"This is the Part Where We Beg Them. SARCASTICALLY." (Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Central Park Summerstage, 7/06/08)
Consider this out-of-focus shot as part of an ongoing tribute to bad ontheinternet live concert snaps.
...or an acknowledgement of missed opportunities. A mental coin flip put this show over Ronnie Spector, and just this weekend I'd already let slip the start of the AfroPunk festival and free time with Sonic Youth and The Feelies and Rachid Taha and Dengue Fever. I know! But if I wound up at only one gig, I'm glad it was this one. I could make a better pictorial argument if I hadn't brought uncharged back-up batteries, if I hadn't burned off my good ones killing time through an Afrika Bambaataa spin that got buried by a squad of hacky hype men.
...or evidence of imposed priorities. Because as dynamic and photogenic as Seun Kuti is - and holy shit, is he - narrowing focus and isolating moments would be antithetical to what's at work.
As much I as tend to go on, personally, perpetuity rarely impresses me. The best longform musics carve out a cohesion. Too many contrive boom-boom climaxes to justify their lulls. Too many, bored with themselves, squiggle into suitey asides. I get dance music, I get trance music, I get the cyclical capture/release of energy and whatnot, but I get the point and I get bored with it.
These guys (myspace) will not bore you.
Seun (pr.'d "Shay-yoon") has been playing with this, his genre-founding father's band, since he was nine. He's not an amazing soloist - his instrument is alto sax, and his highlight on it was rocking responses to crowd calls during "Fire Dance" - but he makes an incredible leader. Marching and slapping and crouching and springing up reaching everywhichwayward, long limbs and way-tight slacks overdefine his spidery moves. By the end of the set he was shiny and shirtless (showing off more overdefinition, there), but he doesn't Splat! so much as keep the simmer going. He has a huge smile, and a huge laugh; they help counterbalance any generated ferocity.
No knockouts, a series of jabs, keep everyone up and in the ring. This is music that's not supposed to stop, music that goes right home with you.
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 - Mosquito Song (mp3) (buy)
Afrobeat's components can make it daunting listening for impatient folks like me. The funk trap of settling for the groove, the jazz trap of waiting for something to happen. There isn't a song on this Kuti's first full length, Many Things, that reaches the ten minute mark, but there's still some settling and waiting.
Live it's all right there. Many's strongest tracks bookended the show. Egypt 80 is fourteen members strong, without Kuti; it came out strong, and without Kuti. Bari saxman Adedimeji Fagbemi fronted "Don't Give That Shit to Me." With Seun they moved through most of the rest of the record (also including Fela's "Gba Mi Leti Ki N' Dolowo") to a very vigorous "Mosquito." Everything works on that one. Already so much going on in its underneath, then the aggravated anticipation of the vocals unsettles things backward a nanosecond, finally smacking those ah! oh! ay! ay! ay! exclamations all over the top. Great stuff.
If there was one surprise - other than just how killer and consistent the whole show came off, I mean, seriously, wow - it was how content Kuti was to let his music's political messages remain couched in the songs. Especially with G-8 happening and all.(*) I've seen musicians from other countries gently explicate, I've seen them scold. I've seen them say nothing at all, of course, but one of Afrobeat's defining characteristics is its political nature. Kuti let his method stick to his method: I'd like to explain every song, he said. "But time is so important here." He kept things moving.
Also there: Feast of Music, A French Girl in NYC, InnerContinental, Sound Taste.
(*) The only outright political address was the pathetic, crowd-pleasing calls of "Fuck George Bush!" from Bambaataa's lackeys. Seriously? It's July Two Thousand and fucking Eight, and if you haven't fucked George Bush yet, you ain't gonna.(**) Nothing to say about the current presidential election? Nothing positive to say? Or are you going to get to that come 2012?
(**) Also, you could argue that one of the few good things Bush has done - despite the stubborn unwillingness to get involved in situations like Darfur, despite the lousy faith-based asterisks that discriminate policy, and even with the acknowledgement that any government efforts to address distant widespread problems are bound to feel underwhelming and after-the-fact - is begin to do a little for Africa and its AIDS crisis. That might not matter in the Bronx so much, but when your headlining act lost his father to complications from the disease, cut the cheap sloganeering.
yes I was there alright... so lucky to catch him during my 5-day vacation
trip to ny (thank you time out magazine!). great show, i just wish he could
have played another 60 mins :)