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Femi Kuti – Africa For Africa [LP Review]

Review by: Ben Connolly


Buy the CD here
  I’ve always been fascinated by the anthropology of musical styles – the evolution of a distinctive style and sound based on many factors, but often described easiest by geographic boundaries. Take, for example, Memphis blues with its jug-band country feel, as opposed to the Detroit blues and it’s altogether grubby and gritty undertones. While both evolved from the same musical stirrings (and both served as underpinning styles of modern blues and rock n roll), their sounds are geographically distinct and unmistakable. You can hear the swamps and sandflies in Memphis blues, and you can almost sense the grease under the fingernails plucking the Detroit blues guitars.

Heck, there’s no musical style so underpinned by geography than slow, languid, feisty and hot reggae which, no matter where it’s played, evokes the Jamaican countryside to a tee.
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