Fela Kuti – Sorrow, Tears & Blood (LP Vinyl)
Product Details
Released in 1977, "Sorrow, Tears & Blood" arrived at one of the most dangerous moments in Fela's life, just a year before the Nigerian military would ransack his Kalakuta Republic commune, an attack that left his mother fatally injured. The B-side, "Colonial Mentality," cuts just as deep, indicting Africans who internalize and perpetuate the values of their former colonizers. Together the two tracks form one of his most politically concentrated statements.
Fela wrote the title track of this album in response to the 1976 Soweto Uprising in which thousands of South African students protested the forced teaching of Afrikaans, the colonial language of Apartheid. During the uprising and the ensuing riots, hundreds of students were killed. The song calls out killings that have gone on in the name of authority and totalitarian rule as well as the instruments of repression of colonial Africa the police and the army. The music parallels the somber tone of the lyrics; focused and direct, and avoids the usual bombastic funk of Fela compositions.
Tracklist
UPC: 720841204312
Label: Partisan Records
Release Date: 8.19.14
Format: LP Vinyl