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Posts tagged as “Fela Kuti”

MUSIC MONDAY: “Blackman Know Yourself” – Celebrating Afrobeat (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Blackman Know Yourself” – Celebrating Afrobeat (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on July 13, 2020

[Photo credit: Fela Kuti by Leni Sinclair / Getty Images]

The roots of Afrobeat began in Ghana during the early 1920s. When musicians incorporated influences like the foxtrot and calypso with Ghanaian rhythms like osibisaba (Fante).

Nigerian artists later solidified the Afrobeat groove in the late ’60s led by Fela Kuti. The sound is a complex fusion of jazz, funk, soul, Ghanaian highlife, psychedelic rock and traditional West African chants and rhythms.

This playlist features Kuti, his longtime collaborator Tony Allen, and his sons Femi and Seun. Plus The Funkees, Antibalas, Angélique Kidjo, Chicago Afrobeat Project, William Onyeabor, The Lijadu Sisters, and many other originators and modern practitioners of the art.

Enjoy, and don’t even try to sit still while it’s on.  Until next week, stay safe, sane, and kind.

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:0F5CPmd4JNblXRZGsMTxan”/]

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwestSpotify: marlonwest)

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)

Alvin Ailey To Make its Feature Film Debut Today in Theaters Nationwide

By goodblacknews on October 22, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-10-22 at 9.05.41 AM
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been amazing audiences around the world since 1958. However, even after almost 60 years in business, it is still breaking ground as a modern dance company.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, Ailey will be debuting its first-ever feature film as part of the Lincoln Center at the Movies series, Great American Dance. In movie theaters nationwide, audiences will have the chance to watch the Ailey company perform some of its most classic, popular pieces like “Revelations,” “Takademe” choreographed by Robert Battle and “Grace” by Ronald K. Brown.
Hosted by Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan, the film will also feature behind-the-scenes footage from shows and exclusive interviews with members of the company.
Considering that this is a one-night only affair, this event is the opportunity of a lifetime. The Ailey company is critically acclaimed for its brilliant choreography and innovative scores featuring some of the most loved and revered musicians in Black music including Duke Ellington, Roy Davis and Fela Kuti.  The entire show is performed to African-American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues.
Interested? Check local listings (the show starts at 7 pm local time) here or here and check out the trailer below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kidmQA4Loqc&w=560&h=315]
article by Monique John via hellobeautiful.com

BOOK REVIEW: Going Back to Lagos in Teju Cole's "Every Day Is for the Thief"

By goodblacknews on March 22, 2014
Author Teju Cole and the cover of his book, "Every Day is For the Thief." (©Teju Cole / Random House)
Author Teju Cole and the cover of his book, “Every Day is For the Thief.” (©Teju Cole / Random House)

Imagine a patient, observant and precise writer like the late W.G. Sebald reborn as a Nigerian exile, returning to and then wandering about that country’s teeming and chaotic cultural capital, Lagos. That, in broad strokes, is the voice of the narrator of Teju Cole‘s fine novel, Every Day Is for the Thief.

“The air in the strange environment of this city is dense with story, and it draws me into thinking of life as stories,” Cole’s unnamed narrator says halfway through the novel, as he becomes more deeply immersed in the disorder, the striving, the corruption and the inventiveness of Lagos and its people. “The narratives fly at me from all directions … And that literary texture of lives full of unpredictable narrative, is what appeals.”
Cole earned a large following in the United States for his PEN Faulkner Award-winning Open City, published in 2011. That novel told the story of a Nigerian immigrant and his wanderings in New York City and other places.  The U.S.-born Cole was raised and educated in Nigeria. Before he wrote Open City, he had written Every Day Is for the Thief, his first book, published in Nigeria in 2007, and which Random House is now issuing in the United States for the first time.