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Afrobeat, the
percolating, polyrhythmic, politically minded big-band dance music most
closely associated with the late Nigerian maestro Fela Anikulapo Kuti, has
always been a fusion form. Rooted in traditional Yoruba music, it
incorporated a host of styles from the African diaspora, including American
jazz, soul, and funk. Think of it as the silver lining to
globalization’s dark cloud, the spoonful of sugar that makes the
bitter bolus of neocolonialism go down. In light of this complex lineage,
it’s misleading, if not downright insulting, to claim that Antibalas
is expanding, or adapting, or corrupting the Afrobeat template. Such
arguments hinge on the authenticity canard, the fallacy that Afrobeat is
some kind of static, moribund, provincial relic instead of the sluttish,
omnivorous, organic hybrid that it is. Fela is dead, of course, so
there’s no way of knowing how he’d feel about microhouse or
grime or any number of other subgenres that have emerged in recent years,
but something tells me he wouldn’t want his beloved Afrobeat to rot
in the grave with him. Although corpses don’t get a say in choosing
their disciples, it’s highly probable that Fela would give a
resounding hell-yeah to Antibalas if he could. The sprawling Brooklyn-based
collective, whose name means “bulletproof” in Spanish,
currently boasts a dozen players and is legendary for its marathon live
shows. Although the band has evolved considerably over its nearly
decade-long career, with close to 30 members passing in and out, it has
been faithful to Fela’s essential legacy, maintaining an absolute
dedication to progressive politics, lockstep musicianship, and ecstatic
groove-mongering. Its music is rigorously structured — composed,
orchestrated, and conducted — and yet deeply spontaneous, with breaks
reserved for improvised solos from featured instruments. The lyrics are
serious, at times even preachy, but they’re couched in so much
booty-walloping that whatever message they might contain works strictly on
the subliminal level; at any rate, it’s easy to forget about the
evils of the military-industrial complex when your badonkadonk is shaking
six ways to Sunday. Security, the
band’s fourth full-length and first for Anti-, is the most
experimental effort so far. It still sounds eminently danceable (no danger
of Antibalas’ sacrificing its sacrosanct groove), but it’s just
about as weird as a party-starter album can be without, well, breaking up
the party. Producer John McEntire (Tortoise, the Sea and Cake) refracts the
familiar riffs and rhythms through a kind of avant-jazz, post-rock
sensibility, smashing old patterns and rearranging the still-recognizable
shards into new configurations. The opening cut, the accurately titled
“Beaten Metal,” juxtaposes fractious percussion with a funky
electric-piano riff, dissonant trumpet blurts with a serpentine bassline.
Sometimes it sounds like a Steve Reich composition, sometimes it sounds
like underground house music, and sometimes it sounds like being caught in
a tin-roofed shed during a hailstorm. The roiling, anxious funk of
“Filibuster X,” with its crazy keyboard daubs and stuttering
horn bleats, resolves in some very funny speculation about what G.O.P.
stands for (“Greedy Old People”? “Guilty of
Perjury”?). “Hilo” has overtones of ruminative dub, and
“War Hero” counters zippy Afro-pop guitars with
call-and-response vocals describing this administration’s murderous
foreign-policy agenda. The CD’s strangest cut, though, is also the
prettiest. The slow, spooky, intensely contrapuntal “I.C.E.”
blends lambent synths and simmering horns into something that approaches
contemporary classical music; when McEntire’s hammered dulcimer joins
a doleful trombone and distant-thunder drums, the perfectly simple,
perfectly devastating result transcends genre altogether. If this is
inauthentic, leave authenticity in its coffin.
Antibalas performs on Tuesday, April 17, at the
Canopy Club in Urbana and on Wednesday, April 18, at Blueberry Hill in St.
Louis.
Contact René Spencer Saller at rssaller@core.com.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2007.
