Antibalas: s/t (Daptone, 8/7/12)
“Dirty Money”
Having come back into fashion a decade ago, afrobeat isn’t so much resurgent as it is enduring. These days it might even more popular than it was in the 1970s — setting off dance parties, blasting over café speakers, occupying whole sections at record stores, and even influencing indie-rock records. Its immersion into the global mainstream is in large part due to the revived interest in Fela Kuti, the Nigerian afrobeat rebel whose life is chronicled as equal parts musical innovator and controversial social activist. Over the years protégés of Kuti’s Africa ’70 band have exploded everywhere from San Francisco to London, but none may have been more instrumental to afrobeat’s second coming in the States than the Brooklyn-based ensemble Antibalas.
