Seun Kuti, along with his older brother, Femi, are the two of the many children of their famous father (who at one stage had 24 wives) to carry the flame of Afrobeat musical and revolutionary genius into the 21st century.
It was Fela Kuti – Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, band leader, human rights activist and socialist political maverick – who coined the term ‘Afrobeat’ in the late 1960s. Afrobeat became a musical social movement that quickly spread throughout Africa during the ’70s, much to the chagrin of the military dictatorships that it openly criticised. After the release of his hit 1977 album, Zombie, with its scathing attack on the Nigerian military, Fela’s ‘Kalakuta Republic’ – home to his recording studio and the large entourage of people connected to his band ­– was viciously attacked by 1,000 soldiers. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was fatally injured when she was thrown from a window.
It was against this backdrop that Seun was born in 1982. A musical child, he regularly joined his father onstage. When Fela died from AIDS in 1997, Seun, then only 14 years old, became the lead singer of Egypt ’80, his father’s band. In From Africa With Fury: Rise, his second album, Seun leads Egypt ’80 – many of whom were frequently harrassed and arrested alongside his father – on an exuberant, energy-charged, polyrhythmical celebration of the sound and ethos of the Afrobeat spirit, greatly helped in the project by co-producers, Brian Eno and John Reynolds.
Afrobeat dance-lovers, take note: this record is consistently up-tempo, with only a mild slow-down on ‘Rise’, Seun’s cri de coeur against oil and diamond multinationals; hence it’s a great record to party to!