Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 at the Great American Music Hall

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80
Great American Music Hall
San Francisco, CA
April 12, 2025

Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria was a singular experience for Afrobeat star Seun Kuti. For Kuti, now 42, came of age in the Kalakuta Republic, the freewheeling commune presided over by his dad Fela Kuti, who was a force of nature —innovating the Afrobeat style, singing and composing songs, playing sax and keyboards, along with being a political and social activist, a role the government continually retaliated against. Seun, Kuti's youngest son, first appeared with his father and Egypt 80 as a child. Following Kuti's death in 1997, he studied in England and then returned to assume leadership of Egypt 80; he has toured widely over the years with various iterations of the band. Currently, the only remaining original member is bassist Kunle Justice. Yet, with a new generation of talented musicians on board, the unit remains as tight as ever.

This time in San Francisco, Kuti performed at the Great American Music Hall, a relaxed venue offering seating at chairs with tables as well as balcony seats on three sides. First, tenor saxophonist Fabrice "Fab Smith" Fila took the stage and presented "No Waiting," a tune picked from the repertoire of his Parisian Afrobeat band Les Frères Smith. Guitarist Anis Benhallaki kicked off the tune, followed in turn by trumpeter Valentin Pelleti. Fela Kuti's classic 1978 instrumental "Dog Eat Dog." was up next. A photo montage of African and other Black radical activists (such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X) was projected to the rear above Smith.

Kuti, the star of the show, then appeared—blazing into a searing version of Fela Kuti's "Everything Scatter," a song about an episode of cultural strife on a Nigerian bus. It was followed by "Stand Well Well"—a Seun Kuti tune that attacks corruption and inequality while calling on the need for accountability and urging listeners to resist oppression:

The whole world just dey look like copy and paste / Like everybody get the same likes and get the same taste / They just wanna ball, dem no care about freedom / They just wanna ball, they no care about justice.

"T.O.P.," an instant classic from his 2024 album Heavier Yet Lays The Crownless Head (Knitting Factory Records,), was up next. "T.O.P." concerns the theme of consumerism without regard to costs:

People getting killed everyday / And we no care anyway we sick boss / And we planet just dey suffer for some rich man to yoofa we sick boss.

Kuti has explained the song this way: "We are educated in a way where we see our brothers and sisters as our competitors rather than our solution. Everybody wants to be at the top. Everybody wants to be first. Everybody wants to be more special and do better than their brothers and sisters. 'Things over people' is what the system demands. The ultimate goal of this unnatural competition that we create amongst ourselves is to accumulate things and this process causes so many atrocities starting from the oppression of nature to the oppression of humanity."

Before presenting a new song, tentatively entitled "Problem," Kuti launched into an extended discourse (see video below) during which he twice thanked his audience for coming. Then, once more employing his usual dynamism and energy, he alternated between singing lead vocals and playing his alto sax and keyboard. The band performed "For Dem Eye"and "Emi Aluti" (Yoruba for "Spirit Struggle"). As an encore, they played an enthralling and heartfelt version of Fela Kuti's "Coffin For Head Of State", which spotlighted the prodigious skills of bassist Justice. "Coffin"is a formidable tune, which references the 1977 Nigerian government raid on his Kalakuta Republic compound in Lagos—destroying it, beating Fela severely and killing Fela's mother, Seun's grandmother:

I go government places / I see, see, see / All the bad, bad, bad things /Them they do, do, do / Them steal all the money/ Them kill many students /Them burn many houses / Them burn my house too / Them kill my mama / So I carry the coffin.

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