With Finding Fela, Alex Gibney tries to get his arms around Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti.
by J.R. Jones
Late in this documentary about the Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, the musician's longtime manager, Rikki Stein, recalls the time he traveled to the U.S. to meet with every major record label on behalf of his client and was invariably asked, "Which three minutes out of that 28-minute song do you want me to put on the radio?" Kuti's tunes typically began with a percussionist laying down an irrepressibly funky beat, then the guitarist adding some edgy riff, then the other players joining in one by one until a brass fanfare elevated the music to the next level of drama; over the course of a half hour or more, the song built, peaked, and subsided like the plot of a movie.…[ Read more ]