Seun Kuti

Seun Kuti began learning the saxophone and piano at eight years old. Within a year he was part of his father’s chorus before sharing the opening act with Fela’s great Afrobeat band Egypt 80. This intensive induction into the music cauldron of The Shrine in Lagos in the Nineties honed the boy’s talent both as an instrumentalist and a singer. His father’s death in 1997 propelled the 15-year-old to the front of the scene, though it took a few years for him to find his mark. Seun wisely decided to heed the experience of the elders in the Egypt 80 band, notably its musical leader Baba Ani, and stay faithful to his father’s legacy.

Kuti retained most of the performers in this mythical band, as well as the hard-driving beats that so characterise this music genre which mixes horns, percussion, keyboards, dance and militant vocals. Afrobeat has never denied the jazz and funk heritage Fela brought back from the US in the Sixties. But father and son have given it a gritty West African component that makes Afrobeat a brand of its own. Kuti has mastered Fela’s alto saxophone lines and hooks and his booming voice is not far from the tone his father imposed on the music world.

Like Fela, Seun Kuti decided to hone his talent abroad. He spent some years in the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts before returning to Lagos to launch his revamped brand of Afrobeat. Rather than trying to escape from his father’s daunting shadow, he has been working on Fela’s legacy, proud of the unique combination of music and politics he left behind. “If I’m in my father’s shadow,” he says on his myspace website, “then it doesn’t trouble me to be. If that’s all I can get, it’s a very good place to be. He was a very great man. But of course every artist wants to define (himself).”

Aware that his society is no longer the one his father fought to change, Kuti has toned down the hard-hitting messages Fela put in his songs. “Instead of “get up and fight,” Seun writes, “it’s going to be “get up and think.” To illustrate his point he has just finished recording “Think Africa” and “Na Oil.” They are likely to be part of his debut album, expected in 2008. Meanwhile the firebrand performer continues to tour the world with his twenty-piece band. At 24 he retains all the energy and magnetic onstage qualities Fela was known for. At his side is his sister Motunrayo Kuti, just one of several dancers that hike up the room temperature with their audacious gyrations.

Seun Kuti has already featured in collaborations with major artists like Manu Dibango, Tony Allen and French rapper Mokobé. His growing posse of fans are now keen to enjoy his own solo release, convinced that it will move body and mind in the same electrifying way that his legendary father Fela did at the end of the last century.

November 2007

Daniel Brown

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