Are you cold Spokane? I’ve got the cure. And no, it’s not
"In Between Days." Fela Kuti, the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and father of Afrobeat, will warm you up via the dancing that should commence in front of your computer.  First, I want to talk about his life because everything that follows is true.  (Albeit a too brief summary.)

Discovering the Black Power movement, Kuti formed his own political party and ran for President. His mother was thrown out of a window by the military for his political views and his studio was burned by police. He put a curse on Paul McCartney for trying to steal his music. He titled an album “Expensive S***” which refers to an incident in which the Nigerian police tried to arrest Kuti by planting a joint on him. Always testing authority, Kuti managed to eat the joint which prompted the police to bring him into custody and try to wait for him to dump the load so he quickly traded it for another inmate's clean turd- and was released. Criticized as a misogynist, in 1978 ceremony, Fela married twenty-seven women at once, many of whom were his dancers, composers, and singers – then he adopted a rotation system of keeping only twelve simultaneous wives.  At the Berlin Jazz Festival, his musicians deserted him because he wanted to use all proceeds to fund his presidential campaign. He died from AIDS in 1997 and more than a million people attended his funeral. Last year Will Smith and Jay-Z produced the Broadway award winning “Fela!” with a film to follow. All of this aside, he fought against European cultural imperialism for Africans and censorship in Nigeria's state controlled media – a fight that matters.

But on to the music. After the jump is Zombie from 1977, a harsh attack on Nigerian soldiers using the zombie metaphor to describe their methods. It’s fast-paced fun. Now dance.

---

---