There's a diner in central Virginia called the Blue Moon that used to play a Fela Kuti compilation what seemed like every Sunday morning for at least a couple of years-- something I mention because it's how I first heard his music and how I remember it best: Over and over again, at a decent volume. His recordings are defiantly samey, but his style is unmistakable: the horn-head/solo structure of American and European jazz applied to funk; 12-minute songs that seem to start somewhere in the middle; lots of congas, lots of honking. Something like the Nigerian James Brown, sure, but also a little like Monet's series of haystacks-- each iteration a little different but disciplined in their similarity, always some minor variation on an ideal.
So while two straight discs of Fela is exhausting, it's probably the most suitable way to digest him. I can't say that Black President (which is exactly the same as MCA's out-of-print The Best of Fela Kuti) contains all of Fela's best material-- he has too many records, and they've only been sporadically available on CD. (Knitting Factory, by the way, intends to reissue 45 of them over the next year and a half.) What I can say is that his music is so intense and consistent in mood that lesser tracks in his discography just make themselves obvious-- they don't appear hypnotized by the sprit; they lack energy. In 2006 I tried to listen to 20 Fela albums in a row and came to two conclusions: For the most part, his best songs had already made it on compilations, and that compilations best convey the full brunt of his music. There's also the issue of consumer value: Most of Fela's original albums featured only two tracks, each about 15 minutes, so a $20 compilation just gives you a lot more to chew on than a $12 album. Fela: The Best of the Black President isn't just a good place for someone starting out, it's probably the only Fela album many will need to own. True, some of the songs are edited, but if you need the full 15-minute version of "Gentlemen" instead of the 11-minute one, then the Best of is probably not for you in the first place.
Fela changed the course of funk, African music, and almost anything groove-based that came after him, but it sometimes seems like his contributions to music in general are more interesting than actually listening to his music in specific, or that the sum of his work is more exciting than any particular set of songs. It's like seeing the forest but missing the trees, or being in love with the idea of love. Or like a complaint I remember being attributed to guitarist Arto Lindsay when he was in the no-wave band DNA: That people either loved or hated them, but never talked about which songs worked or didn't. This might be a personal opinion, though-- I also find it hard to actively enjoy James Brown after two hours. At a certain point I just become passively reverent, and have a suspicion that other people do, too, unless they're dancing. (This prompts the question of Fela's utility in scenarios facilitating human propulsion to rhythm. He's useful.)
His biography is even more sellable-- and more bullet-point friendly-- than his music: twenty-seven wives, a commune/recording studio for his band members and family, an actively hostile relationship with Nigeria's military government. The African rebel. Even if you don't like his records, take the time to watch Stephane Tchal-Gadjieff and Jean Jacques Flori's 1982 documentary, Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon-- a real testament to the power of an artist as a political figure (quaint, I know). All to say that he's an outsized personality; a person who stands for an idea-- an icon, I guess. "They cannot kill me, because my name is Anikulapo," he says in Music Is the Weapon-- an adopted middle name meaning, roughly, "he who carries death in his pouch."
Fela's political lyrics usually forsake subtlety for immediacy, but I find it easy to forgive him-- the soldiers who threw his mother out the window after a raid on his commune weren't very subtle either. After she died, Fela dragged a coffin to one of the army's central barracks and wrote a song about it: "Coffin for Head of State". His music is feverish, urgent, and simple, but it reflects on simple evils: Corruption, subjection, brutality. Of all verbs commonly used to try and convey music's intensity, I prefer "boils" for Fela's-- nothing abstract, just a matter of excited molecules banging against each other to produce a state simultaneously sustainable, dangerous, and transformative.
