Ahead of a double-header at Cork Jazz Festival, we chat to Seun Kuti

The last time your writer was on the phone to Seun Kuti for an interview, it was an entire 24 hours later than scheduled, and once he’d woken up properly - on a day he and his Egypt 80 collaborators were packing up to head to Europe from Nigeria for a 2022 tour, that also included their first Leeside appearance on that year’s Everyman Jazz line-up, no less - he was a singularly authoritative interview, holding court on everything from continuing his father Fela’s musical legacy, to the linguistics of capitalism.

Your writer, then, is more than willing to forgive Kuti’s being ‘artistically late’, as he puts it, for a follow-up. As another European excursion is underway, this time with a double-dose of headline Everyman dates this weekend, Kuti finds his music with a foot in each of two worlds, with his new album featuring collaborations and productions with US rockstar Lenny Kravitz, and former Fela producer Sodi Marcisewer. On the topic of the former, Kuti is more than willing to wax radical.

“There are moments, y’know, that the ancestors want to use as a way to validate their presence in your chosen path, to walk the righteous path. When you walk this straight and narrow, which for me, is the real expression of freedom, especially in the world we live in today, to varying degrees. 

Y’know, being able to, as a human being, navigate the world, this world, this construct, as close to your own terms as possible, while understanding that your own terms must not impose themselves on others.

“Meeting Lenny was reaffirming the straight and narrow path for me. So how did this happen? I see he has an Instagram page, you know, because in my head, I’m a huge fan of Lenny Kravitz. In my head, he’s too big for Instagram. I go to follow him, then I see he follows back. He sees me, y’know? He knows who the f**k... he sees me?

“Regardless of what this industry makes me feel, yeah, the right people see me, in the world that is trying to make you feel unseen. If there was not such a concerted effort in making conscious artists feel unseen, this wouldn’t be such an affirmation, or a validation of anything. It should be just ‘okay, this great artist knows me’, but there’s that extra... because there’s a concerted effort by the mainstream to make artists like us feel irrelevant, like our message is not needed by young people or by the world, or just screaming into the wind.

“So when I met Lenny, you know, we decided to speak [properly, when we had time], and I DM’d him on Instagram, he replied, and then we had a chat, he sent me his number, and then I called him. For, like, two-and-a-half hours, y’know, he’s just talking to me about music, and life, and, you know, I mean, there was a bond there. I told him it would be great if he could listen to some of the things I was doing, and so I sent him the skeleton of the ideas for these songs. He was like, ‘if you want me to executive produce this, I’ll be happy to’.

“I’ve never had, y’know, someone with Lenny’s musicianship and superstardom. I’ve always had the superstar and the musician, but not at that level of learning. So to see that level of how he curated the entire recording, to see how he decided everything technical, from how we might take the drums, the guitars we used, the keyboards we used, the picks that the guitarist played with, studios, y’know, and everything. It was interesting.”

Away from the band, Kuti’s revolutionary politics continue to inform his stewardship of the radical Movement of the People party in his native Nigeria, originally founded by his father in the 1970s, and reactivated in 2020 as a coalition of socialist and progressive organisations, calling for better governance in its home country, and a critique of existing, Westernised mindsets on a pan-African basis.

Times have changed, systems have evolved, but the struggles remain the same. 

"Y’know, MOP is both one part, one wing, one branch of a global awakening of that working-class world, who are coming together in their different spaces, in their different organisations, in the different countries, to begin a new conversation for a new humanity.

“What is happening now in the world, is that people know what’s wrong, the majority of us do, as working people, the professionals of this world... The consciousness among the professionals is evolving, and it’s growing, and I believe it’s going to reach a point soon where the majority of us will stop aligning with the oppressor.

“Many of the global professionals, musicians, artists, professors, journalists and all of that, they have an allegiance, y’know, because they are the pets. We are all animals to these people, trust me, they think we are animals, but they have pets among us who they treat better, y’know, and maybe they are lost and they don’t want to switch allegiance, but the rest of us who bear the brunt of this system, who pay the cost, are not only organising about political power, we are also organising to be humans that can wield this political power, you know, for the needs of everyone.”

With that being said, and with a mind for the old socialist call for ‘bread for all, but roses too’, Kuti’s message of love and revolution is carried on as buoyant and complex a combination of Afrocentric jazz and modern influences as ever, and he’s looking forward to reuniting with an audience with whom he spoke freely of common postcolonial traumas.

“It’s always a good time. A good show with a revolutionary artist, y’know, just goes to show that the revolution is not just doom and gloom. There are good times within the revolution, and this is one of those moments where colonised peoples can just come together, and stick their middle fingers up, together, as loudly as we can, in joyous chorus against our oppressors.

There’s nothing more joyful, there’s nothing more spiritual, there’s nothing more powerful. I look forward to coming to Cork and chilling with the Irish.

Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 play The Everyman on Saturday, October 26, and Sunday, October 27. Doors at 9.45pm both nights, tickets from everymancork.com or the venue’s box-office.