Red Hot and Riot

There's a case to be made for Red Hot + Riot: A Tribute to the Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti being one of the year's best albums. Not only does it bubble with Afrobeat, it also brings together African and African-American music in a way that's never happened before - modern, unforced, and completely artistically successful.

The latest release from the Red Hot organization, which raises money to educate about, and help fight, AIDS on a global level, in many ways it's a natural fit, given that Fela himself died of the disease and his son, Femi, has been very vocal about AIDS education in Africa.

"Essentially, "we just sat around and thought 'Wouldn't this be great….?" Digital music production allows a lot of possibility."

"We've been trying to go global and reach out to places where the epidemic is hitting hardest in the world," said Red Hot's Paul Heck, who co-produced the record. "Myself and John Carlin, the head of the organization, are huge fans of many different kinds of African music, but sometimes you get a block - you can't do a Fela tribute, the music and the man are too big. But until the reissues appeared, he didn't exist for a while in a tangible form."

The reissues of Fela's albums by MCA helped make Fela more visible than ever in the West, and saw him given some of his due as a musical pioneer and political militant. For Heck, the spark for the project came "in the spring of 2000 when we were in a session with Amir Thompson (AKA ?uestlove of the Roots) for a track off Red Hot and Indigo. The Fela vinyl reissues and box sets had just hit the stores, and he had one. He put on some tracks and said "You should do a Fela tribute and call it Red Hot + Riot, and literally from that the idea was born. Next day I was on the phone with Femi and Fela's management, and it went from there."

While it took two-and-a-half years for the idea to reach full fruition, it's been worth the wait, garnering a huge array of stars, whether it's conscious rappers like Common or dead prez, new soulsters like Macy Gray and D'Angelo, or such stellar African talent as Djelimady Tounkara, Baaba Maal, or Femi Kuti himself. Perhaps curiously, the whole thing began to take shape with the loosest track, a version of "Water Make No Enemy" that sounds like a friendly jam.

"Amir was touring with D'Angelo, and they were fooling around with "Water," and we thought it'd be great to have him do it with Femi - they were both out on the road in the States," recalled Heck. "We got them together in Detroit, and after the tour they did it in New York. We didn't even have a record deal, but we thought it was a way to get things going with a bang."

There was no set agenda on the part of the producers. Essentially, "we just sat around and thought 'Wouldn't this be great….?" Digital music production allows a lot of possibility. Femi was a key artist, to have his and the family's blessing. In the summer of 2001 there was an Africa Out Loud festival here, and we got a lot of those artists. We could have had a lot more, but I needed to keep a balance. In the end we had about 90 minutes of music."

But given Fela's reputation among musicians, there was no shortage of people eager to be involved - from both sides of the Atlantic.

"People were great, artists like Djelimady Tounkara and Chiekh Lo came in on short notice. Cheikh Lo had covered "Shakira/Lady" when he was a teenager, which is why he wanted to do it, and he loved what the song was about. His vocal captures a Fela essence, I think. There were no rules. The only way to pay tribute was to bring your own style to what they did."

And though Femi Kuti only actually appears on one track, his influence was widely felt, nowhere more than on the incendiary "Shuffering And Shmiling."

"He sat with dead prez for two hours in the studio talking about organized religion in Nigeria, and why Fela wrote the song," Heck remembered. "They got the message of the song and filtered it through their sensibilities, and captured the essence of the original. They're spiritual children of Fela. They're among the few artists speaking about the same things Fela did. When Stick drops that first line, and the music drops out, it still gives me the chills."

That track, which was originally 13 minutes long, also brings in an artist from yet another continent, Brazil's Jorge Ben Jor, who contributes rhythm guitar and the stunning falsetto scat singing.

"He just played one take on guitar, then a vocal improv, all the scat singing, which was the track's glue."

At first glance, the odd person out in the whole lineup is Sade. Her smooth style seems at odds with Fela's passionate music. But, like Fela, she comes from Nigeria.

"I wanted her to do "Trouble Sleep," Heck said. The song knocked me out, and it's Fela's only slow song. It's like a blues lament, and she does that kind of thing so well. But she doesn't do tons of stuff, so Stuart Matthewman, a member of her group offered her a mix of her song with Fela and Tony Allen samples. She's the greatest selling Nigerian artist of all time. And it's nice to have something that chills you out." And in the end, Heck still got a version of "Trouble Sleep," from Taj Mahal and Baaba Maal.

Jazz was always as much a part of Afrobeat as funk, and it's certainly not ignored here, as trumpeter Roy Hargrove and saxophonist Roy Blake blow blow up storms throughout, given plenty of room to stretch out on instrumental sections. And Nile Rodgers, a man capable of turning his hand to any style, it seems, also got a good workout.

"[Co-producer] Andres Levin invited him down to play on "Zombie." He had to come back, because there was something wrong with the hard drive, and then we asked him to stay for the "Water" session. He and D'Angelo had never met before, and they were jamming on old Chic songs during breaks. It blows my mind to have three of the world's great rhythm guitarists - Djelimady, Nile, and Jorge Ben - on this record."

While the organic grooves were taken care of, new music wasn't ignored, either;

"It would be great to have someone doing a turntablist, hip-hop thing with Afrobeat," noted Heck. "So I reached out to Mario C., another producer, and he got Mixmaster Mike. "The Kalakuta Show" track with Blackalicious was originally an instrumental, and I thought it'd be interesting to hear people rhyme over it."

Now, 30 months after inspiration, the record is finally in the stores, after countless hours of work from Heck, who's already moving on to the next project. What are his memories of it all?

"My favorites moments are the way the record opens, the beautiful Djelimady Tounkara interlude, and the Fela quote, from a documentary, and the Taj Mahal vocal on "Trouble Sleep." I wanted him to sing it like a blues singer, but he wanted the pidgin English. On one note he still got a blue note, and it made it into a classic blues line."

Red Hot and Riot

"Essentially, "we just sat around and thought 'Wouldn't this be great….?" Digital music production allows a lot of possibility."

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