Seun Kuti at Hamer Hall, Photograph by Remi Chauvin
A few months ago, my friend Penny recommended me the Fela Kuti podcast, Fear No Man, a 12-episode series that looks at how the Nigerian Afrobeat icon backed up his claim that “music is the weapon of the future.”
During the 1970s and 80s, Fela made music designed to unite the masses and offend the elites. It was anti-government, anti-military, and advocated for the overthrowing of capitalism and neocolonialism.
But it wasn’t Fela’s lyrics alone that gave his music its potency. Fela’s two main bands – first Africa 70 then Egypt 80 – featured upwards of a dozen members, including several horn players, percussionists and backing vocalists. Their music was communal in spirit and communal in execution. Fela’s songs were trance-like and insistent, and his recordings regularly surpassed the ten-minute mark. The aim was to get people moving, connecting, singing, dancing and laughing.
It’s a contrast to the stereotypical image of a protest musician; i.e., a lone performer with an acoustic guitar singing earnestly about the ills of the world. This kind of protest music is rarely effective because it’s completely joyless, said my friend Penny. What makes Fela Kuti’s music so powerful is how animated, how joyful, how alive it is.
The same can be said of the work of Fela’s youngest son, Seun Kuti, who continues to lead an updated incarnation of Egypt 80. Seun and Egypt 80’s gig at Hamer Hall – a seated theatre venue – was a raucous affair for its entire two-hour duration, with barely anyone in the crowd staying seated.
The setlist was a mix of Fela classics and Seun originals. Fela’s signature song, the military mocking Zombie, closed the show, and it was an obvious highlight, its delirious playfulness pretty much summing up the mood of the night. There was plenty of sobering political critique to be found in Seun Kuti’s originals, such as T.O.P. and Emi Aluta, but his tack was to take us with him, rather than lambaste from the pulpit.
Seun and his band clearly revere Fela, but Seun wasn’t rendered timid by the task of honouring his father’s legacy. He was all charisma and gags, at one point veering off into a tongue in cheek spiel about the unfulfilling nature of parenthood.
Seun is a virtuosic saxophonist, and he was ably supported by his nine-piece band, who dished out unrelenting Afrobeat grooves without breaking a sweat. Sampa the Great was absent for Emi Aluta (she appears on the recording), but arrived on stage for an impromptu verse during Zombie.
Seun called for an end to right wing extremism, racism, fascism, and capitalism, and spoke about the ignominy of African capitalists. But for the most part, joy reigned supreme.
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 performed at Hamer Hall, on the stolen land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, on Friday 5 June.
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