I can hear you now in your head saying to yourself – What the Fucking Hell is he thinking?!?
This is me expanding your horizons. Isn’t that the major point to this blog anyway? I mean I’m intermixing unknowns with populars and all kinds of stuff in between. Well here’s an artist that I’m fairly sure that you’ve never heard of if you’re not from Africa. I had never heard of Fela until a couple of years ago. I was hanging with my buddy Derek Sivers. You know that mastermind behind CD Baby. Well shortly after I helped him decide to keep with the digital distribution thing he turned me on to Fela. Derek cited that Fela was a big influence on him. I figured man, if Fela has that sort of influence on Derek, I gotta check it out.
So he pointed me to an album that contains about a hour of music but is all of two songs. Thus you’re getting this massive amount of content for a measly $1.98. It’s an unfortunate result of how they divy’d up the music on this release. So I’m going to recommend it to you as well. It’s way out of the ordinary to those of use that prefer our commercial sounding music. However it’s a great departure.
You see, when I’m running I set my iPod to random. Every so often I’ll be running and one of these songs come on. There I am clomping down the road in the San Fernando Valley with the signature iPod ear buds on, dressed like a poor-ass runner. Essentially looking like a slob. I like these songs for running to because I get lost in that world Fela has created. That’s the beauty of his music. Most commerical artists would lose your attention after say 4 to 5 minutes. Fela is a master of keeping the interest. That is true genius right there. If you can hold a person’s attention for 28 minutes. You’ve accomplished something.
Now that I’ve said that, I have to recount a dinner I attended last Wednesday night with Erin. It was for Human Rights Watch. I don’t want to sound preachy, so I won’t beat you over the head with it. It was a cool event to attend. They were honoring people that put the needs of others above their own safety. For as much of all the inconveniences that I dislike about America, I can say that I’m (we’re) fortunate to live in a part of the world that isn’t thoroughly abusing it’s people in such dire ways. Our government is more subtle and hopefully our people will prevent our own situation from getting worse. Anyway, Fela’s music reminds me of one of the people honored last night from an African nation of Liberia. In fact the had a live performance of another artist, that I’ll likely attempt to feature in the future. What a crazy instrument he was playing, a Kora.
One thing to note… This song is actually 28 minutes long. I snipped it off at about 7 minutes. I’ve given you a good long slice of what Fela is about. Enjoy and support, even though he’s no longer with us in this world. His music certainly transports us to whereever he is.
(** Disclaimer: If Fela’s label tries to make me a Beast of No Nation by suing me, I’ll be improvising my right to delete the audio. The post will remain to spread the word. **)