Not Yet Zombie: Fela Ransom Kuti and the Koola Lobitos with "Amaechi's Blues"

Today's random song is an early tune by an African and music legend, Fela Ransom Kuti, accompanied by his quintet the Koola Lobitos. A Nigerian musician and composer who played many instruments, Fela Kuti was a pioneer of Afrobeat. In 1958, Kuti was sent to London to study medicine, but decided to study music instead and formed his first band, the Koola Lobitos, who fused jazz and highlife music. After five years in London, he moved back to Nigera and reformed the Koola Lobitos but after a while, he decided to move to Ghana to try a different direction. It was in Ghana that he first started playing what would be called Afrobeat, a unique fusion of jazz, funk, highlife, psychedelia and traditional chants and rhythms of West Africa. In 1969, he spent 10 months in Los Angeles where he became acquainted with the Black Power movement, and this experience would influence his future music, as well as drive his human rights and political activities. He became not only a revered musician, but a political figure as well. He frequently decried Nigerian political corruption and mistreatment of Nigerian citizens and consequently was arrested over 200 times. Personally, he also believed in polygamy as part of a greater African culture, and participation in this practice may have led to his contraction of HIV/AIDS which was his official cause of death in 1997, although his exact cause of death remains controversial. His funeral featured a five-sided glass coffin for full public viewing. His music has since undergone a revival, helped by the Broadway musical Fela! which was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, and an annual Felabration festival in Lagos. You can find this song, Amaechi's Blues, on the 2016 Fela Kuti retrospective Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul, issued by Knitting Factory.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti