The Nerve Magazine
REVIEW: Femi Kuti and Postive Force @ The Commodore
VANCOUVER 7.26.07 -- While the world scrambles to adopt kids and buy jeans to save Africa, Nigerian Afro-beat superstar Femi Kuti and his 13-piece musical juggernaut offer refreshing proof that not all Africans need to be saved. It’s a side of the continent we need to see more often.
There was no scruffy-faced NGO worker in a khaki vest recruiting donors at the door of the Commodore Saturday night. Bono was not on the guest list. This band is authentically inc(RED)ible. A horn section tighter than James Brown’s pants. Drummers that make Neil Peart look like Meg White. And a keyboardist that played like Stevie Wonder with his eyes open.
All your favourite music originated from Africa and Positive Force played like they invented it, blasting through a non-stop two-and-a-half hour reel-to-reel ‘70s style African party-mix of high-life, rock, rap, funk, jazz, blues, with even a whisper of disco. And even though each of the musicians on stage packed enough charisma to warrant their own show (especially the stunning trio of singer/dancers who shook it like a Hasselblad picture all night long), it was main man Femi Kuti who owned the crowd. “Take your mind to Nigeria!” he exclaimed, before maniacally whipping himself and the crowd into yet another frenzy.
If we weren’t so distracted by the groove, we might have imagined how powerful and important his songs of safe sex, anti-corruption, truth and democracy might be on his home turf in Lagos - a city consistently in the bottom five of the UN’s most unliveable places. We might even wonder on the symbolism of a West African man in complete control over a crowd of a thousand rich white North Americans.
But tonight in Vancouver, Kuti’s politics were easily drowned out by his sound and rhythm. And when it was all over, a small sweaty gang of Nigerians armed with trumpets and saxophones walked straight out the front door (laughing past a pack of fighting Roxy goons) into a hot summer night in the UN’s most liveable city on the planet.