One of the world’s true musical revolutionaries, Fela Ransome-Kuti’s life and work embody most of the contradictions inherent in any major collusion of Western and African styles of thought and art. Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1938 to an affluent Christian family and educated in London, Fela was just another minor highlife bandleader until he…
Queens homeslice Eric B. (Barrier) is the DJ and Strong (Long) Islander Rakim (William Griffin) is the rapper; as the latter sings in “I Ain’t No Joke,” “I hold the microphone like a grudge/Eric B. hold the record so the needle don’t budge.” Beginning with a brilliant summer of ’86 single, “Eric B. Is President,”…
Along with King Sunny Adé, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey dominates the juju music genre, that beautiful, spiritual and eminently danceable combination of traditional chants, hymns, highlife, rock and country- western. An easy way to think of juju is as inverted Western pop: interlocking guitars function as rhythm instruments while numerous drummers take on the melodic…
Sixteen terribly amusing songs about oral hygiene, used duds (“Clothes of the Dead”), rent-control romance, Thorazine and girls with guns, all done to a golden-brown turn by magician-comedian-label-proprietor Penn Jillette (Bass), Dean J. Seal (Bongos) and Rob “Running” Elk (guitar), with Kramer kind of at the kontrols. Loose’n’lively in a hip, know-it-all, post-frat singalong sort…
Refusing to compromise their chops with some cut-rate rock vocalist, this young instrumental trio (originally from St. Louis but now living in Brooklyn) constructs a huge, brash sound influenced (consciously or not) by Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, the Velvet Underground, the Meters (Blind Idiot God covers the Crescent City funk geniuses’ “More Time”), the Sex…
