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SEUN KUTI with EGYPT 80 announces debut North American tour
6.27 | Wisconsin Union Theater | Madison, WI
6.28 | Millennium Park | Chicago, IL
6.29 | Harbourfront Centre | Toronto, ON
6.30 | World Cafe | Philadelphia, PA
7.01 | SOB's | New York City, NY
7.02 | Montreal Jazz Festival | Montreal, QC
7.03 | Montreal Jazz Festival | Montreal, QC
Seun Kuti is Fela Anikulapo Kuti's last son. Fela was Nigeria's most beloved popular musician and most acerbic social critic until his death in 1997.
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 |
Seun started learning to play saxophone and the piano when he was eight. Seun Kuti has been performing on stage since he was nine years old. He started his career as opening act with his father's band, Egypt 80; and he still performs today with the same band. Apart from the new young bass player Kayode, Seun is the youngest person on stage. Most of the band members performed with Fela, and some are now in their fifties and sixties. Performing on stage with as many as twenty singers and musicians in regular sessions that sometimes go on all night was such an effective practical education that when Fela died in 1997, Seun, then just fifteen, was ready to take over. Since then, he has led Egypt 80 as lead vocalist and saxophonist, the focal point of a band that his father had forged into one of Africa's most legendary ensembles.
In performance, there is no mistaking that Seun is Fela's son but he is also very much his own man. His singing voice is deep like Fela's, and his alto saxophone hits the lines and hooks his father composed with the same muscular style, although he brings his own flavor to the solos on saxophone and synthesizer. And like Fela, on stage Seun lives up to a reputation as a sex symbol, shimmying, winding his hips and often discarding his shirt, to the delight of ladies. Fela's Afrobeat was a pungent blend of funk and jazz with an African sensibility, reminiscent of James Brown but grittier, nastier and vaguely unsettling, like fermenting fruit. With Seun, Egypt 80 is as explosive as they were under Fela, combining horns, keyboards, percussion, guitars and vocals in a sophisticated and overpowering blend that is always insistent.
"If I'm in my father's shadow then it doesn't trouble me to be," he says. "If that's all I can get, it's a very good place to be. He was a very great man." He pauses. "But of course every artist wants to define himself."
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