Album Review: Journey Through Life by Femi Kuti

This was never really an option (and most likely not really an aspiration either) for singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Femi Kuti, whose own journey in music started as a member of afrobeat originator Fela Kuti's orchestra Egypt 80 in the 80s, including acting as the stand-in bandleader when his globally celebrated father was imprisoned on trumped-up charges by Nigerian authorities. 40-odd years later, Journey Through Life suggests that not a huge deal has changed musically from those formative days, but dismissing the album as a predictable exercise in the afrobeat idiom is missing the point. Self-producing for the first time, Kuti is clearly intent on keeping the afrobeat flame alight, but this is no toothless exercise in nostalgia, or a low-risk enterprise in replicating old, once formidable formats.

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