Chopteeth live at Washington D.C.'s Black Cat
Photo by C.L. Kunst
Chopteeth
Afro-Funk Big Band (Grigri Discs)
www.chopteeth.com
People deal with grief in various ways - some go out and get drunk,while others might take a trip in order to "clear the air" while attempting to deal with the pain. Quite a few might even try therapy, but in the case of Washington, D.C. bassist and labor organizer Robert Fox, making music was the answer he found after losing a close friend in a tragic car accident.
Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry and synthetic to wet and gushy), rhythm tracks can be tempo-tweaked with an upward toggle to change a Timbaland beat into a Chromeo one. Add some T-Pain-esque pitch-correction vocals to your between-
Nigerian-born Fela Kuti's legacy lives on more than a decade after his untimely passing from AIDS in 1997. His unique fusion of jazz, funk, rock and his own native African sounds brought his continent's melodies to mainstream audiences in an unprecedented manner, thanks to his audacity and creativity, which is carried on by his son Femi and many of his followers around the globe.
