Femi Kuti
By Hal Bienstock
Special to amNewYork
Having a famous parent isn’t always a recipe for musical success. Just ask Julian Lennon. Yet Femi Kuti, son of legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, has managed to not only uphold his late father’s legacy, but also forge his own identity as one of the best Afrobeat musicians in the world by adding elements of Western hip-hop and R&B to his father’s traditional sounds.
Femi was scheduled to perform at Webster Hall Thursday and Sunday, but these performances were canceled at the last minute due to illness. The Jan. 8 show will be rescheduled at a later date.
His latest album, “Day By Day,” is out now, however. It’s his first release in seven years. Femi spent that time in the interim honing his sound and raising his son as a single parent.
“I think it helped me creatively,” he said of the time off. “I became a better person and a better father. I also used the time to teach myself trumpet and piano.”
Like his father, Femi is known for more than just music. While his concerts are raucous affairs in which the audience rarely stops dancing, his songs are full of powerful political messages about the desperate lives of Africans.
“Why are Westerners getting everything while we are so poor?” Femi asks. “Where do people in Africa get guns and bombs? We don’t make them ourselves. We get them from America and Europe. The CIA and the leaders of Europe are involved in Africa’s downfall.”
Femi knows this is challenging subject matter, and if his goal of getting people to think while they dance keeps him from achieving mass popularity, it’s a bargain he’s willing to make.
“I’ll never be as big as Beyoncé, but I can bring messages to the people I meet,” he said. “[People] listen to me because they want to know what is happening in the world. And if those people think about their lives and what their governments are doing and tell their friends, that’s enough for me.
“It may take 100 years for these problems to be solved, but slowly, systematically, the world will change.”
