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| Afrobeat has come to be recognized as Nigeria's Original contribution to world music. |
AFROBEAT first appeared on record in form of Fela Kuti's My Lady's Frustration, a tune written for Sandra Akanke Isidore, based on a beat he heard from Ambrose Campbell, a Nigerian expatriate musician living in London and experimenting with a special African beat that would allow him expand his musical oeuvre. This was one of the songs that formed the basis of the seminal album, The 69 Los Angeles Sessions, in which Fela moved from a shorter and structurally tighter highlife and blues -based style, to longer and more open songs like Funky Horn. Ambrose Campbell was an innovative musician who played timeless music and is known to have collaborated with Shake Keane and other Caribbean jazz musicians in London at that time. Listening to a cut from the album, London Is the Place to Be for Me Vol. 2, one would assume it was some contemporary jazz musician sampling Afrobeat, only to be confounded by the liner notes that this music was recorded well before 1960. Some of Campbell's music is now being re-issued by Honest Jon's Records in the UK where he still lives.
Today, a typical Afrobeat band will have capable arrangers whose job it is to create exciting musical backgrounds based on their knowledge of melody, harmony and rhythm. There must also be improvising musicians who take on solos and generate attention by playing in the front of the band and sounding out from it. The great soloists in Nigerian music, Victor Olaiya, Zeal Onyia, Fela Kuti, Sunny Ade, Victor Uwaifo, Yinusa Akinnibosun, Babatunde Williams, Oscar Ellimbi, Dele Sosimi and others have always had a way of playing, like they were telling a story. What happens is that the band has a musical roadmap consisting of the melodic contours and the harmonic form, for example, the kind of chords they are required to play. With that basic form in mind, the soloist can easily interpret the music in his own way, when called upon to take a solo. Other horn instruments can respond to the soloist's prompts and thereby create a lyrical exchange – that famous call and response effect – within that same basic structure. Then you have the kit drums, piano, bass guitar, electric guitar and then a horn section making up the rest of the band. If the soloist is a good enough improviser, an exciting connection is easily established within the band and with the audience. The horn sound has come to be identified with afrobeat just like juju and late highlife is guitar dominated. The saxophone has a human sounding timbre that makes it a popular tool for improvising. Notes can be bent so to speak and all kinds of sounds can be created from a high shrill to a low rumble. Then there is the voice that expresses the whole range of human expressions. Anger, sorrow, sensitivity, sensuality, joy are all expressed in a language– usually pidgin-English–which encapsulates the life of the modern African.
Listening to or watching an afrobeat band, one immediately notices that percussion instruments dominate the rhythm section, with congas, shekeres and claves being standard. In a small sized group of five or six players, these are all usually played by the same man alternating them depending on the song. For example, when the group, Ayetoro, play my compositions, I like the percussion player to do different things depending on the song’s forms, moods and even titles. On a song of mine titled Yoruba Boyz Club, I get her (Ayetoro is the first Nigerian led group to record with a female percussion player, Angela al Hucema, from Chile) to establish a basic pattern using the sakara and or omele drums which have an ancient Yoruba sound to them. They help provide a sonic backdrop to the tune. If the next tune to be played is an up-tempo stomp, I might prefer to have the congas played because they give another flavour.
Afrobeat is a whooping exultant big band jazz that spans a whole spectrum from experimental acoustic projects to huge orchestral vocal led bands. The groove mixes call and response vocal styles, hot instrumental solos, funky guitars, massive horn sections and a stylized rhythm section. These were some of the structural building blocks Fela Kuti put together as a template for creating this exciting art form. Coming from a conservatory-type background which emphasized form and structure in music, combined with a rigorous study of tonal and chromatic harmony, Fela mixed European classical traditions with emerging modern Yoruba lyrical music forms, within a performance style developed by years spent visiting and playing in small jazz clubs.
Jazz musicians have always been drawn to afrobeat because; it is in itself a fusion of jazz with African rhythms, an avant-garde form of jazz. Roy Ayers the American vibes player went on tour of Nigeria with Fela and together they recorded the album, Music of Many Colours (1981). Ayers in 1981 later released his version of Kuti's hit song Africa Centre of the World featuring Yeni Kuti; Fela's daughter, on spoken word and vocals. The album was released by Polydor in the US and contained Afrobeat gems such as The River Niger, Mo Nife si e (I have love for you), The Third Eye and Destination Motherland. By the early 90s, Branford Marsalis, the American jazz saxophonist used samples of Fela's composition Beast of No Nation on his Buckshot Le Fonque project. Carlos Santana, the Latin rock guitarist also covered Truth Don Die, an Afrobeat classic written by Fela's first son, Femi Kuti. Antibalas, an American group led by a Latino baritone player and composer Martin Perna, played a funky 70's styled version of Afrobeat and you can fast-forward to London in the 2000s and you have British jazz musicians such as internationally acclaimed trumpeter and composer, Byron Wallen, playing on albums by Ayetoro and Dele Sosinmi's Gbedu.
Jazz does not have a monopoly regarding collaborations with Afrobeat. Ginger Baker, rock superstar drummer and one third of the group Cream, drove across the Sahara with a studio and made his way to Lagos to play with Fela's Africa 70 band and record The Live With Ginger Baker album. Dennis Bovell, the West Indian bass player and dub reggae producer who invented the lover’s rock genre recorded the Live In Amsterdam album and played the bass guitar on tracks like the magnificent Give Me Shit I Give You Shit. While Fela was still in prison, Robert Musso recorded the Army Arrangement album, featuring the drums of Sly Dunbar who, with his creative partner, Robbie Shakespeare, were the aristocracy of reggae session players. The project involved American funk players like Bill Laswell and P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worell. However when Fela came out of prison, he was livid when he heard the song and he went on to release his own version.
Afrobeat has come to be recognized as Nigeria's original contribution to world music. It has provided and still continues to provide an aural backdrop to our lives. Hopefully, some day it's history and form will be taught along with other local music art forms in our schools so our children can enjoy their cultural heritage. Already the music has made its way round the world.
Recommended Albums:Fela Kuti, Live in Amsterdam (Wrasse Records, 1984)
Fela Kuti, Best of Fela Kuti (Wrasse Records, 2005)
Femi Kuti, Shoki Shoki (Universal Music, 2000)
Ayetoro, 6000 Miles And A Minute (Ebute Metta Music)
Branford Marsalis, Buckshot LeFonque (Columbia Records, 1994)
Tony Allen, Best Of: Eager Hands, Restless Feet (Wrasse Records, 2002)
Dele Sosimi, Turbulent Times (Ekostar, 2003)
Roy Ayers, Africa Centre of The World (Polydor, 1981)
Antibalas, Talkatif (Ninja Tunes)
