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Seun Kuti
music
Afrobeat’s new
messenger doesn’t
mince words
By Dan Grunebaum
Gr o w i n g u p t h e
child of a legendary
entertainer and
political firebrand
isn’t easy—especially
when you’re the youngest of
eight. Sean Kuti encountered all
sorts of headwinds after his decision
to take on the mantle of his
towering father, Afrobeat pioneer
Fela Kuti.
“The family said, ‘Fela is dead,
the band can’t survive,’” the lean
29-year-old Nigerian recalls on
a sunlit afternoon at Naeba Ski
Resort, where he and the band his
father founded, Egypt 80, have just
wrapped up a feverish two-hour set
at the Fuji Rock Festival. “But I said,
‘No, we’re going to keep playing.’ It
was hard, because people used to
compare me to my Dad.”
“I grew up hearing his music
all my life, but I didn't understand
how big it was because Fela was so
humble,” the singer and sax player
continues about their relationship.
“He slept on the floor. He was
not proud. To be that great and be
down to earth is the philosophy of
Afrobeat music. The connection to
the common man is important.”
The favorite son of Fela’s, Seun
was joining his Dad on stage by
age eight. He would open for Egypt
80, singing a few songs before they
took the stage for marathon outings
of jazz-inflected African beats
and uncompromising messages of
political empowerment.
But then it was over. “I started
playing in ’91 and ’92, but then Fela
got sick and died,” Kuti says of his
notoriously free-living father’s
death of AIDS in 1997.
It took t he you nger Kut i a We kept playing in Nigeria for ten
decade to return Eg ypt 80 to a years before we broke out. But that
place where it could act as a major helped my art. I never thought we
draw at events like Fuji Rock. “The would play for 100,000, so we just
government, which controlled the said, ‘Let’s do this.’”
media, wanted Fela to be dead,” he A generation distant from its
explains. “Everyday there was bad post-colonial creation, is Afrobeat
press about me. They said I was a still relevant? “For me, what’s hap-
cokehead. But my Dad taught me pening now is not a lot different
about the reality of life. He said,
the press has that name because
they are there to press you down.
10 • download our podcast at • podcast.metropolis.co.jp
from what happened in the ’70s,”
Kuti responds. “To take a line from
my father, he sang around 1978,
‘How can you say the country is
getting rich when the people are
so poor?’ The same thing is happening
today. The government says
the country is growing by eight
percent, but every year 20 percent
more people become poor. So we’re
still going through the same shit
our fathers went through.”
Kuti has little time for the
bling-bling lifestyle celebrated in
contemporary pop, whether in
Africa or the West. “In England
now, they are taking Afropop, and
they put a commercial gimmick at
the end to make something they
call ‘Afrobeats,’ and they sing about
champagne and cars, which maybe
only three percent of Africans can
afford,” he says. “That is not the
direction Afrobeat should go. Afrobeat
cannot be used to sell Gucci.”
A member of the tiny upper
class he just described, Kuti could
have taken the easy route and
chosen the expat life in London or
New York, but he prefers to remain
in Lagos.
“As a Nigerian, you have plenty
of inspiration in your daily life.
The politicians are talking lies
every day on TV, you see people
so demoralized they accept the
bullshit,” he says. “That’s why I
still live in my country. I want to
understand how it is for my people.
I know I am privileged, but I also
know the music has to be for the
majority. Art should be about what
the people are going through. This
is what drives me.”
A new album is in the works
and Kuti offers a hint of what’s on
it: “I have a new song called ‘IMF’—
international motherfuckers—that
tells you all you need to know.”
K u t i s a y s t h e d i f f e r e n c e
between the situations his father
faced and the ones facing contemporary
Africa is that now Africans
have the smarts to fight corruption
and use the system to their
own benefit.
“If you look at how people are
directing their anger, it’s properly,
and that comes from education,”
he concludes. “This is where the
change is going to come from, and
I hope Afrobeat can continue to be
the music that drives that.”
Club Quattro, Nov 20. See conce
rt list i ng s (j a z z/world) for
details.
courtesy of plAnkton