Fela Kuti
The Best Best of Fela Kuti
(MCA)
Packing just 13 tunes into a hefty
160-minute double, this best-of celebrating Nigeria's dead-of-AIDS Afrobeat evangelist wouldn't
seem the salve for anyone's Fela problem. But consider the judicious edits and the comparatively
Spartan 12-minute average track length you'll find here a gift. Nowhere else will you find
Fela's grooves so unceasingly sharp, his riffs so manifold, his furious bursts of hornsmanship
so exhilarating. I'd even argue he's never sounded more, well, African. His compulsion toward
meandering jam-band spaceouts clipped, trimmed and hemmed for posterity, the propulsive
polyrhythms of his legendarily large backing bands dig in and never have the time or space to
let go. Acolytes might argue that sounds like Fela tamed. To agnostics, it will sound more like
Fela revealed.
Rating: 9
Artists l Essays l The List l Sites & Sounds
New Issue l Best Of l Fave Links l About Us