Summoning Afrobeat’s Rhythmic, Rebellious Force to the Stage

The shrine took shape between rehearsals, with statuettes and bottles of water and palm wine laid on the side of the stage. In Yoruba and English it was proclaimed that the honoree, who had died one day short of 11 years before, remained in spirit. But this impromptu blessing last Friday for “Fela!,” a new Off Broadway musical, did not truly become a tribute to the show’s namesake — the Nigerian bandleader and political gadfly Fela Anikulapo Kuti — until the band kicked in and the 20-odd members of the cast and crew took the stage and gave themselves over to spontaneous dance. Mr. Kuti, who died of AIDS in 1997 at 58, was the king of Afrobeat, a musky hybrid of African rhythms and American jazz and funk, and his songs — 15, 20, 40 minutes long — have coaxed many feet to the dance floor. Defiant and irreverent in politics, he also used his music and fame to denounce corruption and ridicule those he called the world’s “vagabonds in power.” That he was repeatedly jailed and beaten for his opposition only quickened his route to becoming a modern African folk hero. All of that makes him a perfect subject for Bill T. Jones, the political lion of modern dance who is the director and choreographer of “Fela!,” which began previews on Tuesday at 37 Arts, on West 37th Street in Manhattan, and opens on Sept. 4 for a two-and-a-half-week engagement. “The Fela Kuti project dropped from the sky,” Mr. Jones, 56, said. “I didn’t know I was looking for such a thing, but it’s rooted in the big questions of my life, questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power. And there’s something about the man that calls out for a very poetic treatment. His life is so mythic in its scale.” “Fela!” is both a homage to Mr. Kuti’s creativity and a study of his persona, and it combines rump-shaking musical numbers with political monologues and supernatural plot twists. It features Sahr Ngaujah in the title role, a team of 13 dancers and a crack 10-piece band with members of Antibalas, a Brooklyn group that has made a name for itself as one of the premier recreators of Mr. Kuti’s music. SOURCE:NYT.COM