FELA KUTI & ROY AYERS / Africa, Centre Of The World

OK, here’s the deal. When I put the Fela Tribute Mixtape together, I was vacillating on what to feature as the Classic track but then I remembered one of my favorite Fela cuts, the duet with Roy Ayers, “Africa, Centre Of The World.” I knew we had featured the track before and if we featured it again that would mean a repeat. Since we are now into our sixth year (as of June 18th), I hope our BoL audience will grant me a bit of leniency and not be offended if we repeat an earlier post. Go here to read the original post, which gives the 411 background on the song. For many in the United States, this song was our Fela introduction. There are two versions of the selected song in the jukebox (the download only features the Kuti/Ayers duet). I couldn’t resist pairing “Africa, Centre Of The World” with the Fela Tribute Mixtape. Trivia note: The Roy Ayers version is from a now out of print album titled Africa, Center Of The World, which Roy released after returning from spending time with Fela in Nigeria. The duet version is from an album that originally was issued with the British spelling, hence “colours” and “centre” rather than the Americanized “colors” and “center.” The album has subsequently been issued as part of a CD two-fer that also contains the album Upside Down. Enjoy. —Kalamu ya Salaam 01 “Africa, Center Of the World” – Evolution: The Polydor Anthology – Roy Ayers 02 “Africa, Centre Of The World” – Upside Down/Music Of Many Colours – Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “FELA KUTI & ROY AYERS / Africa, Centre Of The World”

Leave a Reply

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website

| top |