Fela Kuti and The Africa ‘70 with Ginger Baker, 'Live!' Review

Time Capsule: Fela Kuti and The Africa ‘70 with Ginger Baker, Live!

In late July 1971, on an unseasonably cold London day, a 12-piece band from Lagos, Nigeria arrived at Abbey Road Studios for two recording sessions. The band was called the Africa ‘70, and they were helmed by their bandleader, legendary musician and political activist, Fela Kuti. Even in 1971, Kuti was a giant figure in Nigerian culture and music. He and the Africa ‘70 had plans to record two albums in these two days. The first album, tracked on July 24, became Afrodisiac The second recording was to be a live album, recorded before an audience. It would feature Cream’s drummer and longtime friend of Kuti, Ginger Baker. Known as “rock’s first superstar of drumming,” he befriended Kuti several years earlier, around the time that Cream broke up, in 1968. Just four months after this July recording session, Baker would journey to Africa to set up a recording studio with Kuti in Lagos, as documented in the 1971 film, Ginger Baker in Africa. This second album became Live! and was released just one month later, in August. It would become one of the most acclaimed live albums of all time.

The recording sessions were a big deal for both Kuti and EMI, the label that owned Abbey Road Studios. Kuti was the first signing to EMI’s Africa imprint, and Live! would be the first major international release of Afrobeat—a genre Kuti had created that combined elements of jazz, funk, salsa, calypso, and Yoruba, the indigenous music of Nigeria. He and his band had tried to break into the Anglophonic market before. They recorded the ‘69 Los Angeles Sessions a couple of years prior, while they were playing six nights a week at actor Bernie Hamilton’s nightclub, Citadel de Haiti, on Sunset Boulevard.

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But that album, recorded in haste, after the American authorities realized Kuti and his band had overstayed their visas, and it wouldn’t see proper international distribution until a reissue in 2010. And EMI didn’t release either of his 1970 albums internationally, just through their Nigerian imprint. So, in other words, Live! was the first real taste that European and American audiences had of Kuti’s music (likely thanks, in part, to Baker’s appeal to pop and rock-leaning crowds). It therefore could be considered the first Afrobeat album released outside of Nigeria, one that found second lifetimes in the hands of DJs generations later, recontextualizing Kuti’s material as afro-pop and groove’s rightful precursor.

The band rehearsed for the two recording sessions all day, and because of the London cold, the conga players kept excusing themselves to run their hands under the hot water taps in the bathroom, according to former Abbey Road producer, Jeff Jarratt. Baker showed up and got talking to Kuti. The drummer, who was known in music circles as a difficult figure, was agreeable in Kuti’s presence—it was clear he revered the man. The engineers set up Baker’s double kick drum, which would work well in the Afrobeat field of syncopation, and the musicians practiced for a few hours with Baker alongside the Africa ‘70 drummer, and legend in his own right, Tony Allen. Then, at 6 PM, about 200 invited guests showed up at Abbey Road for a performance. “Let’s start what we have come into the room to do,” Kuti tells the audience before, fittingly, beginning their set with “Let’s Start”: a hypnotic mix of bass, horns, Kuti’s shouts, and his Hammond organ playing. If you close your eyes, you can see the room and the clouds of cigarette smoke. You can almost smell the presence of 200 bodies piled into a makeshift performance space at the Beatles’ old stomping grounds, with Kuti dancing at its center.

On “Black Man’s Cry,” Kuti’s radical side comes out. When he and the Africa ‘70 were in Los Angeles in 1969, Kuti was inspired by the Black Power movement, and brought these ideas of protest back to Nigeria, which had been fighting a civil war at the time. “Black Man’s Cry” has a big band jazz sound, but the central figure on this track is the firebrand that Kuti would become known for in his later work. He shouts and yelps, and while you can hear the pain and rage in his voice, there’s a tension between his vocal delivery and the energetic support of his band. There are echoes here, too, of his later work, such as a bassline that calls to mind “Water No Get Enemy” (the B-side on 1975’s Expensive Shit), and the sociocultural barbs of 1976’s “Zombie,” a song that criticized the Nigerian military and, later, allegedly got Kuti’s mother killed after a thousand soldiers attacked his Kalakuta Republic commune in Lagos.

The 13-minute “Ye Ye De Smell” showcases Baker’s drumming and how it complemented the work of Allen. You can hear these two in conversation, even if they don’t exchange a single word. You can also hear some of Kuti’s controlling personality in the intro to the song, where he introduces Baker, who improvises a drum fill for a little too long, prompting Kuti to tell Baker, “That’s enough, that’s enough. The record is moving, the record is moving.” He wrote “Ye Ye De Smell” for Baker. It’s a phrase he calls “a kind of friendship thing.” “When a friend is doing something a friend doesn’t do, then he smells,” Kuti says, then adds: “Ginger doesn’t smell. He takes his bath.” And the song really does set the two drummers as the beating heart of the set. The guitar and bass repeat a minimalist groove, which lets the drums really drive the song forward. There’s a dialogue unfurling—one that sways between dalliance and eruption. One minute, you’re in a trance. Next, you’re on your feet.

On closer “Egbe Mi O,” Kuti translates the song’s title: “Carry me, I want to die.” Baker replies, jokingly, “I agree.” And Kuti ends the exchange with the incisive quip: “Ginger agrees with everything I say.” This track, which also clocks in at around 13 minutes, shows Kuti’s ability to work his voice into the band, using it as another instrument in his ensemble. The call-and-response at the end of the performance would later become a staple of the Afrobeat style and became a major introduction for Western audiences to the traditional Yoruba style of performance. Kuti’s vocal work on this track is less about delivering lyrics, per se, and more about being moved by the music and entrancing the listener.

But Live! doesn’t end there. A reissue from the 1980s, available now on most streaming platforms, features a live track called “Ginger Baker & Tony Allen Drum Solo (Live at the 1978 Berlin Jazz Festival),” where Baker and Allen share a drum solo, uninterrupted for over 16 minutes. While it may be difficult to discern who is who on the recording, it’s clear that you’re listening to two of the greatest drummers who ever lived. And while Live! helped launch Kuti’s career in Europe and elsewhere, assisted, in part, by the crossover attention given to Baker and Kuti’s collaboration by the English press, the real star of this recording session is the Africa ‘70. Few ensembles have been as magnetic a driving force as them, tightly shaping and controlling every second of an Afrobeat gem that wound up a classic.

Time Capsule: Fela Kuti and The Africa ‘70 with Ginger Baker, Live!

While the album helped launch Fela Kuti’s career in Europe and elsewhere, assisted, in part, by the crossover attention given to Baker and Kuti’s collaboration by the English press, the real star of this recording session is the Africa ‘70.