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Seun Kuti, son of the late legendary Afrobeat founder Fela Anikulapo Kuti retuned to Santa Cruz last night with his father’s legendary Egypt 80 band. Seun’s star definitely continues to rise as his tour to support the newly released ‘A long way to a new beginning’ just released on Knitting Factory records

The tour stop supports the aforementioned 3rd full length release from the youngest son of Fela. His latest release follow the 2011 release ‘From Africa with fury:Rise also on Knitty Factory Works. To those unfamiliar with Seun’s afrobeat grooves, they prove as political and dancable as those of his father, the founder of Afrobeat music

Noteworthy songs on the new recording include “Black woman”, “IMF”, the traditional ‘Ohun Aiye”, and ‘Kalakuta boy”, a reference to the the communal home his father established in Nigeria to practice and perform. The latest release was co-produced by grammy award winner Robert Glasper. Guests appearing on the imprssive new offering include M-1 of Dead Prez, Blitz the Ambassador and Nneka.


 

After releasing anew the music of 70’s Nigerian icon William Onyeabor through the 3 record set Who is William Onyeabor? (Luaka Bop records) a band was arranged to perform this music for 4 nights in New York and California in May and it was quite special to get the chance to see them.
The band featured appearances from the Lijadu Sisters who have 4 recordings re-issued from Knitting Factory Records in 2012. Fans were given the chance to hear 2 songs from their 1976 recording Danger. The Lijadu Sisters songs included the title track as well as Life’s gone down low.
Other members of the band include David Byrne, Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip),Kele Okereke (Bloc Party), Pat Mahoney (LCD Soundsystem), Devonte Hynes (Blood Orange), Money Mark, Sikane, Joshua Redman, amd others. The show took place on Tuesdsy, May 6th at the Warfield in San Frncisco. The concert included modern interpretations of many of Onyeabor’s best known songs including Body and Soul, Fantastic man, Atomic bomb, Love me now, and others. A modern nostaligic phenom is gaining a new audience and gaining respect as a clever electronic funk pioneer from Enugu, Nigeria.

I’ve had my share of aliases over the years; Guido and Sweetbottom to name a couple. The name Strangeblood was actually given to me by the drummer in Venus Flytrap circa 1991. We were at band practice and were messing around and the late Chris Whitson (guitarist and songwriter) would say “That Curtis just isn’t normal, he doesn’t do normal things and doesn’t listen to normal music”. One time Tom (our drummer) said, “I think I’m going to start calling you Curtis Srange”, and then he asked “have you heard of that golf player Curtis Strange?”  The name Curtis Strange followed me around for a few days and then it somehow turned into Curtis Strangeblood. Back then Tom used to always accent the A’s a bit and so it always came out as Curtis Straaangeblood. That used to follow me around quite a lot back then. Chris would always be saying “Curtis just isn’t normal” and Tom would follow that with “Curtis Straaangeblood”.

The rest is history I suppose. I only ever DJ’d three or four times, so leaving out the Curtis and inserting DJ is just a sort of novelty to give everyone the impression that you’d be lucky to have me blast a set at you’re latest gathering, but as some of those reputations precede me, you might be unlucky depending on how obscure the mix is. Just a warning for those of you thinking of hiring me