Femi Kuti 252 <i>Continued from <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/report/in-afrobeat-fight-femi-kuti-is-no-friend-of-government">part 1</a></i> “I don’t like any corrupt government,” Femi says. “And any government that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do cannot be my friend.” A student of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey">Marcus Garvey</a>, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/femikuti">Femi Kuti</a> told me he hopes freedom of communication brought by channels like the worldwide web can lead to a time when government altogether is not necessary, when people can get along as free individuals. In this he is with his father Fela, who asked for a society organized by its people -- “no Marxism, no capitalism; Africanism.” For both of Femi and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti">Fela Kuti</a>, music is inseparable from efforts to remake society -- and not abstractly. Fela protested political injustices through song, escaping not just embargoes against free press and demonstration but cultivating a lyrical language comprehensible to the common man (“Music is the weapon of the future.”). When I ask what ordinary Nigerians can do to improve their lot, Femi answers, “We can sing.” In so saying, Femi lifts music’s transformative potential above even <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/report/in-afrobeat-fight-femi-kuti-is-no-friend-of-government">the internet</a>. “Music has to play a political role because music influences people,” Femi says. “Now if music plays a political role it will speed anti-corruption, and pass any message very fast. I think it’s the fastest outlet to passing on information.” ** Whereas Fela Kuti absorbed traditional forms and combined them with styles emerging elsewhere to invent a new music, Femi has largely stayed with Afrobeat. “I don’t listen to anybody anymore,” he says. “Nothing. I don’t even listen to myself.” But significant political music of the kind wished by Fela <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/home/search?query=democracy+dakar">appears all over West Africa in the form of rap</a>, spoken as often as not now in tribal languages specifically by and for common folk. Femi told me he has heard about these developments but “we don’t get to hear many of that in Nigeria” (which must be partly true: tribal languages vary considerably; <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/city/dakar">French dominates much of the region</a>; <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/home/search?query=hiplife">Ghanaian hiplife</a> is quite different from Nigerian hip hop, which is more influenced by American and British styles). Still, here is the internet, and one wonders what a Kuti might do to synthesize recursive recording elements with the ripe stagecraft of Afrobeat. Then again, Afrobeat shows plenty of life. Femi mentions Afrobeat bands from <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/region/oceania">Australia</a>, <a href="http://spinearth.tv/city/paris">France</a> and the U.S. who have started to tour extensively, often visiting <a href="http://shrinetv.com">the Shrine</a> in Nigeria on a kind of pilgrimage, and he reports growing support on his frequent tours to <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/region/europe">Europe</a> and <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/region/north-america">North America</a> -- <a href="http://spinearth.tv/city/atlanta">Atlanta</a> especially is a new stronghold. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Day-Femi-Kuti/dp/B001IF25W2"><i>Day by Day</i></a>, his record released in October last year, remains a top-5 seller among Nigerian artists on Amazon.com (Fela Kuti’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Expensive-Shit-He-Miss-Road/dp/B000CCZQI2"><i>Expensive Shit</i></a> is No. 1). “It is like having a double barreled gun,” Femi says, “and if I take what my father has and what I have and shoot it to the audience, it’s more powerful.” In his performance at <a href="http://www.spinearth.tv/home/search?query=fillmore">the Fillmore</a> 20 June, Femi delivered a grinning lecture on sexual stamina during an extended jam of his 1998 hit <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpTYLQ5K9w">“Beng Beng Beng”</a>. The lesson, issued across the swaying bellies and raised arms chanting all the while that percussive theme along with Femi’s <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/spinearth-prod/pictures/38953/femidance.jpg">three chorus girls</a> under a haze of marijuana smoke, was that if after one year practice a lover can last 10 minutes, and after two years practice, 30 minutes … “then after 10 years you start at 10 pm and go till 4 in the morning.” Femi’s dedication to Afrobeat pays off. Amid other projects, Femi performed and perfected the tracks that became <i>Day by Day</i> for nearly 10 years. ** Back in the dressing room, Femi told me he loves playing the Fillmore. The Fillmore is perhaps his favorite venue in Europe or America. “It reminds me so much of the Shrine. The crowd, they are very open minded. They are down to earth. But you cannot fool them,” Femy says. “I’ve always felt very comfortable, for a spiritual reason. We have been coming here for years now. Santana comes sometimes, sends us roses.” But so much that San Francisco offers natural sanctuary to an Afrobeat man -- legacies of Miles Davis and Fillmore jazz, a Marcus Garvey bookstore, <a href="http://www.moadsf.org/">Museum of African Diaspora</a>, history of countercultural resistance -- Femi’s true desire insists Africa can develop as an attraction for worldwide talent just as does the great cities of Europe and America. His dream of highway driving is not just childish joy for engines, no kind of envy of wealth but a will for investment of resources -- resources not again for wealth’s sake, rather for sustaining world-shaking music. “Now I am impatient to see my highways, railroad lines, good airports,” Femi says. “You need music centers all over the world, where American bands can tour Africa like African bands tour in America. It’s one-sided right now. We are touring, and when you come to Africa it has to be some very big powerful politician, who has some money hidden behind an organization, with the government’s help. And big bands, with big fees which the masses can’t afford. “We want to see it like when we come to America, where young bands can come -- any kind of band can tour the ‘United States of Africa’ and just tour. Or right round Africa, all the way to South Africa” -- and here Femi gets carried away a last time, indulging the oratory cadences of the African syllables -- “<a href="http://spinearth.tv/home/search?query=zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</a>, Rwanda, Botswana, Angola … by the time you are back in the United States you have to be a changed person. “Different cultures, different people, different languages. That band will be a changed band!” Resistance is the shout. Afrobeat ecstasy bubbles over. 19 2009-07-09T18:59:24Z 1 1 Cultural/Heritage 2038 6.44116 3.41798 Lagos, Nigeria 2009-07-09T19:11:00Z 6 in-afrobeat-fight-femi-kuti-is-no-friend-of-government-pt-2 published femifemi, Femi Kuti, fillmore, fela, highlife, nigeria, shrine, iran 2009-07-13T22:42:03Z The Fillmore 1117