The Afrofunk Music Forum

It's a gritty afternoon in a gritty parking lot in a gritty South Baltimore neighborhood, and the crowd is starting to fade. For the past five hours at this human rights rally, poets and rappers have been taking the stage to one-up one another's outrage, and now even the most anguished cries -- "the beast of the United States is eating wherever it wants!" -- are met with little more than polite nods. The sky's getting dark, the slogans are getting tired, and you can see people thinking that the struggle for justice should maybe just take the night off.

Then a new band takes the stage -- and suddenly a driving pulse erupts, powerful and irresistible. It's unlike anything else at the rally that day… This music has the drive of 1970s funk, the subtle rhythms of Yoruba tribal music, the fire of Ghanaian highlife. And when the five-piece horn section kicks in, driving the energy higher, everybody -- everybody -- starts dancing.

"We're here tonight to see people get active!" shouts the band's leader, pumping a fist in the air. "Otherwise, it's all over!"

The music is Afrobeat -- a fiery brand of political dance music pioneered in the 1970s by the Nigerian activist Fela Kuti -- and the group is Chopteeth, a 14-piece big band that's part of an Afrobeat revival across the United States. Thirty years ago, Afrobeat was the most important new music in Africa, fusing James Brown-style funk, African rhythms and urgent messages of political confrontation. But it never became an international phenomenon like reggae, and nearly vanished a decade ago when Kuti died.

Over the past few years, though, this profoundly African music has found a new home -- in America.

Martin Perna of Antibalas (photo below) also provided an interview for the Post article, adding a perspective on Afrobeat and its message:

"Afrobeat was a way for me to merge my political convictions with my convictions as a musician. It's inherently a music of resistance and a music of struggle, and if you're going to reach people with any sort of message, you've got to put it to a beat."

Reinventing Afrobeat may be the key to its survival, its proponents say. The music is unlikely ever to enter the mainstream -- "there's too much stuff in Afrobeat for the market to dumb down," says Perna -- but if it's going to take root in American soil, it needs to adapt. The new players are hardly African firebrands. They tend to be American, white and mostly suburban. The music even seems to be turning into new, hybridized genre -- call it American Afrobeat -- with an agenda of its own.

"Most of the groups doing Afrobeat are either multicultural or predominantly white," says Perna, whose own background is Hispanic. "How they address the privileges they enjoy -- male privilege, class privilege, skin color privileges -- will give American Afrobeat its depth; looking within themselves, rather than just pointing. Anybody can point a finger at George Bush, or the Iraq war, or police brutality, and write a song about it. But the real depth comes from examining these other systems of privilege. And we try to do that in our music."

It continues to amaze me how Afrobeat musicians in the US and other parts of the world are adapting Fela’s music in new ways to reflect their own musical interests and their own message. The music is flourishing all over the world, and seems to only be growing in popularity and attention. Keep it going!

Otrabanda Records recently released a superb new compilation of classic 70s-era Ghanaian tracks, titled “Bokoor Beats: Vintage Afrobeat, Afro-Rock and Highlife from Ghana.” I’m really enjoying this disc, and it includes some moments of brilliance from early in the development of afrobeat, tracks which were previously hard to find anywhere.

Like many of the most innovative and dynamic Ghanaian records of the era, all of the tracks trace their provenance to musicologist and producer John Collins, whose Bokoor Studios became the focal point of an exciting and innovative new music scene Ghana. It’s influence spread throughout West Africa and beyond, and Collins’s studio became the only place in Ghana to record if you wanted to update roots music with the new funk and rock sounds arriving from the US, Cuba and Nigeria.

Collins converted his father’s farmhouse into one of two music studios in Ghana, and recorded more than 200 different groups over the years in a variety of styles including jazz, gospel and reggae. He was also one of the organizers of the first musicians union in Ghana, The Ghana Musicians Union. But it was the funky sound of afrobeat he produced in the 1970s that arguably had the biggest impact on West African music:

Banning Eyre offers some perspective on this period of musical creativity:

While there have been a number of compilations available over the years documenting the music swirling around the Bokoor Band, this is the best material I’ve heard yet. It's great to see it getting warm critical reviews. The recording features a number of choice tracks from Collins’s Bokoor Band as well as classic proto-afrobeat from the Mangwana Stars, Oyikwam Internationals, and TO Jazz.

I especially like the up-tempo highlife of “Atiedele” by the Mangwana Stars: with its boppy bass line seeping into your head; the delicate, interlocking guitar work; the atmospheric keyboards; and the chorus vocals. This tune is an overlooked gem.

The Bokoor Band’s “Yeah Yeah ku Yeah” sounds like Sly and The Family Stone’s funky trip to Ghana, if they brought a harmonica with them.

“Anoma Franoas” by the Oyikwam Internationals features a blasting horn section over a silky-smooth highlife guitar rhythm, groovy beats and warm, personal vocalizing.

You can’t help but love this tune.

Fans of classic 70s music from Ghana will definitely appreciate this recording. I’ve been listening to it on Rhapsody’s subscription service, but you can hear song samples and purchase digital tracks online from Calabash Records.

Calabash is also offering a free download of “Egbe Enyo” by the Bokoor Beats, an excellent, hard driving, roots afrobeat tune that cuts out superfluous ornamentation and gets right to the core of the groove. Dynamite stuff!