![]() (Lead singer of Coldplay) Chris Martin’s inclusion of Fela Kuti’s sample is nothing short of a Trojan horse: a seemingly benign pop song impregnated with a belly of deeper meaning, subtly designed to stop and make you think.įela Kuti’s son, Femi, is playing the horns in the background, and his son, Made, can be heard playing the saxophone. ![]() ![]() His mother was a women’s rights activist and throughout his career he remained vocal about his Pan-Africanist beliefs, championing solidarity between all indigenous and diaspora ethnic groups of African descent. The man knew a thing or two about struggle. In the same way, as Coldplay’s succes has allowed them the luxury to team up with South-Korean boyband the Bangtan Boys (BTS) to make genre-bending music that cross-pollinates cultures, playlists, and new commercial markets, Fela Kuti was doing this the hard way in the summer of ’69 in the United States as a Nigerian without a work permit. Fela Kuti was the pioneer of Afrobeat, a music genre combining traditional Yoruba percussion (music from Benin, Nigeria, and Togo) with American funk and jazz. “Music is the weapon, music is the weapon of the future” chants a sampled Fela Kuti on Coldplay’s ‘Arabesque’, a song off their 2019 album, Everyday Life. Can Coldplay, the most successful band of the 21st century, play their greatest supporting act yet and simultaneously help bring peace to the Middle East? Music is the Weapon of the Future
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