Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Live In Amsterdam (Capitol); Perambulator (Lagos international)
Randall Grass, Musician, January 1985
NIGERIA'S FELA Anikulapo-Kuti was the presumed messiah to break African pop internationally, just as Bob Marley had broken reggae. He sings in comprehensible pidgin English. His lyrics are funny/serious political broadsides. There are dozens of prominent juju, highlife and soukhous practitioners, but Fela is certainly the most credible purveyor of the incendiary jazz-cum-funk-cum-African roots Afrobeat synthesis; after all, he invented it.
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