Fela Kuti is a very well known name in the world of music, but I knew more about the name than the music itself. Of course, I knew a bit about the character, and the fact that he was he was the first one to coin the term Afrobeat to describe his sound, he was a human rights activists and died in 1997… beside all this, I just had a too vague idea of this legendary Nigerian musician and his music.
Many members of the band Chop and Quench are part of the cast and band of FELA! the musical, they even have performed with artists such as Beyonce, Femi Kuti, and Angelique Kidjo, and their lead singer Sahr Ngaujah was nominated for a TONY Award for his performance in the Broadway show. They were playing a free outdoor show at Grand Performances, at the California plaza, downtown LA, and performing Fela’s ’69 LA Sessions album in its entirety for the first time ever. I dug a bit into Fela’s bio to know about these LA’s sessions that he recorded during a 10-month stay in Los Angeles in 1969. During this time he discovered the Black Panther party and the Black Power movement, which gratly influenced his music and politics. The INS actually discovered he and his band were in the US without work permits, and this quickly precipitated the recording of the ’69 Los Angeles Sessions’ before their departure from the US back to Nigeria.
The large band, Chop and Quench, did bring Fela’s ’69 LA Sessions album’ back to life and it was said many times during the night that it was a historical night. Beside the numerous instruments, the horn section is what you notice the most in Kuti’s compositions, they are jazzy, funky and omnipresent. I have always thought there was something totally unique about African sax and trumpets, as they were fueling the syncopated compositions all evening long. Beside all the instruments, the three queens, as lead singer Sahr Ngaujah was calling them, were providing the dancing moves as well as the female vocals. I have seen many African shows before but the Fela sound is immediately recognizable and unique: funky, jazzy, a bit tribal, with a throbbing tempo which purrs and gives the impression the song could last forever, a sound certainly different from those of other iconic African figures.
Honestly I even got a very strong James Brown vibe during certain songs at the start of the show, and singer Sahr Ngaujah got in the groove right away with the female dancers. However, he was not performing as Fela the character, from the beginning, he was wearing a full suit and shirt and I guess the show was nothing like the Broadway musical for this reason… Although there was a place reserved for the dancers (which was packed), I was expecting more action between the rows of chairs, but people were actually siting first, probably because of the contained aspect of the performance … However, when Ngaujah removed his vest, then removed his shirt toward the end of the show, he almost got back into Fela’s skin, and soon more and more women stood up and shook their bodies with more or less success… it was difficult to compete with the three queens though.
The show was actually in two sets, and after the interruption the band dug deeper into Fela’s music catalogue, and I recognized some familiar tunes… After his return to Nigeria, after the LA session fed with American R&B and jazz, Fela renamed his band Nigeria’70, and became more political which says a lot about the importance of this outburst of inspiration. And this is real history.
Lots of pictures of the show here.
