Checking out "Fela!" at Soundcheck

WNYC's Soundcheck program hosted an intimate in-studio performance today at The Greene Space, featuring the musical duo Dean & Britta and cast members of Broadway's Fela!

Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals) and Britta Phillips (keyboards, vocals) will launch a limited-edition deluxe double CD next Tuesday—13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests.

“It's kind of like making a music video but backwards,” said Wareham of their intriguing commission to score Warhol's simply shot, slowed-down portraits of Factory studio pals like Nico, Jane Holzer and Mary Woronov. The duo opened with “I'll Keep It With Mine,” the Dylan song Nico recorded on Chelsea Girl. They followed with the darkly dreamy, twangy “I Found It Not So”--written for a film of Woronov but mistakenly accompanying a film of Holzer thoroughly, endlessly brushing her pearly whites. I had to agree with Soundcheck host John Schaefer: Mistake or not, the song and the film fit!

Look for Wareham and band, including Phillips, performing Galaxie 500 songs at the Bowery Ballroom, August 19. Complete show information

Soundcheck audio and more information on Dean & Britta

You haven't seen Bill T. Jones's Fela! in any of its incarnations? I don't even want to talk to you. But the irresistible samples Schaefer offered this afternoon--with Fela! star Sahr Ngaujah, other company members and the magnificent musicians from Antibalas rocking the show's versions of "Everything Scatter," "Upside Down" and especially "Water Get No Enemy"--should get more folks there. The little Greene Space was packed with people arranged in orderly rows, but it was hard to stay seated.

Recently, Femi Kuti--son of the late Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and a renowned singer-bandleader in his own right--visited the Broadway show for the first time. He was moved to tears. Ngaujah told us, "Femi said that [his father] would have been quite amused by what we're doing--in the best way!"

Soundcheck audio and more information on Fela!

Fela! on Broadway website

The Greene Space information and schedule

I love Hazmat Modine!

No, that's not Matthew Modine. (Sorry, Matthew...)

Hazmat Modine's "River & Blues" (led by my multi-talented friend, Wade Schuman) at the River to River Festival

Thursday, July 8, 7pm-8:30pm (free)
Wagner Park, Battery Place and West Street, Manhattan

Information

Get a taste of Hazmat Modine on BBC Radio 2 on July 5 on PAUL JONES -- RHYTHM & BLUES. Hear the broadcast live on bbc.co.uk/radio2 at 7pm UK time or play it at any time over the following seven days.

*****

And how about this?

Broadway2Battery: Antibalas Music

Thursday, July 22, 7pm (free)

Castle Clinton, Battery Park, Manhattan

Antibalas (Spanish for “bulletproof”) is a high-energy and highly celebrated Afrobeat orchestra from Brooklyn. The band anchors this year’s Broadway hit FELA! with their musical direction and energetic instrumentalists, arranging and performing the music of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti and originals alike.

Get tickets (two per person) outside Castle Clinton, starting 5pm on July 22. First come, first served. 

Information

Fela! run extended through October 4

The Bill T. Jones musical Fela!--reviewed here on September 4--has been extended.

Tickets for this extension (September 24-October 4) will go on sale Monday, September 15 at 12pm. Visit Ticketmaster or call 212-560-8912.

Fela! awakening [updated]

UPDATE: Run extended to October 4

Fela! has been extended. Tickets for this extension (September 24-October 4) will go on sale Monday, September 15 at 12pm through Ticketmaster or by calling 212-560-8912).

*****

The innovative, electrifying and controversial Fela Anikulapo Kuti--one of Nigeria's greatest musical performers and band leaders--died at age 58, in 1997, of complications from AIDS. But while his legacy endures among music fans worldwide, he also continues to inspire social justice activists with his lyrics' critique of colonialism and of his country's oppressive military junta. For this persistent, outspoken stance, he was imprisoned and brutalized, his supporters suffered beatings and rape, and his brilliant activist mother, Funmilayo Kuti, at age 82, was thrown from a window, later dying of her injuries.

Fela!--a concert-style musical directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones and co-written with Jim Lewis--brings the story of the aftermath of that tragedy to the intimate 2nd floor theater at 37 Arts. If one imagines that this might be too unwieldy, too disturbing a story for a musical--one that collages the deliriously, lavishly, infinitely unspooling Fela tunes, dozens of eye-popping dancers, and accounts of violent repression--think again. Jones makes it all work--and then some--with a tight book, an even tighter bedrock of Fela songs provided by the Brooklyn-based Afrobeat band Antibalas, a sensational company of dancers, and a frequent smackdown of the invisible wall between performers and audience.

And then there's Sahr Ngaujah, plunging into the role of Fela with every ounce of his energy, emotional complexity and wit. From start to finish, Nguajah leads this production with an authority that never lets you entertain doubt that the inventor and king of Afrobeat indeed stands before you.

The evening is lengthy--with a 15-minute intermission--but engaging and rewarding. The audience gets caught up in the percolating vitality and the courage of Fela's Afrobeat, even as we're drawn to the softer side of Fela's love of his mother, or as we flinch from his flashes of angry impatience, or feel revulsion at his oppressors' brutality.

Jones--who took home a Tony® for choreographing Spring Awakening--has another winner here. Let's hope its run will be extended beyond the scheduled September 21 closing. In the meantime, you'd better rush for your tickets: FelaOffBroadway or Ticketmaster at 212-307-7171.

Click here for musical excerpts from Fela!, including my personal favorite, Track #8, Water Get No Enemy.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa