Felabration just got more colorful with Red Bull. The number one energy drink in the world appears on the scene with veteran artistes from the Red Bull Music Academy to energize the event.
For over ten years, disciples of the legendary Afro-beat king, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, have celebrated the posthumous birthday of the global icon. This event, tagged Felabration Viva Africa 2010, attracts music lovers, afro-beat enthusiasts, musical-historians, and any one who just loves a good time, from all over the world. And that world includes the Red Bull Music Academy.
The Red Bull Music Academy is a unique institution in the global music scene. It boasts of hundreds of local music workshops, FM radio partnerships, and dedicated Academy-curated festival stages across both hemispheres carrying the spirit of collaboration, creative exchange and musical innovation. The Academy has brought its forward-thinking music symposium to cities like Cape Town, Berlin and Melbourne for more than a decade, uniting legends of music with their up-and-coming counterparts from 32 countries.
Providing a platform for budding talents to learn and interact with music legends like Tony Allen, Theo Parrish and others like them is one of the many ways the Red Bull Music Academy has been impacting the musical scene. Aside from being a lecturer at the Red Bull Music Academy, Tony worked with the King of Afro-beat for 15 years, performing on 30 different records. The King himself once said that, without Tony, he would need four other drummers! Tony, without whom the drum patterns that is of Afro-beat today would have been impossible, brings first-hand knowledge of the style of Fela, raw and undiluted, making the event as excitingly Fela as it can get.
Tony and Theo first met at the Red Bull Music Academy Studio in London to create the simmering layers of rhythm and melody that will inform Kings to many people. And though from two different musical worlds, they blessed the studio with two small bottles of whiskey and gazillions of ideas. Together they paid tribute to Afro beat's legacy, created by FELA, popularly referred to as “Abami Eda” meaning the Strange One. Theo commented that it was odd to work with a drummer like Tony who has such control over the dynamics, exclaiming: "Dude is so damn crispy!"
The product of their unique collaboration, created specially for this year’s Felabration will be showcased to music lovers at the Africa Shrine on October 14th.
Red Bull Music Academy is also injecting Nneka and Amp Fiddler into Felabration Viva Africa 2010. Nneka is a passionate artiste whose circumspect personality births fiery lyrics that burn social issues into the minds of her listeners, while Amp Fiddler, a veteran sound maker, brings with him the tones of a life-long journey of musical discoveries.
More information is available on redbullmusicacademy.com
Felabration this year lasts from October 11th to 17th.
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