Fela Kuti - Coffin for a Head of State / Unknown Soldier
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Artist: Fela KutiEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2006-06-13
Music Label: Wrasse Records
Soundtracks:
- Coffin for Head of State, Pts. 1 - 2 - Fela Kuti
- Unknown Soldier, Pts. 1 - 2 - Fela Kuti
Free Music Notes for Coffin for a Head of State / Unknown Soldier
Free Music Review: Speaking truth to power while having a splendidly good time
Hit: 5 Stars
This CD is a powerful combination of great music and civic dedication. In the 1970s, the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti created a new genre called Afrobeat, where funk and jazz instrumentation were wedded to local traditional rhythms with vocals in Nigerian pidgin English. Everything takes its time--few of Fela's songs were under the 10 minute mark and many far surpassed it--and the listener quickly feels at ease in the gradual buildup. Fela was the ultimate maker of chill-out music, but far from being a lightweight like so many contemporary acts in that genre (Thievery Corporation, for example), he had a huge amount of musical integrity and was always looking to extend his sound.
But besides being a genuinely hip musician, Fela was a voice against the misdeeds of the Nigerian government. He had a number of small brushes with the state as the years went by, but when he released a song called "Zombie" in 1977 that painted the Nigerian military as a bunch of mindless puppets, the powers that be sought to put him down for good. Over a thousand soldiers stormed his neighbourhood, arsoned his home, raped local women, beat Fela to within an inch of his life, and threw his mother to her death from a second-story window. When the people demanded an investigation, the government kept a lid on it and claimed that the murder was done by an "unknown soldier".
The first song on this disc, "Unknown Soldier" (1979) has Fela recounting the whole sad story after 15 minutes of smoking development. While he keeps an even tone of restrained anger for most of his narration, once he gets to the matter of his mother's death his voice movingly breaks. His lyrics end with a clever metaphor of the government investigation as so much smoke and mirrors: "Dem start magic: Dem seize my house, wey they there born. Dem seize my land, dem drive all the people wey live in area: two thousand citizens, dem make them all homeless now. / Dem start magic, dem start magic. Dem bring flame, dem bring hat, dem bring rabbit, dem conjure, dem bring smoke, dem they fall, dem conjure, spirit catch them. Dem they say: 'Unknown Soldier 921'".
In "Coffin for Head of State" (1981) Fela attacks religious authorities in Nigeria for keeping silent in the fact of all this violence. The title refers to a publicity stunt where Fela had his mother's coffin carried to the gates of the Nigerian military's headquarters. Here the chorus of "Amen" resounds among the chorus of Fela's wives as he mocks the vacuous rhetoric of both the Christian priests and Muslim imams of his country.
It's a shame these Wrasse Records reissues of Fela's discography are difficult to come by in the United States; they can be found at nearly any big record shop in Europe. Still, it's well worth paying import prices if you have to, because this is powerful music and will find a treasured place in your collection.
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