 Fela Kuti Fela Kuti's music is so good it's a wonder you don't get fat from listening to it. It's as pleasuring as eating a big box of Krispy Kremes, except a whole lot more nutritious and soul purifying. If I spent as much time reviewing CD's I love passionately as I do reviewing CD's I'm about to sell back to the used CD shop, this record guide would be filled with Fela reviews, mostly glowing, written in the ecstatic style that accompanies listening to the heavy perfection of his classic albums. This CD is one from the recent series of "Fela Originals," a truly essential remastering project that's making many of his best albums available on CD with original artwork and spankin' clean sound – two albums per disc to boot. Fela albums are so different from other albums you kind of have to recalibrate your brain to be able to really access everything that's going on. His bands were better than James Brown's, his music deeper than Pharaoh Sanders's, his words more potent than Bob Dylan's, his vision broader than Duke Ellington's. Am I exaggerating? Who knows? Could a guy who spent most of his time walking around in his underwear have possibly been as good as all that? Check out the music, freshie. Unknown Solider and Coffin For Head of State are collected on this disc, albums from 1979 and 1980 respectively, right at the peak of Fela's popularity and creative prowess. He really didn't diminish or fluctuate much as a performer, and as a result most of his albums are as good as any others, but his mid-70s through early 80s albums are the real primo stuff. These two albums in particular are pretty staggering because they address events wherein Fela's mother was thrown out of a window and killed during an attack on Fela's home by the Nigerian army. Fela had declared his home to be a separate state, and the army came in to beat and rape most of the occupants and seize the property, in the process murdering his own mama. Undeterred, Fela turns the complexities of his political situation and his emotional composure into heavy Afrobeat funk, backed by Africa 70, who serve as choir to Fela's preacher in these very extended jams. The disc starts off with Coffin For Head of State, chronologically later but serving as a great prelude to Unknown Soldier, which at thirty-one minutes is a pretty fucking intense piece of art. "Unknown Solider" details Fela's view of the attack, and "Coffin" is more of a poetry piece meditating on the whole situation, also detailing the subsequent protest wherein Fela brought his mother's coffin to the headquarters of the army generals who would have ordered the attack on his land. It's heavy shit, and completely enrapturing music. On musical merit alone the disc is so far past essential it ain't even funny, sonny. Factor in the history and Fela's words and you've got an album that gives you a whole lot every time you hear it. And the grooves are amazing, as danceable as the subject matter is deep. It's fortuitous that these two albums are compiled together, because they make perfect sense as a unit and the combination actually makes the whole even more powerful than the sum of its very strong parts. Fela Kuti was an unconventional guy, and about as larger-than-life as icons come. There's so much about him that remains difficult to grasp, especially for dumb Americans like myself who have not been well served by record companies distributing his music in the US. There hasn't been much opportunity to easily access what Fela was all about, and hence the US mainstream remains pretty much in the dark about how titanic a figure the guy is in music. But the CD reissue series is a fantastic starting point, and of the discs released so far, I'd point to this one as the best place to start appreciating Fela Kuti. Rock critics usually point to Original Suffer Head, which is certainly a great album, but I think they mainly say it's so amazing because all the other rock critics say so, and it's become kind of the pet Fela album. But Coffin For Head of State is even better, and this CD is one that will shake your head loose, chum.
Review by Jacob Ocular-Migraine |
