Femi Kuti, Ba Cissoko & Akli D - African Soul Rebels Tour 2007

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"Nigerian band leader and saxophonist Femi Kuti is the undisputed heavyweight of West Africa's funkiest music, Afrobeat.

He brings to the UK his red-hot message of human liberation, fighting corruption, poverty and oppression.

His showmanship alongside his 14-piece band has now become as celebrated as his revolutionary musician father Fela Kuti.

Hard-hitting driving rhythms, dazzling brass, gyrating dancers - Femi Kuti is the Nigerian force to be reckoned with.

Algerian singer-songwriter Akli D brings together a wide range of influences, from reggae, blues, rock and folk to the trance-like Berber rhythms of North Africa.

His UK premiere at Womad enraptured audiences and fellow musicians alike. Akli D's new album Ma Yela is produced by multi-million-selling Latin artist Manu Chao.

Trailblazing Guinean kora master Ba Cissoko and his band bring a vibrant and hip edge to age-old traditions, skilfully fusing the ancient sounds of the acoustic kora with a beat driven by dynamic percussion and funky bass guitar.

Nominated for Best Newcomer at the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards, their latest album Electric Griot Land is as relevant to African music as Jimi Hendrix was to the blues."

African Soul Rebels Tour 2007: February

14 Leicester : de Montford Hall 01162333111
15 London : Barbican 0207 638 8891 Barbican - Home
16 Liverpool: Philharmonic Hall 0151 709 3789
18 Edinburgh : Usher Hall 0131 228 1155
19 Manchester : Bridgewater Hall 0161 907 9000
20 Gateshead Sage: 0191 443 4661
21 Northampton: Royal & Derngate 0164 624 811
22 Coventry: Warwick Arts Centre 02476524524
23 Poole : Lighthouse 01202 685222
24 Basingstoke : Anvil 01256 844244
21 Brighton : Brighton Dome 01272 709709
22 Bristol: Colston Hall 0117 922 3686

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Akli D - Kabyle Mental

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Given the musicians involved, the third annual African Soul Rebels tour promises to be the hottest yet. Topped by the fiery, funky grooves of Nigeria's Afrobeat king Femi Kuti, it also features Ba Cissoko from Guinea Bissau - with his West African kora gourd harp - and Algeria's Akli D, Manu Chao's latest protégé. For all three, politics form a vital part of their music.

Kuti, like his famous father, the late Fela Kuti, is a thorn in the side of the Nigerian government. When we speak, he is almost ready to leave for London to start the tour next week, and his sister Yeni is still rushing round getting European entry visas for some of his band - not easy if you are African. "I allow myself to be directed by positive forces," he says. "You keep an open mind and the truth comes because the truth is very real. We live in a material 'gimme gimme gimme' world. Because of corruption we create bombs instead of food. Politics is all about arms and corruption and oil, while there is so much suffering in the world which we should be doing something about."

When not blasting solos on his saxophone, Kuti spends his time on stage grooving alongside his Positive Force orchestra and their formidable warrior dancers, whose athletic gyrations are a focus of the action. It's interesting to note that the song that got him banned from the radio back home was not Stop Aids (in a continent with religious prohibition of condom-use) or even Traitors of Africa, an attack on corrupt Nigerian leaders. Rather it was Beng Beng Beng, which describes sexual pleasure from a woman's viewpoint.

Fela Kuti prodded the Nigerian government on corruption and skewed policies for over 30 years, before he died of Aids. Femi Kuti is more spiritual than his father; his most recent songs are more parable-like: Water No Get Enemy, recorded with Macy Gray and Roy Hargrove, uses water as a metaphor for the value of ordinary Nigerian people. Do Your Best is an appeal for leaders of honesty and courage.

As a father of seven (three of them adopted), Kuti says he is focusing more these days on family and on raising money for children's orphanages - something he shares with Akli D D's punchy, upbeat song Good Morning Tchétchénia was composed for Chechen children.

"I was inspired by the way Fela Kuti married lyrics and music," he tells me. "On top of anything you are saying you got to have positive rhythms."

Based in Paris since he was forced into exile at the age of 18 - after activism on behalf of his Kabylia people - D's songs switch from reggae to Malian desert blues to gypsy swing, depending on his theme. He grew up with a rich palette of sounds in Berber country in north-east Algeria and made his first guitar from an oil can and bicycle brake wire. His desert blues come from a Malian-born Tuareg grandmother, who was first brought as a slave to Algeria when she was 12. "If you are an exile you are caught between two worlds, if not more," he says, "and all the music you grew up with plays a big part in your life."

So how did D, who spent several years living and busking on the streets, meet Manu Chao? "He came to the bar I was playing at and liked my sound and we jammed all night on two guitars for many nights, long after the bar had shut. Then when I started working on my disc he offered to produce it." D tells me that their relationship, which flowered in Bellville's Bar Babel, is one of "spiritual complicity", and paints a picture of Chao as less a superstar, more an ordinary guy obsessed by music projects. "You know, he moves around on his scooter or the metro. One day we were working for hours and I fell asleep and when I woke up Manu was still at it, making sounds for my music. He forgets to eat!"

Chao's sonic "pim" and "poom" alchemy subtly underpins D's catchy songs. "I also heard Dylan and the Doors when I was a teenager and I like to create images in music, to make people really happy, have a good time, dance," says D. "But I like to make them think of things like immigration and the life problems so many have. In Kabylia we have a saying, 'If you speak you die but if you do not speak, you are dead'."

Cissoko - dubbed the "electric griot" (praise singer) - shares Akli D's interesting forays into reggae. Still, the main link between all three is their engaged politics, a hallmark of notable world musicians. And the rich variety of sounds they create stems from backgrounds in different countries with different post-colonial histories, and their own very personal life experiences.

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African Soul Rebels podcast

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This is the third year of the African Soul Rebels tour - previous line-ups have included the Sahara guitars of Tinariwen, Mali's Amadou and Mariam, Rachid Taha and Souad Massi from Algeria.

This time around you couldn't beat the line up with a stick. The "son of a lion" Fema Kuti is the headliner. Kuti's 16-strong band summon up a killer brew of Nigerian Afro-Beat, matching the energy and innovation of his father Fela Kuti. Guinean kora player Ba Cissoko, is a relative newcomer. His Electric Griot Land was a nod to Hendrix's 1968 double album, Electric Ladyland, to do for the kora and its West African repertoire what Jimi did for the Delta Blues. His cousin Sekou plays a Kora saturated with effects and veers from a skunk futurism to sounding like it has been amplified from a 1920s radio.

The night opens with Akli D Berber from Algeria, who mixes folk music of his native Kabylie tradition with Chaabi, American blues and Senegalese M'Balax pop. His second album, Ma Yela, was produced by Manu Chao, who helped turn Amadou & Mariam into international stars with Dimanche A Bamako. It's an astonishing good album. Here he opens with Salaam, its first track, working up the interplay with his three-piece band of guitar, bass and drums into a rich subtle texture.

He has got interesting hair, a kind of cross between Bobs Dylan and Marley and with electric guitarist Malik Kemouch scattering quicksilver lines over Akli D's intricate work on acoustic guitar.

His seven-strong set is drawn entirely from the new album with Good Morning Tchetchenia one of the most compelling. It opens oud-like, melody picked out by Akli and accompanied by a blues cry, descending to scales of lament: "War in the east, war in the west. Stop the war." A plaintiff wish but driven on a compelling insistent rhythm that's like a wake-up call.

Calabash player Konkoure opens Ba Cissoko's set. Cissoko and Sekou are both wired to effective pedals, though the effects are sparingly applied outside of Sekou's rapid bolo runs. The interplay between the two is highly inventive and adding an echo chamber of a wah-wah to the fluidity of the kora makes for a remarkable piece of Guinean Cosmische music.

It's Sekou who's largely the freak-out artiste here, though he is matched for inventiveness by Konkoure's percussion, the songs extend into lengthy workouts on core rhythms that are infectiously danceable. The kora must be the most beautiful sounding instrument in the world, and Sekou's intense style and use of effects stretches it to its outer limits.

Their final extended number is magnificent and the last to put down his instrument is Sekou, playing out the final phrases of Dandala to huge applause.

Fema Kuti would be an impossible act to follow, and his 16-strong band stokes the insistent layers of rhythm as the three booty-shaking dancers dominate the front of the stage. This is music that floods the senses with a real showbiz build-up leading to Fema's arrival on stage. He is one of Africa's great showmen, but one of its great voices of conscience too. And passionately political, his set is filled with fire and grace. These are songs that, once set up, can keep going for hours, shifting hypnotic polyrhythms behind exuberant brass lines, with Fema's ecstatic vocals weaving between the two, pushing and pulling at the beat.

Resistance is useless under this kind of oral and visual assault. The African Soul Rebels have won the hour.

First Night: African Soul Rebels