No Place for My Dream Femi Kuti

We say: Contemporary Afrobeat with a strong political message.

Flickr photo by Tom Beetz I reviewed this artist's father, Fela Kuti, last time round, so it seems as good a time as any as to take a look at the next generation. Femi Kuti is a chip of the old block to some extent, although with songs that rarely run over the six-minute mark his output tends to be more user-friendly than the rambling 20-minute agitprop opuses his father was notorious for. This is not to say that Femi Kuti is not interested in politics—far from it—it is just that he is not quite as one-dimensional as Kuti senior tended to be.

The song titles give a clue as to what to expect subject-wise. "Nothing To Show For It," "No Place For My Dream," and "Politics Na Big Business" all tell it like it is: strong direct vocals accompanied by slinky riffing guitars and funky bass along with female chorus and coruscating horns. The brass section in particular is quite magnificent on tunes like "Na So We See Am" — powerful, muscular, yet flexible — and the whole band is as tight as Femi's dad's stage outfits used to be.

Although the message is nothing new—corruption, injustice, poverty—and at times comes close to clichéd sloganeering, it is undeniably heartfelt. The truth is, Femi Kuti, although drawn to the same causes and traditions as his famous father, will never quite be celebrated in the same way: it's very doubtful that he'll ever have a musical written about him. I'll stick my neck out, though, and say that Femi is probably a better musician, with more talent (but less ego) than his paternal predecessor, the Kuti brand leader. Having developed his own distinctive musical style over the years, Femi Kuti is very much his own man these days. Listening to No Place for My Dream it seems clear that Nigerian Afrobeat remains not only alive and well but still has plenty more to say.