Femi Kuti – 14/11/08 Royal Festival Hall, LJF

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Femi Kuti – 14/11/08 Royal Festival Hall, LJF

Friday, 21 November 2008 12:04

Tonight’s support artist Ayo is humble and calm. While her talent could summon an attitude, it would diminish her simple charm. As she played hits such as Down On My Knees she endeared those new to her. Fans were already acquainted with her sweet soul/folk vocals. As she improvised to the Afrobeat, she reluctantly let go of her self-confessed shyness and slipped into the shifts and swirls at the heart of her Nigerian culture.

She had warmed up the audience for Femi Kuti and the Positive Force, but they took their time to turn up the heat. Microphone problems meant that Femi and his band were not initially at ease. But from the outset, his dancers were cooking on gas with parts of their tasselled costume taking flight to avoid being singed.

Performing hits from his 5th album Day by Day, Femi was every inch the perfectionist on stage conducting his band with precision. Whether singing, playing the saxophone or the keyboard, he had come to teach the students in the audience. It was hard to hear every word uttered from the stage, but he announced he had came to give a history lesson about Africa and its people covering the last decade.

With political blood in his veins, he celebrated Barack Obama’s victory. Femi was unafraid to feel the emotion in his music whether it was anger or joy. With tracks from You Better Ask Yourself, to One Two, he spoke of justice and poverty. He spoke directly to the many Nigerians in the audience who felt they were in a private session as they ad libbed in native tongue.

Their unreserved engagement only spiced up the Nigerian style stew that the show fast became. By the second half, the entire audience were no longer bemused by the dancers in the balconies – they too were stirred to their feet by the now smiling, relaxed and topless Femi! We all wanted a taste of the Nigerian “secret code” of call and response. When we called for an encore, Femi and the positive force responded with sounds of 2012, beats so fast that they could be the soundtrack to the Olympics.

Review - Fiona McKinson

Second Review

Of the many ways that Femi Kuti could be described, “shy” would certainly not be one. But try “powerful”, “explosive” or even “absorbing” and you would be much closer to the mark. At the very least these qualities characterize his performance at the Royal Festival Hall on the opening night of the London Jazz Festival.

Given the significance of the Kuti family to Africa’s recent past, for many a Femi concert is about far more than the music. Rather, the Kuti-inspired afro-beat gives expression to a well of resentment caused by the colonial hang-over, government corruption and the exploitation by multi-national companies of Africa’s vast resources. These feelings often run deep, consequentially when they are released there is an almost spiritual intensity to the occasion. This much I was expecting, but it was still quite fantastic to experience it.

Femi, who seems to conduct his band with the command of an iron fist, plays not with any remarkable technique but with an awesome passion-driven energy. Whether saxophone, trumpet or organ the method and effect are the same; a simple softly stated phrase backed by a light afro-beat groove building to a shrieking fortissimo which fills the auditorium with all the tension and pride of its author while the 5-piece horn section provides powerful backing. In criticism, it is perhaps too formulaic; the first couple of times you experience it it seems special but after that you begin to ask what else there is to this music.

This gripe is however off –set both by the intoxicating poly-rhythms that generate an arresting dimension to the sound created and by the vamps that the band hooks onto and plays with such an afro-beat swagger that you just want to dance. Indeed, most of the audience ended up doing just that.

Review - Joseph Kassman-Tod

Third Review

The duration of one of Femi Kuti’s albums would barely cover the length of an introductory solo by his father. However when it comes to his live shows, it is very much a case of father like son, only without a dozen or so wives on stage. The luminously uniformed and purple trousered band enter before the trio of scantily dressed backing dancers and Kuti follow, cutting an imposing yet humble figure. He stands at the side of stage introducing his 13-piece band known as ‘The Positive Force’ to the enthusiastic audience at the Royal Festival Hall before launching into a thunderous, ‘Do your best.’

The driving percussion and sweeping brass melodies which form the Kuti signature sound spanning three generations (his grandfather having been the first African recording artist) fill the hall - yet it is only elements from ten years of Femi Kuti’s own material that inspire the joyously raucous calls from his ‘special audience.’ With consummate ease he inspires them to dance throughout, the adoring relationship between Kuti and the crowd is such, that he develops a call and response mantra. Kuti continues to pay homage to Afrobeat, the sound pioneered by father, Fela and influenced by visits to London.

He carefully presides over ‘The Positive Force’, simultaneously conducting, playing, preaching, and oddly ordering the dancers off stage after each number only for them to eagerly return for the next extravagant routine. The moniker attributed to the instrumentalists is worthy of the skillfully rehearsed harmonies their sound produces. It is only Femi’s repetitively jarring organ which seems somewhat out of place. In between swapping his alto and soprano saxophones, he jerks trance-like, resembling a clockwork soldier marching to his own tune.

Following a Marleyesque version of ’97,’ a song dedicated to his more outspoken, late father, Kuti acknowledges the historic landmark of recent events, “Do you know Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday faced prejudice? Ironically a black man is now United States President.” Not to rest on his laurels after the guilty pleasure that is, “Beng Beng Beng,” Kuti is urgent in the refrain, ‘‘Day by day by night by night we work and pray for peace to reign,” a piece which brings a poignant and lyrical end to the night and a concert which heralds a blistering start to the 2008 London Jazz Festival.

Review – Daniel Merriman

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