Up at The Australian is my feature on Melbourne's very fine and funky Afrobeat band, Public Opinion Afro Orchestra, whose recent debut CD, Do Anything Go Anywhere, has rightly been earning rave reviews.
Extract:
The template for Public Opinion is one that has become increasingly familiar in the Western world: the Afrobeat ensembles led by the charismatic singer Fela Kuti before his death in 1997. Although Kuti's music was released in the West during his lifetime (he was the first African musician to be signed by a big Western record company), it received strictly limited media attention in Australia and other Western countries.
"Afrobeat never crossed over to the more mainstream audience that enjoyed soul and funk, musical elements that Fela and his cohorts stirred into the broth along with Nigerian highlife music, jazz and angry, left-wing lyrics.
"Yet in the past few years Kuti-inspired Afrobeat bands have been popping up everywhere in the Western world, including the US, Canada, Britain, France and Germany. Given this, it was perhaps inevitable that Australia should also come up with a fine Afrobeat-style band of its own."
Band's website here
Note to self: must post my early 1980s interview with Kuti (pictured above), published in Melody Maker when he was visiting London.
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