Saturday, March 23, 2013

Mash-up from the far side: Michael Jackson vs Fela Kuti

It's Jacko's Human Nature vs Fela's Me No Get Eye For Back. The King of Pop and the President of the Kalakuta Republic.

And what's best is it's a sound and video mashup featuring some footage from MJ's This Is It funeral doccie and a live performance of Anikulapo with the most otherworldly dancers we've seen since that opening sequence of When We Were Kings featuring Miriam Makeba. Fela liked to call his stage show  The Underground Spiritual Game, and you can see why.



Fela's endless afrobeat jams lend themselves to modern-day mashups, and indeed the person who put this thing together has a site at mjfela.com ("The King Meets The President In Africa") with dozens of Fela-Michael mash-ups.

Another noted Fela fan is producer J.Period, who released a free mixtape through his website featuring rhymes by Somali/Canadian rapper K'Naan over Fela tunes. It's called The Messengers and comes in a set of three with tracks by Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Fela.

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