REVIEW | Fela: Kalakuta Notes

Drewett, Michael

doi:10.5429/2079-3871(2016)v6i2.16en

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“…Outside of the geographical Afrobeats gestation spaces, Wyclef Jean has recorded and released the crassly opportunistic and creative block-evading Fela Kuti (2017), a carnivaldrawing track in which he samples Fela's Eko Ile (1973). Such loose labelling and the current expansion of the Afrobeats usage/label would appear understandable, since it has been encouraged on many fronts, one of which is the Felabration festival held annually to honour Fela at the Afrika Shrine in Lagos (Drewett 2016). The event, which was supposedly conceived to serve as a platform for artists to 'carry the torch' and 'keep up the struggle' has become a promotional-cum-public-relations outlet in recent years.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods in performing Fela in contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019

Osiebe

2020

African Studies

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In the 1982 documentary Music is the Weapon, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, arguably the inventor of Afrobeat, pronounced that: 'My name is Anikulapo: I have death in my pouch. I can't die. They can't kill me!' Fela passed on in 1997, yet his revolutionary practice, in message and in musical form, means that he lives on in the imagination. Over the last decade, Afrobeat has transformed in both terminology and practice. For some, Afrobeat has morphed into an 'apolitical genre by an industry more concerned [ … ] with producing easy listening [and danceable] music' (Negus 1996, 41). While Fela's sons Femi and Seun Kuti continue to play Afrobeat as originally proposed, thus maintaining a relative patent on their father's invention, the bulk of the current usage relies on simulation and as Afrobeats. This paper focuses on the practices of a selection of Afrobeats musicians who have appropriated the text, synthesised the sound, conjured the appearance and invoked the name and symbolisms of Fela. The paper draws from Tejumola Olaniyan's delineation of the stages in Fela's creative career in illustrating how contemporary popular musicians entextualise Fela in their respective creative careers. These Afrobeats artists have performed the 'Fela stages' in their corresponding bodies of work through several means including, but not limited to, the textually analogous, dedicatory, apparitional, amalgamated, and by the means of coming to realisation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods in performing Fela in contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019

Osiebe

2020

African Studies

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REVIEW | Fela: Kalakuta Notes

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Methods in performing Fela in contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019

Methods in performing Fela in contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019

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