The Rough Guide to Afrobeat Revival

For the past 15 years, Rough Guides have been steadily releasing a string of well-researched compilations. From now on, these will be enhanced with essential travel data, sleevenotes expanded into French and Spanish, and a second album-length CD featuring one of the bands on the compilation in greater depth.

Afrobeat Revival – one of two CDs to get the 15th birthday treatment – starts where founding father of afrobeat Fela Kuti left off. Most of the musicians featured are from afrobeat’s furthest shores. Fela himself isn’t present so the Nigerian connection is made by his former drummer Tony Allen and his son (Seun Kuti, sounding very much like Pa). Meanwhile, the brilliant Femm Nameless, a girl-group riposte to Fela’s ambivalent relationship with female creativity, hit their groove to offer sweaty inventiveness.

LG

Available from the NI Australia on-line shop

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