Just another newbie from Holland

I attended a Frank Zappa concert in the early Eighties, great to see all those hippie fathers with their kids on their shoulders and Zappa frequently tuning his guitar with his headphone on while the band played the most amazing time signatures  but Zappa remained in control, his most favorite hobby  !

Hihi, we Hagenezen are taking over

Can we take it back to music? 

Moogtron III wrote: Yes, we can, sorry 'bout that   I read you like Fela Kuti. Now that's an artist I would like to check out once. Is there an album you can recommend? I have the idea that he made many albums.

You're right, there are quite a lot of albums. Most of his total output is available on CD (2 albums per CD), with a few of them missing..
As his albums usually sound more like 12" singles (rarely crossing the 30minute mark in total) , it might be best to try some of his 70's albums like Gentleman or Zombie as the songs are a little shorter like 10 to 15 minutes, in the 80's his songs would be closer to 30 minutes (best to hear those on cd rather than lp as the songs are cut in two halves on vynil, an instrumental side with some saxophone/piano,guitar solos, and a vocal side). The typical Fela song would have an instrumental section and a vocal section, where the basic groove his being maintained throughout the song. But there's lots and lots happening on top of the groove.

So probably my favorite 70's albums:
Gentleman/Afrodisiac
Zombie
Monkey Banana/Excuse-O
J.J.D./Unnecessary Begging

Favorite 80's albums (if you've survived the above mentioned):
Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense
Beasts Of No Nation/Overtake Don Overtake Overtake

There's also a compilation 2cd (which I don't  have, because I have all the albums already). This one is called Best Best of Fela, which the selection done by his son Femi.

Hope this has been helpful to you.

A lot of his earlier songs were about african culture, which upset a lot of the african governments who tried to perform well as european puppets. So Fela got in trouble with the Nigerian governement many times, he was severely attacked expecially by Obansanjo (the very same guy who is in charge overthere now, one of his henchman was Yar'Adua, who supposedly won the current election). So Fela's songs became more and more political. ITT (IInternational Thief Thief) being one of them. If you want some more (the whole collection?), http://biochem.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~endo/EAFela.html here  you can find a very large, detailed discography of the man (mostly vinyl stuff).

Does anyone have any idea how I can put links here?


Edited by unclemeat69 - April 24 2007 at 13:13

thnx back . http://www.afromix.org/html/musique/artistes/fela_anikulapo_kuti/index.en.html
another discography with cd's available and a dvd.

I warn you about the man's attitude during concerts (I made a concious choice never to see him live because of this, his recordings are enough for me), because he yells and screams at his musicians, he's known to beat his (numerous) wives etc. A genuine

He died about 10 years ago


Edited by unclemeat69 - April 24 2007 at 14:07