Suen Kuti & Egypt 80

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Suen Kuti & Egypt 80 will be playing Sunday on the Main Stage

Seun Kuti is Fela Anikulapo Kuti ‘s last son. Seun’s father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, was Nigeria’s most beloved popular musician and most acerbic social critic until his death in 1997. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, one of Africa s best- known pop music stars in the 1970s and 1980s and known for his songs criticizing the Nigerian military junta. Seun started learning to play saxophone when he was eight, which is also when he started taking piano lessons. Seun Kuti has been performing on stage since he was nine years old. He started his career as opening act with his father’s band, Egypt 80.

And he still performs today with the same band. Apart from the new young bass player Kayode, Seun is probably the youngest person on stage. Most of the band members, performed with Fela, and some look to now be in their fifties and sixties." Performing on stage with as many as twenty singers and musicians in regular sessions that sometimes go on all night was such an effective practical education that when Fela died in 1997, Seun, then just fifteen, was ready to take over. Since then, he has led Egypt 80 as lead vocalist and saxophonist, the focal point of a band that his father had forged into one of Africa’s most legendary ensembles. While Seun is the front man, a star in his own right who is routinely recognized by fans on the streets of Lagos, in many ways Egypt 80 is still his father’s band. In performance, Seun comes across as a perfect stand-in for his famous Father but also stays very personal.

His singing voice is deep like Fela’s, and his alto saxophone hits the lines and hooks his father composed with the same muscular style, although he tries to bring his own flavor to the obligatory solos on saxophone and synthesizer. And like Fela, on stage Seun lives up to a reputation as a sex symbol, shimmying, winding his hips and often discarding his shirt, to the delight of ladies fans. Fela’s Afrobeat was a pungent blend of funk and jazz with an African sensibility, reminiscent of James Brown but grittier, nastier and vaguely unsettling, like fermenting fruit. With Seun, Egypt 80
is as explosive as they were under Fela, combining horns, keyboards, percussion, guitars and vocals in a sophisticated and overpowering blend that is always insistent. In the 70s the band performed almost nightly at The Shrine, a club Fela established, but these days they rehearse once a week and play three or four times a month at various venues around Lagos, sometimes in huge stadiums alongside other artists. The band also tours regularly in Europe, they alreadu hit France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, UK, Belgium, but also South Africa, Ghana... Seun was literally born to do this, and seems unconcerned by the constant comparisons to his father.

For Seun, taking up where his father left off is about building on Fela’s legacy, not trying to escape it. He wrote a song on Malaria disease for a festival in Dakar where he jammed with Manu Dibango and Tony Allen for the BBC film «Africa Live : the RollBack Malaria concert» sponsored by the UN fundation that has been broadcasted around the whole world. "If I’m in my father’s shadow then it doesn’t trouble me to be," he says. "If that’s all I can get, it’s a very good place to be. He was a very great man." He pauses. "But of course every artist wants to define themselves." Seun says he and his father were close, and Fela’s death at the age of 58 hit the teenager hard. Fela had other children by other women, but took a special interest in Seun, who is one of only two sons to follow their father into a career in music. But having inherited the leadership of Fela’s band, Seun can be more selective about what else he chooses to take from the example of Fela’s life. In artistic terms he is also determined to chart his own course. Seun has just finished to record two original tracks, « Think Africa and Fire Dance to be soon released in Vynil 12 inches and on I-Tunes in order to innovate his own style. Seun also wants to update his father’s political message. He heartily endorses Fela’s politics ("He wasn’t afraid," Seun says proudly) and relishes the fact that many of the songs he performs pillory by name Nigeria’s current president, Olusegun Obasanjo (who was also head of state in the mid-1970s when Fela recorded some of his most biting broadsides, including a track blaming Obasanjo for his mother’s death in an infamous army raid on Fela’s Kalakuta compound). But right now Seun seems unlikely to form a political party, as his father did in the late 70s.

Seun hopes to offer his listeners a slightly different message from his father’s. "I want to make Afrobeat for my generation. Instead of ‘get up and fight,’ it’s going to be ‘get up and think,’" he says. "My generation’s not thinking. It’s not really our fault. My father’s generation fucked everything up. And we haven’t been brought up to put it right. ‘Apparently, they weren’t parents,’" he adds, quoting Eminem. Seun once said "I have to play my father’s songs until I’m ready." With an album of his own creations in the works, presumably he’s finally set to stake his own musical claim instead of trading on his father’s name. In so doing, perhaps he can muster the kind of iconic voice and presence that made Fela one of his generation’s most politically influential cultur alartists. It’s
already clear that Seun’s name and music resonate with a new generation of Nigerians, many of whom are too young to remember his father’s heyday. No, it can’t be easy to be a leader to the teeming, aggressive and often undisciplined legions of Nigeria’s youth. But maybe Seun Kuti is one
man for the job. In 2007 He did a stunning debut tour in the USA and Canada playing in front of 10 000 people in the Millenium Park and for more than a 100 000 people in Montreal for the Jazz Festival’s General Motors scene.

To prepare the album, he releases his first single « Think Africa » and « Na Oil » only on vinyl on techno label still Music, then « Fire Dance » on Gilles Peterson Brownswood label.
Gilles Peterson came to the London gig and wrote this on his blog : « Seun Kuti at the jazz cafe last week - Oh my God - the best thing I've seen since Fela in the 80's – incredible band - absolutely moving concert - I was just there - mouth wide open like I was 14 again watching Level 42
at the Lyceum! best show this year - easily - » Gilles Peterson (brownswood loves jazz on www.myspace.com/gillespeterson) The album « Many Things » will be composed with 7 songs, long ones as Fela used to do.

- 'Think Africa' a song by Seun about the necessity of a political consciensness in Africa.

- 'Na Oil' A song by Lekan Animashaun,(Baba Ani) about the stealing of oil by the corrupted politicians.

- 'Fire Dance' A dance song about the magic of the African Woman dance.

- 'Many Thing' A song mocking the politicians who dont see the suffering of thjeir people.

- 'Dont give that shit to me' a song by Rilwan Fagbemi (SHOWBOY)

- 'Mosquito song' a song about Malaria. Seun explains how the corruption causes malaria. If there was clean water and drains, there will be no malaria.

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 has been touring from July 2005 in several famous festival in Europe : Les Nuits de Fourviere 2005 – Sphynx 2005 – Couleur cafe? 2006 - Mar de la Musica 2006 – Pireneo Sur 2006 – Art Rock 2006 - Les Eurocke?ennes 2006 – Musiques Me?tisses 2006 – Festival de Jazz de Montreal 2007 – Roskilde 2007 – Nice Jazz Festival 2007 – Lugano Jazz Festival – JVC jazz festival 2007– Oslo World Music Festival 2007... New Album Spring 2008.