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Femi Kuti - Review
Written by Rikard Rehnbergh   
Tuesday, 04 May 2010 12:46
To begin the beginning: Femi Kuti not only looks like his father Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti  –  the infamous Nigerian freedom fighter, sole founder of the free, somewhat anarchic Republic of Kalakuta, of the musical form Afrobeat, and the famous nightclub the Afrika Shrine, first cousin to Wole Soyinka, the first African to win a Nobel Prize, etc, etc –  he sounds like him too, both in terms of vocal, textual, and instrumental expression. Or, as Femi says about himself, he speaks the truth, just like his father: “If I didn’t tell the truth, it would be a betrayal of my past. But I hope I’ll bring the struggle to an end in my lifetime.”

The concert in Stockholm starts in a very cool jazzy mood, almost quiet, and it is not for nothing that Femi asks us in the audience if we know who Edward Ellington was?
Duke, we say!
Who Charlie Parker was?
Bird, we say.
Who Billie Holiday was?
Lady Day, we say.
Who John Gillespie was?
Dizzy, we say.

And Femi ends the conversation with the words: “Good, then you know where we’re coming from!”

Father Fela joined the forces of Miles Davis, James Brown and High Life; of Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah, and definitely put Nigeria on the musical map.

It looks like more than just a coincidence that, coming from the Folkopera-remixed concert (see separate review: A message in the music), Kuti talks to us, during one of his three longer, serious talks, about Nazi-Germany and the Second European imperialist war, about the hideous fact that the German youth of today are to be held accountable for the atrocities their grandparents committed against the jews, as Kuti says, (although he seemed to forget, the Romani people, the homosexuals, the handicapped), which means, consequently, that the Europeans, alive today, also have to stand “trial” for the slavery, colonialism, oppression and genocide of millions and millions of Africans.

Now, the concert builds up to a more intense state where the audible landscape, the soundscape, gets thicker and thicker, and one can really hear, feel, see the 5-piece horn section adding layer after layer on the Kuti-canvas. He says he loves Stockholm, and one is bound to believe him, he’s been hear a lot, last time at Södra teatern in 2005. And, one has to add, he has a brother as well, Seun Kuti, who was here, with father Fela’s old band Egypt’80, as late as year 2007 during Kulturfestivalen. Seeing the two half brothers (Femi is one of Fela’s first born children) singing and playing together would be something like seeing their father resurrected, but that will be the day.

Ararara! Urururu!

Kuti calls out several times during the evening: Ararara! and the crowd answers: Urururu! Which, he explains, is a kind of typical Nigerian/Lagonian call-and-answer to know where one’s at, but, Femi warns us, don’t do it with the police, as you never know just were you will end up! And the trumpeter in the horn section of the 10-piece band we’re enlightened about Nigerian politics of today: same story as ever, business as usual, meaning: corruption, fraud, nepotism, and even murder. Will it ever change? Yes, it might, with more people like the Kutis. Femi says: “Everything in my music is about Nigeria, the hustle, the struggle, life itself.”

However, ironically enough, talking to the trumpeter outside the old dance palace Nalen, which, earlier in the day, saw some heavy protests against the yearly summit of the Swedish state owned energy company Vattenfall by climate organisations such as Greenpeace, Klimax and others; so you see, the connection energy & business, pollution & corruption, state & politics is not only something that one will find in an African country, as many an ignorant man might believe is the case.

Femi Kuti ends the show after an hour and a half, which a lot of people in the crowd find far too short, by playing a hectic, frentic version of his mega hit: Beng beng beng, a tune about the violence coming from politicians & police – don’t they nearly always go hand in hand!? – but reappears again after a short while, by picking up the thread where he dropped it: Bang bang bang, three bullets in the air! And finally playing some new stuff, not on any disc as yet, for another half an hour, leaving the crowd in a, probably, contended frame of mind, but hopefully, in a unsubordinate, maybe a bit rebellious state of mind.

Rikard Rehnbergh
 

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