Zombie. . - Music - sound recording review

New Internationalist, April, 2002 by Louise Gray

by Fela Kuti and Afrika 70 (Wrasse Records WRASS 048 CD)

Whenever the 'moral majority' gets itself in a lather about anti-authoritarian pop stars, maybe they should just thank their lucky stars that they don't have someone of the order of Fela Kuti on their tails. Simply, Fela Kuti (who died in 1997) still makes the Sex Pistols or Marilyn Manson look like teletubbies. The difference is Fela Kuti really did want to smash the system; 'the system', one upon which he focused a whole career and some 80 albums, being the misrule of his Africa.

A Yoruba Nigerian who studied classical music but fell in love with jazz in London, Kuti was aware that the problems of Africa lay as much in a colonial legacy as in a profound level of corruption and mismanagement by the newly independent states. Returning to Lagos in 1963, his music was fed by a burgeoning political awareness -- pan-Africanism led to what Kuti would term afro-beat. He fused this politics with a music that sensuously manipulated and spliced high-life sounds with improvised, flying sax solos and incendiary vocals.

Zombie is a good introduction to the master's work. Dating from 1976, it is one of 15 remastered and re-released Fela classics now available from the UK-based Wrasse Records. Its three tracks -- Kuti's songs can each last for some 30 minutes -- were red rags to Nigeria's regime. The title itself is a direct attack on the mindless military. Following the record's release, a thousand soldiers burnt down Kuti's house and fatally injured his mother. The album was produced in court against him. This release combines the incisiveness of Zombie's funk lines with two unreleased tracks: 'Mistake' and 'Observation is No Crime'. Together, they're capable of getting people on to their feet -- something that should scare anyone in their path.

RATING ****

www.gatewayofafrica.com

STAR RATING

VERY GOOD ****