photography: Alexis Maryon

This Is Afrobeat!, Friday night’s offering on Brighton Festival’s eclectic line-up, showcasing legendary drummer Tony Allen and Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 at the Brighton Dome, delivered a scorching musical workout of immense spiritual proportions.

The previous evening’s offering was a screening of Phillip Glass’s classic Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi Indian proverb meaning, ‘Life In Turmoil, Life disintegrating, A state of life that calls for another way of living’) accompanied by the Phillip Glass Ensemble live – an audio-visual spiritual journey, inducing audience introspection and contemplation on the human condition and unstable outcome of our collective future on the planet.

This Is Afrobeat!, on the other hand, delivered an altogether different if not more compelling spiritual epiphany (a triumphant Afro-philosophical ‘musical antidote’), delivering an alternative sonic-vision of hope and resistance. In answer to Koyannisqatsi’s sombre call for ‘another way of living’, here was a performance bringing cosmic contemplation, spiritual celebration, hope, upliftment, inspiration and change through the shared ritual of musical expression. It was something that the festival’s guest artistic curator Brian Eno eagerly and passionately wanted to impart to the already swelling auditorium of as he eloquently introduced the evening’s proceedings, warmly recounting his discovery of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen’s music during a record dig in London in ’72 (“many moons ago”). Eno summed up Tony Allen as “the greatest Living drummer in the world today” and then likened his first experiences of listening to Fela, Allen and the Afrobeat sound as listening to “Jazz from another planet” before humbly rejoining the audience front stage to get his groove on. This admission immediately conjured up the now obvious links between Eno’s love of Afrobeat and its influences on his own artistic collaborations over the years, in particular his work with David Byrne and Talking Heads sprang to mind.

Tony Allen’s set started at a steady pace, easing its way through, by this stage, an almost full auditorium, slowly warming the crowd over and building into a powerful multi-layered edifice of rhythm, groove, and horns with a cosmic sprinkle of synth keyboards and soulful earthy vocals, filled to the brim with generous and incredible solos. Allen led the band from his raised podium and illuminated drum kit with an insane level of mastery of his craft and a warm sense of encouragement for his musicians to experiment, building a rich tapestry of sound. To begin with it felt like a strange dynamic hearing Afrobeat sounds in the Brighton Dome auditorium – a seemingly unlikely venue easily associated with highbrow western arts and classical composition, however this only added to the spiritual nature and grandeur of the occasion, the inertia of the two oppositional constructs colliding into an altogether ‘grand church-like’ Afro-spiritual celebration. Tony Allen only paused between two numbers to jokingly coax the tentative audience into letting go and to express themselves and rejoice in the love and gift of music, which only reinforced the persuasive and uplifting magic of his sounds to greater heights. Allen left the stage to a rapture of enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation from the balcony stalls.

By this stage Brighton Dome had swelled to maximum capacity. The bar was heaving with people of all ages and nationalities buzzing with excitement, some already aware of Tony Allen’s musical prestige and some clearly blown away by what they had just experienced, all profoundly touched, in ecstatic anticipation of the next act.

Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 took to the stage and from the offset awed the audience into what can only be described as a jaw-dropping and life-changing experience, a truly unique and captivating live performance like no other, The cohesion and organic symbiance between Seun and the members of Egypt 80 is mesmerising. Hypnotic syncopation and almost telepathic precision and interaction creates a musical fluidity so reflexive and yet so taught it almost seems effortless; so much funk even Sir Nose would find it impossible not to shake his rump – no ‘zone of zero funkativity’ here for sure!

The set opened with some classic Fela numbers and then comprised mostly of songs from the Many Things (2008) LP but towards the end of the set Seun previewed some as yet unheard material planned to be released in the near future. Seun’s stage presence and frighteningly uncanny resemblance to his father, Fela, is unnerving at first, but it’s halfway through the set that it all starts to sink in, that this man is a truly gifted and multi-talented charismatic artist-musician-performer in his own right and yet embodies and channels the spirit of his family heritage and culture with prowess, offering timely and poignant messages. By the end of the set people were up and dancing in the stalls and Tony Allen took to the stage to accompanying Seun and the full 20 piece Egypt 80 band in a final blistering crescendo. Wherever you may be on the planet this summer, make sure you catch Tony Allen and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 live. You will not be disappointed.

Tony Allen myspace

Seun Kuti myspace

Seun Anikulapo Kuti, the prodigal son of Afrobeat, revels in the state of affairs in his homeland, Lagos, Nigeria, speaks about Obama’s inherited debt to the world and why Afrobeat lives on.

Adorned in red, green and gold, Fela’s heir apparent lounges on his hotel room bed and holds court with regal equanimity. The relentless smog of African herb that accompanies my questions swirls around the small room, leaving me equally intoxicated by his responses as by passive inhalations. It’s immediately obvious that the Seun Anikulapo Kuti I met with four years ago in Lagos has grown into his leadership shoes physically, mentally and metaphorically. It has been a development period for growth and a time for reflection. As he mentions the passing of his Mother, Fehintola, his closest ally and full-time member of his band, an awkward pain enters the room and we quickly move the conversation elsewhere, to the burning issues at hand.

Seun’s disdain of the corrupt, hierarchical leadership in Nigeria alone is an overriding message for which he has Many Things to say in his aptly named debut record. With a truly Afrobeat signature, Many Things seems to have intentionally embraced the traditions of this music and a commitment to the continued legacy of Fela Kuti and Egypt 80.

“Both your suggestions are correct”, Seun responds, the trademark grin widening as he pauses before divulging, “I am very inspired by my father’s music between 1972 and 1984 and when I write music, that’s in my head, that’s how it tends to come out, so I think it’s something that’s in me. For every artist that wants to be an artist you have to have something in you, something special that gives you that edge over everybody else. People call it talent. I had to do what my spirit told me to do.”

Read on in SHOOK 006.