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One stop was S.O.B’s in New York City—a place his father alsoplayed. The sold-out audience was full of Afrobeat cognoscenti, many of whom had seen Fela in his prime. They had come to check out the latest member of the Kuti clan to make a stir, and when the young Seun (born in 1982) took the stage, all skepticism vanished. Backed by his father’s storied Egypt 80 band, Seun was the closest thing to seeing Fela in concert since the Afrobeat king’s untimely death in 1997. It wasn’t just the physical resemblance—diminutive and wiry, with the same receding hairline—or the encores of his father’s material. It was something in the way Seun moved.
Years of apprenticeship in his father’s band had given Seun the chance to study the master’s moves, and when he reproduced Fela’s signature snake-hipped wriggle and cocky bantam strut, it was downright scary. It was also clear that this kid had something, and now he’s poised to give North American audiences another chance to witness it this summer when he tours extensively behind his recently released solo debut, Many Things.
“I’m ready for America, but is America ready for me?” he quips as his voice crackles down the line from his home in Lagos. He’s been practicing his band nonstop—a tactic he learned from his father. “He was fuckin’ extra hard on me,” he says, laughing. “He was a fuckin’ slave driver! Fela wanted freedom for all Africans except the ones in his band, you know? But I owe him a tremendous debt. I learned so many things from him. I have the privilege and responsibility of being a son of Fela, and that gave me quite an advantage starting out—and not everyone can count [drummer] Tony Allen as their uncle. So I was watching my father all these years, and now I don’t have to pay a copyright!”
Born Olesegun Anikulapo Kuti, Seun was only eight years old when he began performing with Egypt 80—the second of Fela’s great Afrobeat ensembles, formed after Fela disbanded his
legendary Africa 70 band in 1979. Seun’s precocious career began as a vocalist when he started singing the volatile polemic “Sorrow, Tears And Blood”—not exactly kid’s stuff. Soon Seun was following in his half-brother Femi’s footsteps, learning the saxophone
and coming up as a sideman in his father’s band.
But tragedy struck in 1997, when his Fela died of AIDS-related complications. “I was only 14 when my father passed,” Seun recalls. “It was a tender age, and it hit me very hard. But I was lucky to have a strong mother and a good family. I credit my mother [Fehintola Kuti] and my uncle [Dr. Ransome Kuti] with making me strong. They were very educated people and very influential on my character and ideology.”
But this close-knit support system unraveled when his uncle died in 2005 and his mother passed in 2006. “Maybe I’m still in denial,” he muses. “My mother died while I was on tour. I was in Madrid when I got the news. I think having to focus on work helped the grieving process, but also delayed it a little. But I’m an optimistic person. I grieve but I don’t like to dwell on it too much.”
By this time, Seun was already focused on his budding career. He had finished his musical studies in the U.K. and stepped into his late father’s shoes, leading the reconstituted Egypt 80 band through sets comprised mostly of dad’s classics. With a stage show that boasted not only vintage Afrobeat material, but also vintage ’70s costumes, Seun was lining up as the next Kuti to wear the Afrobeat crown—an impending coronation that led to a brief but intense rivalry between Seun and his half-brother, Femi. Twenty years Seun’s senior, Femi had also cut his teeth in Egypt 80 before forming his own band, Positive Force, in 1986. The rivalry got nasty for a bit, pitting Femi and his sister Yeni, the executors of Fela’s will, against Seun, his uncle and his mother in a legal battle that some saw as a dynastic struggle over Fela’s musical legacy. But Seun isn’t having any of it. “We are on the same mission, trying to achieve the same goal,” he insists. “But the media likes to play this up and create a false rivalry. This used to cause a lot of problems in the family, but we are way past that now. Today we have solidarity and peace. I play the Shrine [Femi’s nightclub, named after the famous room their father performed in] the last Saturday of every month. If you’re in Lagos, it’s mandatory that you come.”
But if there’s no longer any conflict between the half-brothers, there is definitely a difference in musical approaches. Where Femi pushes out the boundaries of Afrobeat to incorporate hip-hop, dance music and more concise songwriting, Seun sees himself as a traditionalist. “I’m not actively looking for my own sound,” he explains. “I’m waiting for it to come to me, to evolve my sound naturally. Every artist has pressure to be original when they’re starting out. I think there was a lot of pressure on Femi to find his own sound at the beginning of his career. I don’t have that same pressure. You know there was nothing wrong with my father’s sound and I’m happy to explore it until I find my own voice.”
Many Things reflects Seun’s unbridled confidence in his roots— the album’s seven tracks are full of the kind of intense, eightminute- plus, polyrhythmic groove-a-thons that were Fela’s specialty. Tracks like “Na Oil,” “African Problem” and “Don’t Give That Shit To Me” are issue driven jeremiads that could be taken from any Fela album, while “Fire Dance” is a contemporary dancefloor-filler with a sticky, addictive backbeat.
“I wanted to paint a general picture,” Seun says of the album’s material. “I didn’t want to focus on specific Nigerian issues only. ‘African Problem’ is about the issues that all Africans face in
common. And ‘Mosquito Song’ is about malaria, which people all over Africa can relate to. I was shocked that there is a cheap, preventable cure—why should poverty prevent this? It’s the same kind of problems that my father confronted: corruption, greed and ignorance.”
“As long as there are these things, Afrobeat will be necessary,” he continues. “This music has a message and stands for something very powerful. That’s why there are hundreds of new Afrobeat bands around the world today, from Lagos to Europe to New York. The music was never just about my father. He created it, but many people contributed. Afrobeat was made by many hands and it is bigger than just one man. I believe in the ideology of Afrobeat—I love hip-hop too, but Afrobeat is in my blood, you know? And I’m still in the family business.”
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