Femi Kuti is an international protest figure superstar musician from Nigeria, the first-born son of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He began performing with his father's band, Egypt 80, at age 16. He went on to start his own band, Positive Force, with whom he has released nine albums and toured the world several times since. His latest album, Day by Day, came out in October, 2008. Femi is on the verge of embarking on a North American tour. I had the honor of speaking with him earlier today at which point he told me The Shrine, his home base club in Lagos, Nigeria, has been forced closed by the Nigerian government.

How would you describe the evolution of your music? Where is your music today that it wasn't several years ago when your last studio album came out?

I'm getting more experience, age, more mature, and so the music is changing with all of this. I'm happy people think it's getting better, people are enjoying it, people support what I'm doing, that's most important.

What are you listening to right now that's inspiring you?

Nothing really, I'm trying to start work on my next album, so I'm working on some new stuff.

You've shared the stage with a lot of amazing musicians, With whom have you collaborated in your career that you've learned the most from?

My father

How old were you when you started playing with Fela and Egypt 80?

16

Who are some African musicians you feel are pushing their genres and innovating new trends in African music today?

I think most Africans are trying to do that. There's a lot of hip hop Nigerian artists that are very American-Nigerian orientated. That may be typical of my fathers influence on the music scene. There are many artists developing a unique style for themselves. It would be wrong for me to pick one.

Who specifically within the genre of Afrobeat do you respect and listen to?

Nobody.

Nobody, really?

What are they going to teach me?

Well, I guess you have a point.

Well I mean if I was playing at a concert and any afrobeat band is there, I would be forced to listen. I could listen from my dressing room I could hear. There are not a lot of bands playing good afrobeat, I mean, it's ok. There are many in America, Australia, France. Many are getting hooked on the afrobeat.

As someone who thinks of something different when they hear the black president than someone like me who grew up in the US, what did the election of a black president, Barack Obama, mean to you and what do you think it will mean for Africa on the whole?

Well, what it means to me might take a while. Barack Obama is first an American, generally, it shows that Americans are open-minded. I never believed Americans would vote a black man or black person President, the highest office in America. Americans are open-minded, there's a new generation of Americans who are not thinking on a racial basis, and are completely open-minded. So that impressed me, that gave me a lot of hope for the world and America. If Americans can see things in this light, there's a strong future for them and the world. America dictates a lot of world opinion, if America moves to the right, the world moves to the right, if America moves to the left, the world moves to the left. It impressed me a lot.

Do you hope because of his African roots Obama will change the way America has dealt with Africa in the past?

I hope he will be very objective. I hope he won't be lenient in dealing with the corruption of African governments because he's a black man. I hope he doesn't fall for that. He has to be very objective, because all the African governments are corrupt. So it should not be because he's a black American he should be lenient on corruption, I think that is where he should be hard because he should want Africa to become a great continent. He has to be very hard on his policies, because he has to put an end to the corruption with his policies in Africa. He has to prove that the African government is not being proper democracy according to what we know it should be. The African government is corrupt.

I read in an interview on jambase.com, when talking about the raid on Kalakuta republic that killed your grandmother and ransacked Fela's compound, you raised the possibility of the CIA being involved. What makes you think that's the case and would you clarify your stance on the issue?

Because somebody came to warn my father before the attack and warned him the CIA wanted him dead. He said it many times. He was warned that the CIA was going to kill him. I was there, I heard him say it many times.

Who came to warn Fela?

An american, I don't want to name names here.

The CIA definitely has a history of targeting African ideologues that oppose them like Patrice Lamumba and many others.

Lamumba, anyone, Any western government is always opposed to any Pan-African in government.

One of Fela's major accomplishments that is often overlooked was his ability to mobilize people into action around a cause. A lot of people dismiss him as a dissident, just a crazy musician, but he made things happen in Nigeria organizing youth groups and political action groups. Could you talk about some of the ways in which you've continued his legacy of political action outside of your music?

I think its just through music. I stopped giving to organizations because I found out its so corrupt, people are just taking my money, I give people money to make posters you know, put up the flyers, but they get ripped up in the street. And they're just ripping me off in my money. We're at a critical point, where the corruption is so bad, people are so desperate for money right now. It is not smart for me right now. I'll just continue to talk about the problems, sing about the problems, and deal with the problems. I can be in any part of the world today, having a good life, or having a better life than I'm having here [Nigeria], but staying here is a political statement. People are mad at me for staying here, so maybe I mobilize many generations by staying here. Three generations have passed through me knowing I have achieved what I've achieved by staying here in Nigeria. I didn't go to America to stay, I didn't go to Europe, I've stayed here. Everybody told me you've got to move, fuck that. Everybody said I won't be in demand if I stay in Nigeria. I opened the market, I've kept the market my father opened. It won't do any use to admire what I've done. I use my music, what I sing about to make a difference. And I don't want to run for office, any kind of office. I just want to be a musician.

What are some of your unfinished goals for your music career?

Wow, that's a question for God Almighty to answer, not me. I want to arrange and produce some albums. I hope I can always impress and please my fans and other people, and my self as well. I'd like to spend more time with my family. What else...I'd like to see Africa Unite in my lifetime I'd like to see highways running north to south east to west like I see in America, I'd like to see big airports like I see everywhere, train stations like I see everywhere, I'd like to see the United Countries of Africa, I would like to see the eradication of poverty and the end of suffering. We're the richest continent I can't understand why we're suffering. I would like to see the end of corruption. And all these things that I stand for in my lifetime, I would like to see an end to it in my lifetime. But that's up to the creator to decide that. I'll just do my part, keep practicing, playing music, and fighting.

Just for your information the shrine was closed yesterday by the government. So now we're having a big battle right now, trying to get it open.

On what grounds did they close it, they just decided they didn't want it to be open?

They said people were selling things outside, like sweets, and fried meats, biscuits, things like this on the streets, not in the shrine, on the streets, on the major road. Now they're saying we're responsible for those people. So they are closing the shrine because we let people come and sell things there. And we're like how do they expect us to get rid of these people? Do we own the road? The road belongs to the federal government. How we can we go to the federal governments' property and say get out of here? It's the government's problem to do that. They have to remove them not us.

Have they tried to do things like this before?

Yea. They have closed the place for two days now, we are losing all kinds of money, our instruments are there, we can't rehearse.

So what can you do to fight them?

We don't know yet, we have many options, maybe we are going to court, we don't know yet. Right now we're talking to the office of the commissioner to give us the go-ahead to open the place. They said 10 o'clock this morning, they didn't show up, then they said 2, they didn't open it, so we're still waiting.

Well whatever I can do to help, I'm not sure how receptive the Nigerian government is to petitions from American music fans...

Well maybe put it in your article on the internet so that more journalists will put it in their papers, 'The Nigerian government closed the shrine, blah, blah, blah, things like that.

Marc Amigone

Location: Chelsea, NYC
Art: From Fluxus to Media Art
Show time: Mon - Fri: 11 AM - 5 PM
Venue: Maya Stendhal Gallery
Food: Planet Thailand 212
Drink: Star Lounge
Miscellaneous: Burlington Coat Factory

Fluxus, a group of artists through many mediums who used mixed media in their works and who have been influencing the art world since its inception in the 1960s gets a retrospective with From Fluxus to Media Art with select works being shown by Jonas Mekas, George Maciunas, Fluxus, George Brecht, Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, and Studio IMC. Before the show you should hit Planet Thailand 212 for dinner. Williamsburg’s favorite Thai and sushi restaurant has extended into Manhattan and looks just as impressive as it’s sister. After you learn some new tricks, The Star Lounge, located under the forever-hip Chelsea Hotel has three rooms including a main room that’s red, white, and dimly lit providing a sexy atmosphere. Right next door to the B&N, there’s a Burlington Coat Factory and though it's not glamorous, unlike the department stores across the street, the clothing is not as picked over.

Kevin Serra of kevchino.com recently got the great Brooklyn based singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten to perform her song “For You” Live from Central Park in a rowboat. Check out this gorgeous performance!



DaVe Lipp

Make up artist Vincent Longo hails from Australia, but spent formidable years in Italy. During the 1990’s, he established himself as a runway and editorial make up artist. It was his kitchen cosmetics approach that inspired his line of cosmetics. Longo literally concocted his formulations in his apartment’s kitchen. Regrettably, his products retain that home-produced quality. We tried two products: Volume Riche Mascara and the Water Canvas Primer.

Volume Riche Mascara: This mascara did fulfill its promise to add volume to the lashes. Our lashes became fuller and more voluminous upon application. However, it was the most dry and clumpy mascara we have ever tried. Pulling the wand out of the tube was a black tar mess and I often had to blot the excess kohl off the wand. The upside is how easily it washed off compared to other mascaras. The retail price is also excessive at $23.

Water Canvas Primer: This primer felt like I was putting Neosporin on my face. Unlike other primers, this was not light weight and had a gelatinous consistency. The most important ingredient of a good primer is silica, which creates smooth, silky applications. The website claims it has silica gel, but the ingredient inventory doesn’t have silica on the list. The only advantage was the convenient size of the tube and its non-greasy formula. Otherwise, you are better off spending $40 on two less expensive and more effective primers.

Ashkan

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Band: New York Dolls Get Tickets Here
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Music Hall of Williamsburg
Food: Fornino
Bar: D.O.C. Wine Bar
Miscellaneous: Verb Café

Way before hair metal, when wearing women’s clothes and makeup was shocking, especially on the mean streets of NYC in the 70s, the New York Dolls were one of the leaders of the punk movement. With a new album out, it looks like the Dolls are sticking around longer than their original run. What also rocks is finding a decent pizza! Fornino offers just that, wrapped up in an original concept. Serving wood oven burning pizza, the menu is broken up into three generations, the first being your basic pizza ingredients while the second and third go off the gourmet deep end, giving you more than 20 options total. For drinks, the D.O.C. Wine Bar has a homey atmosphere and an excellent wine list of strictly Italian wines and small plates of food. If coffee is your thing, The Verb Café offers not only coffee but sandwiches, desserts, and soup. Chill at a table and write that novel, look for jobs online, or hang with a friend like everyone else there.

Most of us are familiar with the charming sitcom, The Golden Girls, which brought three septuagenarians, (wise-cracking) Dorothy, (sultry) Blanche, and (simple-minded) Rose and one feisty eighty-year old, Sophia, into our living rooms during the 1980s. The success of this TV show weighed a lot on the relationships and honest humor between these four friends living together in a retirement community near Miami Beach, FL. It was also clear that these four actress including the recently late Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty had an undeniable chemistry. Through the various scenarios, catfights, and late night cheesecake vigils, we would find these girls wound up in a group hug by the end of every show that illuminated the theme song “Thank You for being a Friend.” Whether or not it was meant to captivate a loyal gay audience, The Golden Girls has reached a new level of mockery that few conservative viewers may understand. The archetypal characters of these women have drawn male drag performers from around the world to take part in a festival of innuendo and flattery. And it is no less obvious than this current sold-out production at the Kraine Theater (running through July 12).

Played mostly by men with the exception of a dead-on hilarious Susan Moreno as Sophie, Thank You For Being A Friend: The Musical provides a sharp view on how profoundly the Golden Girls has impacted the gay community. With clever lyrics by Luke Jones, who also plays Dorothea, and a silly book by Nick Brennan, doubling as Roz, this new musical is more of a live sitcom with songs. It captures exactly the kind of raunchy tongue-in-cheek humor that makes you feel a little like a sinner cause you enjoyed it so much – that’s if you can stomach this sort of behavior. Get used to bad language and very adult references. At one point, Sophie claims that her “vagina is so dry it could pass for a small town in Arizona.” This production has turned The Golden Girls into a golden shower of very distasteful jokes and painful pedestrian punches. There are song parodies from Broadway musicals such as Chicago, Dreamgirls, and 9 to 5 that tend to heighten the gayer-than-gay theme.

The plot begins when a gay sex party has moved next door to the girls’ home. Lead by none other than former *NSYNC boy band member, Lance Bass, played with limber athleticism by Jody Wood, this orgy has tarnished the landscape by allowing such heinous sex fiends like rubber-chapped, ball-biting Cubby, played by Brad Loekle, to disrupt this otherwise squeaky-clean neighborhood. A showdown ensues at the Annual Shady Pines Talent Contest that puts the youthful boy bandleader up against the aging ladies all the while double crossing each other in order to win. Surely there are enough sight gags and sorely choreographed numbers to keep the laughs rolling including a memorable dream sequence that has Dorothea in the midst of a female-to-male sex operation.

The performances succeed in fine campy fashion, and their imitative gestures are sure to remind us how fondly we look back on this endearing foursome. Chad Ryan captures the southern charm and randy ferocity that we associate with Blanchet. Nick Brennan portrays Roz in a similar dopiness that gave Betty White such a pitiful appeal. Luke Jones is a towering figure as Dorothea, and along with gaudy costume pieces and gangly postures, presents a memorable impression. This is fringe theatrics at its most ostentatious, but it achieves a celebratory offensiveness that can only thrive under the spoof-hungry community of underground theatre makers. Without this sense of self-conscious irony, Thank You For Being a Friend: The Musical would require much more than a group hug for a happy ending.

Kila Packett

Ralphie May – Austin-tatious
(Image Entertainment)





Reality TV has bought wonders into our lives such as getting to see the washed up lead singer of Poison have sex with a bus load of cheesed out women and showing us that little people can farm (and then get busted for drinking and driving just like our weird Uncle that we avoid at family parties) but it’s also brought us a hand full of comics via Last Comic Standing that were funny but not quite ready for the big stage and Ralphie May is one of them. Even reality television’s 15 minutes of fame is worth something and rather than working the Thursday open mike at the Velveeta Room, the exposure of Last Comic Standing has allowed comics such as Ralphie May to jump ahead in the game but after watching his newly released comedy DVD Austin-tatious it’s obvious that this too comes with a cost.

While Ralphie is no doubt a funny guy (and certainly funnier than Dat Phan), he isn’t yet 99 minutes funny and more importantly much of his humor is expected, typical, and …hate to say it- hack. His set list is as follows- fat joke, dick joke, racial joke, and repeat and while he does bring a few original and personal notes to the chorus it’s not nearly enough. These are the same jokes you hear from your funny landscaper or the loveable alcoholic at every bar in America and although they do work and elicit laughter, it’s just the same old thing and Ralphie doesn’t bring anything new to the game. There are moments when he appears to be on the verge of something interesting such as when he describes having meaningful sex with his pregnant wife and gets real for a moment but then blows it on a punch line that doesn’t carry the weight- “once your child gives you the mummy in the sandstorm I’m tapping out”

About 40 minutes in he gets to some of his core material that he’s been doing for a number of years which is noticeably better and shows Ralphie’s potential but it’s followed with a “yo mama” joke and more of the same so it doesn’t pan out. On the plus side is the fact that stupid people need to laugh too so until Ralphie tightens up his material, his DVDs will keep that weird Uncle of ours laughing while he waits for someone to bail him out.

Tim Needles