Fela Kuti – Coffin For Head Of State (LP Vinyl)
Product Details
Released in 1979, "Coffin For Head Of State" documents one of the most defiant acts in the history of political music: Fela and his musicians literally carrying his mother's coffin to the gates of Olusegun Obasanjo's presidential compound in Lagos. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti had been a towering figure in Nigerian civil society long before her son became Afrobeat's architect, and her death made this 25-minute suite both a funeral dirge and an indictment.
Knitting Factory Records reissues Fela Kuti's Coffin For Head of State on vinyl LP, previously only available as part of the Box Set series. The album, made up of one track only, is among Fela's most courageous responses to the Nigerian army's destruction of Kalakuta on February 18, 1977. During the attack, Fela's mother, aged 78, a veteran of Nigeria's struggle for independence from British colonial rule and an early campaigner for Nigerian women's rights, was thrown out of an upstairs window, fracturing a leg. Fela believed that the assault led to his mother's death 14 months later. The audio has been restored and remastered from Fela's original Nigerian recordings. The artwork has been meticulously recreated from original album artwork.
UPC: 720841204916
Label: Partisan Records
Release Date: 12.13.19
Format: LP Vinyl