As Femi was preparing his album - Stop The Hate - he invited Made, who plays bass, alto-saxophone and percussion on his dad’s album, to release his own debut record ‘For(e)ward’ alongside his own in a joint package. It’s a smart yet honestly touching move on his and the label’s part: and naturally pays dividends to the listener.
Femi Kuti’s output on Stop The Hate is relentlessly fierce and funky, and for his eleventh album there’s no easing off the pedal. Kuti Senior delivers messages of freedom and positivity that are as bold and defiant as they’ve ever been: central themes of the album focus on corruption in Nigeria’s local government, equal rights and the end of police brutality for Black people. Pure and powerful and dispatched with experience and confidence, it’s Afrobeat+ direct from the source.
The contemporary End SARS protests across Lagos come more than four decades after Fela Kuti’s
Zombie album launched its musical uprising against the methods of the Nigerian militia, who responded by raiding his Kalakuta compound, burning down his studio and throwing his 77-year old mother out of a third-story window. They come four decades after Fela married 27 women on the same day, either for misogyny’s sake or to delegitimize the government’s claims that he’d kidnapped his backing band and dancers, depending on which sources you read. A life’s worth of rebellion assembles this kind of political nuance to a man whose influence seeps through Afrobeat and into the fabric of a country’s resistance.
okayafrica Photo: Sean Thomas. Listen to Femi Kuti s New Song As We Struggle Everyday
Femi explains: As We Struggle Everyday is about how hard people work everyday to make ends meet and still go to vote corrupt politicians into power who are meant to be in jail.
Femi Kutishares his new single, As We Struggle Everyday, the latest drop from the upcoming double album Legacy +, a joint endeavor with his son
Made Kuti. As We Struggle Everyday is a politically-charged afrobeat tune about people having the voting power to hold their leaders accountable, but often failing to do so. Throughout the song, Femi sings
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Northern Berkshire Community Coalition volunteer Alex Daugherty checks in a bag of donated goods as part of this yearâs Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service on Monday at the UNO Center in North Adams.
Donations of nonperishable food and other items are collected for Northern Berkshire Community Coalition as part of scaled back events to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service in front the First Congregational Church in Williamstown. Monday, January 18, 2021. Volunteer Jennifer Ceolinski of Williams oversaw the donations from 10 a.m. to noon.
Donations of nonperishable food and other items are collected for Northern Berkshire Community Coalition , as part of scaled back events to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, in front the First Congregational Church in Williamstown. on Monday, January 18, 2021.
Why Fela Kutiâs Afrobeat is still shaking the planet
A new BBC documentary pays tribute to the remarkable life of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musical rebel who gave birth to Afrobeat. Kevin EG Perry talks to Kutiâs son Femi and grandson Made about their mission to continue the familyâs radical legacy.
On 18 February 1977 a thousand soldiers from the Nigerian army stormed a communal compound in Lagos that outlaw bandleader Fela Kuti had declared his own independent state: the Kalakuta Republic. They brutally beat Kuti, burned his home and studio to the ground and threw his mother Funmilayo from a second floor window, injuring her so severely that she died within weeks. What sparked all this carnage? A song called âZombieâ.