Shakara

Albumbeschreibung

The album Shakara was a turning point for Fela Kuti. The year was 1972: he had just experienced his first continental success with Chop ’n’ Quench, changed his band’s name from Nigeria 70 to Africa 70, learned to play the saxophone (in just 24 hours according to legend) and adopted Pidgin, an English Creole, as his writing language to reach a larger audience. He had also just taken over the club of the Empire Hotel, in Lagos, renamed African Shrine, where he was performing legendary concerts on a nightly basis with his band and a myriad of dancers. The ingredients for success and legend were present, and Shakara – that featured the title track and the famous Lady −, proudly marked the beginning of a glorious era for the most scandalous and respected African musician. The two epic tracks both stretch over 13 minutes. Fela, with his Rhodes organ and a playing style reminiscent of the Doors’ Ray Manzarek, injects drama, while Tony Allen sets the rhythm so specific to afrobeat and conducts the musicians. Guitars keep up the pressure, brass mount their attack like warriors, marking the shapes and volutes of this sensual epic. Fela’s imperial song, and the response from female choirs, still provide the most irrepressible chills.

Both Lady and Shakara are addressed to women, in an ambiguous way that triggered the wrath of some feminists. In Lady, Fela makes the distinction between a simple African woman – docile, obedient and obliging to her husband −, and the educated lady who, influenced by western morals, wants to be man’s equal. One could sense Fela’s preference for the former, and his fear of the latter, because even though he is well known for having married 27 Nigerians on the same day, he was also madly in love with an English mixed-race woman, Remilekun Taylor, with whom he had his son Femi. In Shakara (braggart), he takes to pieces the schemes of dominant males who threaten women with violence, but whose claptrap is empty. Be that as it may, the musical discourse is foolproof and constitutes the very essence of an always-active historic genre. As good as his successors and descendants may be, afrobeat will never be as clearly penetrating as through the voice of the initiating maestro: Fela Anikulapo Kuti. © Benjamin MiNiMuM/Qobuz