to 28 women at once. But to distill his stormy career into these essences -- sex, weed, hypnotic grooves -- is a hedonist's simplification.

On their new 12-inch, "A Tribute to Fela" (MAW), the Nuyorican duo Masters at Work shift the focus back to Kuti's political roots. The track "MAW Expensive," a remake of Kuti's "Expensive Shit," recounts the efforts of police to recover drugs from Fela's feces. And the B-side, "ZOE," a cover of Kuti's "Zombie," ridicules the Nigerian military. Although both tracks are influenced by contemporary house techniques -- a touch of echo here, some frequency tweaking there -- neither is a radical departure from the tight grooves of the originals.

DJ culture has also touched Fela's son, Femi Kuti, an Afrobeat recording artist in his own right. The double 12-inch "Beng Beng Beng," which followed Femi's latest Afropop CD, Shoki Shoki (Barclay/Polydor France), features a slew of remixes by London house-music producers Ashley Beedle and Mateo & Matos that bring out the hidden rhythms of the originals without losing the crucial Afropop nuances.

Beedle himself includes a tiny inscription on the back cover of his latest album, Future Juju (Black Jazz Chronicles), "dedicated to the memory of Fela Anikupalo Kuti, may his rebel spirit flow on and on." Although the album has only a few of the pumping four-on-the-floor grooves that are associated with Afrobeat, it lies closest to the radical spirit of Fela's music. Future Juju is a tribute to the rebellious rhythms of the entire African diaspora, from the second-line funk of "New Orleans" to the minimalist Detroit techno of "Alien Waters." In "Ancient Future," a chorus of drums and bells fights to be heard over encroaching analog keyboard swaths until a single tenor saxophone sounds in the distance, coming closer and closer, and its fiery intensity overpowers the heavy rhythm clash below it. This fusion of African and electronic sounds is neither romantic new-age noodling nor refigured Afropop but Afro-Futurism of the spaciest degree -- Sun Ra meets Juan Atkins and George Clinton at a party thrown by Fela himself.

If there's an explanation to be found for dance music's recent interest in Fela (and Afropop in general), it probably has something to do with a midlife crisis of sorts that has DJs reaching back to uncover the roots of communal dance music. In his legendary performances -- spectacles, really -- Fela was known to extend his already lengthy songs to half-hour or hour-long jams, inspiring the sort of ecstatic dancing and worship that present-day DJs dream about. Remixing him has reinvigorated dance music. And if it hasn't necessarily helped further his political agenda, well, maybe that would be asking too much. After all, the complex struggles of post-colonial Africa are something beyond the reach of even the most multicultural dance floors.