Afrobeat!: Fela and the Imagined Continent

by Sola Olorunyomi

Overview

In the seventies as signs of decay began to show in the capitalist experiment of the newly independent African countries, a "bard of the misrule" emerged on the streets of Lagos. Often shirtless and armed with his trademark saxophone, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti tore his way into popular culture with Afrobeat music. Blending ethno-traditional forms with the reigning highlife and jazz rhythms, Afrobeat drew lyrics from the flip side of neo-colonial society and Fela's London and American experience in the sixties. In the two decades that followed, Fela ruled the nights from Afrika Shrine, his signature night club, and the days from the turntables of the restless city dwellers along the Atlantic coastline. Fela's Afrobeat became a dynamic mode of expression in the social history of post-independent West Africa and generated a counterculture that bonded through music, drugs, resistance politics -- and ultimately, the nascence of an Afrocentric contemporary global culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592210725
Publisher:	Africa World Press
Publication date:	04/28/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Glossary	xiii
	Introduction	xix
1.	Tradition and Afrobeat	1
2.	Bard of the Public Sphere	33
3.	The Empire Sounds Back	81
4.	Idan, or a Carnivalesque	127
5.	Alterity, Afrobeat and the Law	173
6.	The Afrobeat Continuum	211
	Bibliography	221
	Appendices	237
	Discography	237
	Excerpts from the Constitution of the Movement of the People (MOP)	254
	Biodata/Inventory of Sonic Censorship	256
	Photographs	265
	Index	275