Fela Kuti - Fela Ransome-Kuti and The Africa '70 With Ginger Baker Live! (1971)

If you're wondering where you've heard of Ginger Baker, he was the drummer for Cream. Fela Kuti meanwhile is the lead pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, which to the layman (like me) probably sounds like blaxploitation funk mixed with stereotypical samba. So it's got an excellent sound and cool beats. But the first song on this record, the instrumental "Let's Start", is troublesome. It feels like an 8-minute introduction to a song that never really gets going, or a breakdown to a song you wish ended 8 minutes ago. This is the shortest song on the album... I'm not feeling optimistic.

"Black Man's Cry" features a chunky drum beat and simple repeating bass pattern that goes on and on. It starts off with some rough lyrics in a language I don't recognize, then gets into a section where the keyboard player gets a lengthy solo, followed by the saxophone player with a lengthy solo. I guess there's an element of jazz in Afrobeat, and not one of the better elements. I'm curious after 12 minutes of "boopity boop boop boodoop" if the bass player needed therapy- to me playing that over and over would be akin to water torture. If you're wondering what the black man's cry is, it goes, "YEEEEAAAAHHHH! YEAH JIT JEAH JIT JEAH JEAH!!!"

Ginger Baker makes his appearance on the album's second side. Of course the first song he plays on starts off with an extended keyboard solo. The addition of Ginger Baker doesn't seem to have changed the music much, so I'm not sure what the point was. His first song is called "Ye Ye De Smell". In Kuti's language that phrase has something to do with (I'm paraphrasing), "your friend, if he's doing something you wouldn't be doing, then they smell." Or something. When I write it down it looks weird, but the way Kuti said it made a little sense. Anyway, it's another extended instrumental with about three lines worth of lyrics. Baker does eventually get a drum solo about 9 minutes in. Like most drum solos, this one is long and boring. Not that Baker isn't an excellent drummer.

The final song "Carry Me I Want To Die" starts loud and bombastic, then gets quiet for no apparent reason so we can hear... Can you guess? A keyboard solo. These songs really just go on and on and on and on. At the end all I could say was, "Whatever." So I guess I'm not an Afrobeat fan. 2 stars.

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