exiled-again.co.uk

"a music genre which involves the combination of elements of West African musical styles such as fuji music and highlife with American funk and jazz influences, with a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion."
Have to admit to being completely unaware of all this stuff before but it sounds pretty good.

https://youtu.be/mFSRCG4DrmI

It certainly is pretty good.

These days there is another 'Afrobeats' which is broadly contemporary dance(hall)-pop with an African twist like this:

Davido - Assurance

It's pretty popular too - nearly 30,000,000 views for that one.

There's a big crossover with grime and UK music since, like Skepta, a lot of the UK artists have African roots:

Skepta & WizKid - 'Energy (Stay Far Away)

Anyway, back to 'Afrobeat' - I won't go into too much background except that all roads lead to Fela Kuti (it was his son you posted):

Fela Kuti - Zombie

Fela's drummer, Tony Allen, is amazing (I've seen him live) and was the James Brown influence in Afrobeat along with jazz and African hi-life that was a large part of the Afrobeat sound. He's currently touring with Damon Albarn's The Good, The Bad & The Queen band.

On the pre-crash board I mentioned seeing a New York based Afrobeat band called Antibalas. They are on the same label as the Dap Kings (who provided a lot of the backing to Amy Winehouse) and played on the sountrack to the Fela film:

Antibalas - Dirty Money

Thankyou,once again
It's the Afrobeat I prefer.Fela Kuti seems to have been one of the good guys.

Psmith wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 08, 2018 4:16 pm

Thankyou,once again
It's the Afrobeat I prefer.Fela Kuti seems to have been one of the good guys.

Fela is pretty much the African Bob Marley in terms of being both a political and musical figurehead, not to mention smoking huge amounts of weed.

There is a lot of his story out there and I was at a special showing of the 'Finding Fela' documentary a couple of years ago which is worth a watch.

Musically it helps if you like a bit of jazz and, like James Brown, he always liked long funky workouts and was famous for all night sets.

Yes thanks.I like the jazz feel to it.