by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)
Comfortable Music Monday! It’s your month-to-month Groove Agent again with one other playlist on this Reverend Martin Luther King Vacation. Immediately we’re celebrating the life and music of the legendary Fela Kuti.
He famously asserted “Music is the weapon. Music is the weapon of the long run.” and a few practically 30 years after his dying in 1997, his music remains to be inspiring generations.
Fela Kuti has been described as Malcolm X, James Brown, Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali, and Dr. King all rolled into one defiant package deal. All modern types of Black music, from funk to hiphop, owe debt to the driving grooves of the Afrobeat style that he created.
Fela recorded greater than 60 albums and spent a lifetime preventing towards political corruption in his homeland of Nigeria. He was in a decades-long cycle of recording music, being arrested and crushed for it, singing about that – REPEAT. In his homeland and world wide he was affectionately known as “Black President.”
This assortment was impressed by Jad Abumrad’s “Fela Kuti: Concern No Man” podcast. It’s a twelve- episode exploration of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and an incredible deep dive into the life and legacy of the multi-instrumentalist, sociopolitical powerhouse, and father of Afrobeat.
Kuti endures as one among crucial musical figures of the twentieth century.
Please get pleasure from 9 hours of the important works of the person usually merely known as: Fela!
