Antibalas--Spanish for "bullet-proof"--is a 15-piece afrobeat band out of New York. Their music captures the sound and spirit of the genre's founder and preeminent composer, the late Fela Kuti of Nigeria. Call it mimicry if you like, but it's no mean feat to summon the bluster, energy and drive of Fela's incomparable band, and these guys nail it, composing within the quirky conventions Fela laid out, and inserting elements of the New York milieu without distorting the signature afrobeat character. Afrobeat leaves lots of room for jazzy free blowing, as in Martin C-Perna's growling baritone sax break on "Dirt and Blood," and Jordon McLean's rowdy but lyrical trumpet work on "Uprising" and "N.E.S.T.A. (Never Ever Submit to Authority)." As these titles suggest, Fela's famed politics of resistance are here too, but rarely expressed as Fela-esque, half-spoken diatribes. Just two of these eight tracks have vocals at all, and on sly, funky opener "Si, Se Puede," they're in Spanish. This isn't a problem. Any attempt to equal Fela's personal presence is likely to fall flat. But in all the great afrobeat recordings, the band and the arrangements really made the sale, and Antibalas has that part down: fat, wall-of-brass horn passages, grounded by that ever-present baritone, and layered, polyrhythmic grooves that raise 70s funk to a spiritual plane. The drums are busier than Fela's, and the guitarist knows how to rock out. Otherwise, this could be Lagos, circa 1980.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre
Originally published in: Boston Phoenix