Fela Kuti Beasts of No Nation

Fela Kuti Beasts Of No Nation on LP

Almost two decades after his death, vindication has come to Fela Kuti, Africa's musical genius. AfroBeat, his gift to the world, is now an international staple on his own uncompromising terms, social content intact. Throughout his life, Fela contended that AfroBeat was a modern form of danceable, African classical music with an urgent message for the planet's denizens. Created out of a cross-breeding of Funk, Jazz, Salsa and Calypso with Juju, Highlife and African percussive patterns, it was to him a political weapon.

Beasts Of No Nation, originally released in 1989, was an indictment of the corruption and repression in post-colonial Africa. The album title cut addressed a variety of targets, each of them, said Fela, guilty of enslaving Africans: the Nigerian regime, the South African apartheid regime of P.W. Botha, Britain's Margaret Thatcher, America's Ronald Reagan, and the ineffectual United Nations. In addition to being vilified in the lyrics, Botha, Thatcher and Reagan are among the political leaders portrayed as beasts and devils on the front sleeve.