It took more than six years and three crate diggers par excellence for T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou's brilliant, yet virtually forgotten, Benin brand of Afro funk to reach a roiling boil for a new generation of listeners.
German collector Günter Gretz sampled three of the group's 50 to 100 albums (depending on who's counting) for his 1973 Reminiscin 'in Tempo compilation. The following year, Miles Cleret's Soundway label released The Kings of Benin Urban Groove… more »
The incontestable king of Afrobeat, with a career that spanned over 30 years, Fela Anikulapo (née Ransome) Kuti's prodigious musical output is overshadowed to the point of cliché by the stuff that's made him such a mythical figure. A bramble in the claw of Nigeria's ruling dictatorship; a total dickweed who might have outdone both Miles Davis and Pablo Picasso for total dickweediness; a cult leader with his own compound, the Kalakuta Republic, and a… more »
One figure stands off to the side and slightly obscured amid the pantheon of African bandleaders. The Congolese superstar Franco - christened François Luambo Makiadi in 1938, dead of AIDS in 1989 - is the least internationally-acclaimed among afropop giants such as Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and Youssou N'Dour. With a biography at least as tragically complex as Fela's, Franco lived large, died sadly, and left hundreds of hours of some of the world's… more »
