The new Red Hot album release is a tribute to the great songs of Nigerian performer and activist, Fela Kuti. Top acts as diverse as Macy Gray, The Roots, Sade, and Nile Rogers interpret the spirit of this Afrobeat legend. Chris Menist gets on track
Oh dear! Here comes another charity album. Except in this case, the album in question happens to be a stunning tribute to the legendary Nigerian performer and composer, Fela Kuti.
Red Hot & Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela has been produced by the Red Hot organisation, a not-for-profit international organisation dedicated to fighting Aids through popular culture.
The album is a well-constructed mix of soul, hip hop and afro-funk. It features a rosta as diverse as Kelis, D'Angelo, The Roots, Baaba Maal, Nile Rogers, Archie Shepp and Femi Kuti, Fela's son. All have a decent and creative crack at Kuti's vast musical legacy.
If this name doesn't mean much to you, Nigerian-born Kuti was a hugely popular international artist, whose career spanned three decades. He fused elongated African grooves with the driving edge and stage presence of James Brown and a huge jazz entourage akin to Sun Ra.
Fela
was also an activist. Politics and music were inseparable to him, and he continuously
proved to be a thorn in the government's side with his songs denouncing its corruption.
The political powers in turn responded by regularly raiding Kuti's home, the antagonistically-named
Kalakuta Republic; a sort of fenced-off ranch so-called to 'separate' it from
the rest of the country.
Fela Kuti was controversial and courageous. He also died in 1997 from an Aids-related illness, although there are those who still contest this fact. As the Red Hot team discovered when they travelled to Kuti's home in Lagos to film a documentary, there were some who even claimed that the country had no Aids problem and that Kuti died from the numerous beatings he received at the hands of the police. Red Hot & Riot began life in the spring of 2000. It was initially the idea of Ahmir '?uestlove' (sic) Thompson, the drummer for hip-hop band The Roots.
"He
had just received some of the first Fela album reissues," recalls Paul Heck, one
of the album's producers who has worked with Red Hot since 1992. "During a break
in the studio he just suggested we do a Fela record and call it 'Red Hot and Riot',
and I was like 'That's a good idea'. I was straight on the phone with Ricky Stein
(Fela's ex-manager) and some of his people, and it turned out they had also had
an idea to do a tribute to Fela. It didn't take much to convince them of the logic
of doing it within the context of a Red Hot Aids benefit."
The first session to take place, prior to securing a deal with Universal, was to record Fela's classic track, 'Water No Get Enemy'. This initial session brought together Femi Kuti, Macy Gray, D'Angelo, Ahmir, Roy Hargrove and Nile Rogers, (of 'Chic' fame). The recording was done at the famous Electric Lady studios in New York and is essentially from one take. Andres Levin, another producer involved with the album recalls this as one of his favourite sessions: "The process was really organic. Macy happened to be in the studio, she wasn't like scheduled to sing! A lot of things happened like that. Nile was in the studio when we started the tune with D'Angelo and they hadn't ever played together. There were about forty people in the control room just getting high off the music!"
For
another track, 'Shuffering + Shmiling', Jorge Ben Jor, a legendary figure in Brazilian
music who performed to a sell-out crowd at Somerset House last year, happened
to be in New York and was persuaded along to the session. Elsewhere on the album,
Cheikh Lo jams with Manu Dibango, and Baaba Maal duets with Taj Mahal (for one
of the album's highlights 'Trouble Sleep').
So, some nice music was made, but what about down on the ground? Many people suffer from 'charity fatigue', out of a sometimes legitimate concern as to how the money gets spent after it's been raised by initiatives such as this.
"Clearly for there to be an economic help to these organisations we need to sell a lot of records," admits Andres. "But it's raising the consciousness of Aids in Africa too, through all the press that it's getting. That's as powerful. The great thing about Red Hot is that they deal directly with the African organisations so there are no middlemen. We've been there, we know the hospitals, the issues there...in Lagos and South Africa."
Over the past ten years, Red Hot has produced 12 successful albums and related TV programmes. To date they have raised $7 million dollars to donate towards Aids relief, mainly funding treatment for those who have no access.
"It is our intention to change things," states Tony Allen, Fela's longest serving drummer who contributes to the track 'No Agreement'. But the point is that why things are not really changing is because those who are really concerned, they listen but they pretend they don't listen to it. They are the ones who are supposed to be changing things.
"If only when they listen to it and they listen properly and really ask themselves questions and start to do something about this, then we start to see changes."
Chris Menist is a freelance writer and percussionist.
'Red Hot + Riot' is out now on Universal from all good record shops. For more
details, visit: www.redhotafrica.com
