Last June, Seun Kuti played to a huge festival crowd at Glastonbury, but here the youngest son of Nigeria’s musical and political revolutionary Fela Kuti was in a far more intimate setting, at Ronnie Scott’s in London. The result was intriguing. This was a sometimes triumphant, sometimes awkward show in which he showed how he has developed Fela’s Afrobeat style, but was less successful when it came to following his dad’s political stance.
An exhilarating opening saw 13 musicians, singers and dancers crammed on stage for an easygoing workout led by Fela’s keyboard player Lekan Animasahun, before Seun came on, starting, as he always does, with one of his father’s songs. Opposite People is a defiantly cheerful piece written in the late 70s in the aftermath of the Nigerian army’s brutal attack on Fela’s compound. Seun sang it superbly. A tall, athletic figure, he leaped around the stage as if he was still at Glastonbury, his band impressively tight.
Kuti then switched to five songs from his latest album A Long Way to the Beginning. IMF, “international motherfuckers”, was another stomping, funky workout that included his first saxophone solo of the night. It was a musical success, but encouraged the first of his lengthy diatribes, in which he sexism, racism and corruption rather than discussing what Fela might have thought of Nigeria’s new president, and he praised Mugabe while criticising Mandela, but the audience failed to react.
By the end, he took off his shirt, to show off his tattoo “Fela Lives”, and dance across the stage for a finale of Kalakuta Boy. It had been an entertaining set, but less rhetoric and more musicianship would have been welcome.
• At Ronnie Scott’s, London, 12 & 13 June. Box office: 020-7439 0747.
