 The
SF Music Award winning ALBINO! is a 12-piece
Afrobeat ensemble that honors the fiery legacy of Nigerian
musical revolutionary Fela Kuti. ALBINO's
high energy grooves and explosive stage show thick with
hypnotic percussion, a heavy horn section, African dance,
outrageous costumes, and infectious group choreography have
firmly established the band as the West Coast's premier
Afrobeat act.
According to the SF Weekly, "ALBINO's
ass-inspiriting percussive engine comes from a rhythm section
of local all-stars; together, they form rhythms based in
the West African tradition which holds at its heart the
inseparable union of drumming and dance. Atop the band's
rhythmic maelstrom ride tightly figured five-part horn lines.
The section's 'heavy heavy' bottom end features a snarling
dual baritone-sax yawp. This is world music that lives up
to the name."
 Albino! @ Burning Man
Afrobeat
is one of the boldest and most radical forms of protest music the world
has ever heard. Afrobeat's original architect, Fela Kuti, was a
revolutionary outlaw who used his music as a weapon to expose and
assault the perpetrators of injustice in his native Nigeria and
throughout Africa. His principal targets included Nigeria's corrupt
military regime, the post-colonial aristocracy's repression of native
cultures, and corporate greed and the exploitation of Africa's natural
resources and working class. Fela's Afrobeat crusade for a free,
democratic, socially equitable Africa spanned from the early seventies
until his death from AIDS in 1997, when a "musical and sociopolitical
voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced." (-All Music Guide)
 ALBINO! proudly embraces and extends the
tradition of Afrobeat as protest music. We believe the current
state of affairs in our nation and the world is dire and
in desperate need of change. The message of our music, like
Fela's Afrobeat, endeavors to expose contemporary injustice
with the goal of inspiring critical thought and activism.
We urge all members of the ALBINO! community
to take action and make your voices heard. We encourage
you to visit the following websites to learn more about
Fela's Afrobeat legacy, and about the charitable causes
ALBINO! has been involved with that are
affecting positive change in your communities and around
the world.
In March and April the ALBINO!
juggernaut will lumber through the Pacific Northwest
and Rocky Moutains
in
support
of our
new live album featuring guest saxophonist Karl Denson from Greyboy
Allstars and Karl
Denson's Tiny Universe (KDTU). Live
with Karl Denson documents a blistering set of all original
material recorded before a sellout crowd at San Francisco's historic Great
American Music Hall in November of 2007. The band will venture much further
east this summer as well, so tell your friends, and prepare to get funky. ALBINO! IS COMING!!!
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