Listen to Fela Kuti While You Work
Superstar Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat music – or simply Fela – is powerful, political and so influential that Fela’s sound has been woven into pop, rock and hip-hop for the past forty-odd years. It’s also great music for work.
Sound motivates
Afrobeat is an energetic genre driven by an energetic, even rhythm. The melody usually repeats, but it is a steady jazz repetition, not a quick repetition of Philip Glass, which can drive you crazy in two minutes. And this melody usually remains unresolved – at least to ears accustomed to American music – for a long time. It makes you move, makes you lean forward.
Instrumental music
Well, not always. Fela, an activist and sometimes a political prisoner, sings about political issues such as war and colonialism – a thousand soldiers ransacked his home and studio (and nearly killed him) after criticizing the Nigerian military on his Zombie album 77 of the year. But Fela sings in Nigerian Pidgin , a colonial-influenced language only partially understood by English speakers, making the lyrics less distracting for the average American (although you should certainly spend some time reading them). Secondly, Fela can fit the lyrics onto a track and leave room for ten minutes of instrumental music because:
The tracks are long
The Afrobeat genre is generally very instrumental, but Fela’s tracks are unusually long, often over twenty minutes long each. You can practically start the Pomodoro timer by listening to one Fela song at a time. Fela shares this quality with many 70s progressive rock or krautrock, but without silly deviations from these genres.
There’s a lot of it
Fela has released no less than fifty albums, and you can find most of them streaming on Bandcamp , Spotify, and Apple Music . Spotify has a 13-hour playlist called “This Is: Fela Kuti,” and Apple Music has a collection of ” highlights ,” ” next steps, ” and ” deep cuts .” Spotify also offers Fela playlists created by artists such as Questlove , Brian Eno, and Erica Badu .
Fela’s music is not just background music. But if you find it difficult to concentrate while playing other music, give it a try. Like prog rock and the classic bolero , this is one of the most difficult pieces of music that still leaves your brain to think.