Tribute to Fela from Masekela and friends.

FELABRATION, the annual commemorative festival that gets better with every successive year, began last Monday at the new Afrika Shrine, Ikeja, Lagos. How best to pay tributes to the Afrobeat legend than with Afrobeat no go die, a star-studded collection of Afro-influenced artistes headlined by South Africa’s hugh Masekela.

Paraded along with Hugh Masekela are four ex-Africa 70 sidemen such as Femi-Kuti, Tony Allen, Baba Ani and Dele Sosimi who are now individualists in their own rights. But the foreign contribution to the package comprises such outfits and solo acts as Keela Daktaris Groove Collective, Antibalas and of course Lagbaja, the Nigerian who performs under a mask.

Tony Allen offers The same blood from his Black Voices album in a treatment that replaces big band Afrobeat beat mere synthesizer and turn tables. The main attraction here is constituted by the drum and bass structure, which is rock solid with the snare in front of the mix. And incidentally this is based on an old song that was produced for him while he was still a member of Fela’s Africa 7- in the seventies. This lacks progressiveness and only reduces Afrobeat to mere disco for the kids.

Femi Bang Bang Bang is reflected in its original form. The song is a point blank sexual assertion. But the grooves are tight and the music moves along a well defined progression. Only that Fela’s ganja has been taken away from the mix.

Apart from being an ex-Egypt ’80 keyboardist who also worked on Femi Kuti’s early solo projects. Dele Sosimi is an ardent admirer of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His offering of Gbedu is in the straight jacketed format of the seventies Afrobeat.

Kiala, the group, pays tribute to some notable African ancestors including Fela in a musical experience that has a direct identification with Fela’s Afrobeat.

The group, Daktaris attempts to recreate Fela’s Upside down vocalized in the seventies by Sandra Isidore. This version is interesting in that it stretches its progression beyond the straight ahead, funky version of Fela’s original treatment, with loose arrangements that put a baritone saxophone player on an enterprising solo spot. The New York based Groove Collective offers Crisis as its input to the session. The group’s interpretation utilizes a basic Afrobeat rhythm as a foundation and vehicle for profuse improvisation and horn work. The group is apparently a proficient jazz outfit that realizes the fact that only a good knowledge of jazz can move Afrobeat ahead like Fela did.

The emergence of New York-based Antibalas is significant to the new wave of Afrobeat. And the fact that the group was organized primarily as an Afrobeat band shows that the music has more than passing novelty values.

Laitan Adeniji, the Heavywind, once spoke highly of Antibalas with whom he jammed in New York during his American tour. The group’s contribution is entitled Dirt and Blood, a selection from the album Liberation Afrobeat. A well written song, the music is based on Fela’s Open and Close with an ensemble sound that has the Latin beat as undercurrent.

Lagbaja’s input is from Cool Temper, which was widely accepted in Nigeria in 1996. Titled Side by side, it is a straight ahead repetitive groove characteristic of Fela’s Afrobeat of the seventies. But the singing is good and the ensemble sound points in a definite direction that can be described as Afrobeat.

Lagbaja has since evolved a freer, non restrictive style and form in which a legion of percussionists provide the bulk of the rhythm for creative highlife of a rather indigenous and experimental type to thrive.

Sere re is an Afrobeat song recorded by Baba Ani who took over the leadership of the Africa 70 and later Egypt ’80 when Tony Allen left in 1978. Solos are heard on baritone saxophone by Baba Ani himself, but the music is typical Africa ’70 arrangement and treatment.

Perhaps the greatest tribute ever done to Fela since his demise in August 1997 is Hugh Masekela’s Fela, which plays for five minutes and a half in this CD. Combining aspects of Fela’s Afrobeat with South African cultural concentration, the music is given a fresh approach and a new lease of life in terms of rhythmic interpretation, group vocal harmony arrangements, vocalization and even the treatment of the subject matter. And bringing his prodigious musicianship to bear on execution, the music easily recommends itself as one of the greatest Afrobeat renditions outside of Fela’s tradition.

Masekela’s Fela can be described as a wonderful tribute from one great musician to another. The lyrics speak of the great experience in terms of musical entertainment that awaits anyone at Fela’s Shrine in Lagos. And, portraying Fela as a great composer and performer of songs, Masekela joggles with Fela’s tunes such as Gentleman, Lady among others, using the same rhythmic configuration of Fela.

Among the brilliant elements Masekela has introduced to Afrobeat are group-vocal harmonies and melodic progressions that are definite rather than the typical call-and-response pattern of African music.

It is however not surprising that Masekela has been able to achieve this feat with Afrobeat. One of Africa’s foremost musicians, he blazed into international prominence in the sixties with Grazing in the grass, a hit which enjoyed immense popularity and success in almost all the charts on both side of the Atlantic. This was after working with the great Harry Belafonte.

Among other remarkable musical exploits, he collaborated on a cross-over attempt with the great trumpet player Herb Alpert. Masekela has numerous albums, which are presently enjoying popularity on the international scene.

A great admirer of Fela and his Afrobeat music, he traveled with Fela in the seventies to Ghana where he was impressed by the group, Hedzolleh Soundz who opened the show for Fela during his musical tour of that country. Consequently, Masekela recorded together with the group in Lagos and took them with him to America in 1974.

Masekela used to jam with Fela at the Shrine in the seventies and has not only adopted elements of Fela’s Afrobeat into his own music, he has performed Fela’s songs. He has a version of Lady on vinyl in a recording, which adds new elements to the original version in terms of arrangements and even style of singing.

However, the powerful statement the CD has made is that Afrobeat is not just a showcase for drums and percussion. These elements are just a foundation and a means to an end. Afrobeat must stretch out. The music should progress and move in various directions. Only a good jazz musician can accomplish this ideal task.