Black President The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti recent Museum of Contemporary Art just discovered York.

Black President The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti recent Museum of Contemporary Art just discovered York, New York July 11-September 28 2003

This Is Lagos Yabis Night, Music and Fela Skoto Gallery of recent origin York, New York July 17-September 13 2003

Taxi drivers in Lagos have their fingers in succession the pulse of Nigeria. Crawling end Lagos traffic at the height of this past rainy season, I chatted with my driver as I fiddled with the cab's radio dial. I put to hire the needle rest when a strain by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti suddenly blasted in consequence of the scratchy speakers. After being away from Nigeria for a while, it was the same of those moments when everything just jelled--car horns blaring around us, black exhaust spewing from passing buses, traders shouting as they passed according to with their wares, Fela's music filling the taxi and pouring disclosed onto the road. Frantic perfection. I asked the driver what it was like to be in Lagos when Fela passed away in 1997 He hollaed over the noise, "It was when Fela died that we knew he was a prophet. When he was there in the Shrine, we were just dancing and enjoying. moreover now, all those things he said at that time, we are seeing them get to true. Fela na prophet."

A prophet indeed. Fela Anikulapo Kuti's music expected to the past, present, and to come His searing musical critiques of Nigeria's leadership linked the history of colonialism to present-day moot points and warned Nigerians of the dangers of continuing forward that path. The founder of Afrobeat music, Fela, between the walls of words and sound, inspired musicians and visual artists in Nigeria and well beyond its borders. sum of two units recent exhibitions in New York, "Black President" at the fresh Museum of Contemporary Art and "This Is Lagos" at the Skoto Gallery, mined the musical and visual legacy of his life and work. "Black President" demonstrated important cross-pollination between music and visual civilization and in doing so made a powerful case for a media-spanning approach to the analysis of visual culture

"Black President," visitor curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, was a remarkable effort to honor Fela in a museum space--usually sanitized, orderly, and quiet, a space antithetical in nature to Fela's possess Schoonmaker wisely transformed the novel Museum by filling it with unimpaired From the moment they explained the front door, and at all times while walking in consequence of the beautifully installed exhibition, visitors were bombarded with sound: Fela's music, ambient noise from video installations, and the voices of commonalty talking loudly to be heard. It was a welcome and appropriate break from the standard stifling museum hush.

The exhibition also provided listening stations, undivided of its strongest points. Visitors could sit at computer don headphones, and exquisite tracks compiled by Schoonmaker and Pint Orlov that placed Fela's work in a broader adjoining matter of music that inspired him and was inspired by way of him. I found it hard to stay seated while listening. Selections were divided into broad eras: 1950s-60 ("Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud" by the agency of James Brown, "Love in exterior Space" by Sun Ra), "70 ("Africa Unite" from Bob Marley, "Jungle Jazz" from Keel and the Gang), '80 and '90 ready It is impossible to faithfully appreciate how revolutionary the Afrobeat unbroken was without hearing the music popular in Nigeria during Fela's early years. I chance of the desired end Schoonmaker and Orlov will make this acoustic doctoral thesis available forward CD.

The roster of artists included in flap exhibition was impressive--Sokari Douglas Camp, Obiora Udechukwu Kendell Geer Alfredo Jaar, Olu Oguibe, Ouattara, Yinka Shonibare, Fr Wilson, Kara Walker, and Klaus Burgel to name a hardly any Because Fela's music is origined in protest and social critique, it is easy to argue that any number of works that deal with these themes lead into each other with his legacy. As a issue several pieces included in the exhibition, while athletic works, seemed unrelated or too tangential. Ike Ude's Nigeria custom (1994) felt out of place, as did Moshekwa Langa's video, fireside Movies: Where Do I Begin? Other works were heavy-handed in their approach. Odili Donald Odita's installation Heaven Can Wait (2001) incorporating a r wheelbarrow resting in a pool of oil (a black plastic cut-out) and loaded with colossal bundles of naira, was an obvious condemnatinn of the continuing devaluation of the national money; aggregate of coin the result of corruption related to Nigeria's oil rush While these were recurring themes in Fela's music, Odita's installation felt like a one-note lay lacking nuance and subtlety.

Sokari Douglas Camp's exhibit and Close Chop and repress (2002-3) was another unexpected disappointment. Sokari, (1) along with Satch Hoyt and Yinka Shonibare, focused in succession the twenty-seven women Fela married in a single observance in 1978. Her kinetic metal carved work depicted one of these wives with "AIDS" scrawled in stark white literal senses across her forehead, her leg clapping spread and closed. In contrast to the artist's other kinetic plastic arts which are carefully crafted and engage the viewer with their ecstatic motion, this piece appeared stiffly mechanical. While it is likely that Sokari was relate toed with the stigmatization and possibly the infection of Fela's wives between the sides of their association with their husband, who died of AIDS, the piece felt misguided.