He
was a mother’s boy married to twenty-seven wives simultaneously. In many ways,
Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a maddeningly difficult figure to fully take stock of,
but he sure could play. Wisely, Alex
Gibney focuses more on Kuti’s music than his politics in the infectiously funky
documentary Finding Fela, which
premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Kuti
was the leading innovator of Afrobeat, the blistering rhythmic fusion of
highlife, jazz, and funk music—and he remains far and away the most influential
exemplar of the style. In his day, Kuti
was probably the only musician more esteemed than James Brown across the
African Diaspora. Decades later, his music remained popular enough to spawn a
Tony Award-winning Broadway show. That is
where Gibney came in. On-hand to document the show’s creative development,
Gibney also incorporates a treasure trove of Kuti performance footage to tell
the multi-instrumentalist’s story.
Musically,
Finding is a rich feast, with members of the real
deal Afrobeat band Antibalas performing the music for the Broadway show and
living up to the example laid down by their inspiration quite nicely. However, Gibney the documentarian is reasonably
forthright addressing some of the darker aspects of Kuti the historical figure.
While his musical criticism of Nigeria’s military regime is celebrated at
length, Kuti’s less than progressive attitudes towards women and sex are also acknowledged.
To
his credit, Gibney also addresses the AIDS issue head-on. Tragically, the voracious Kuti denied the
existence of the disease and refused to practice safe sex, even when he began
to exhibit obvious symptoms. Admirably, the Kuti family was also rather
courageously forthcoming after their patriarch’s death. In contrast, Bill T.
Jones, the co-creator and choreographer of the Broadway show admits they
basically punted on those problematic final days.
Gibney
is a wildly inconsistent filmmaker, who can spin out unsubstantiated conspiracy
theories in a film like Client 9, but
then craft an insightful sports doc like Catching Hell. In Finding, Gibney obviously decided, when in doubt cut to some music,
which is a winning strategy. Whether it is recorded in Kuti’s storied club, the
Shrine, or in a Broadway theater, the collected performances are enormously
entertaining. There is good stuff during
the closing credits as well, so do not be like those squares who walked out of
the Sundance premiere during Femi Kuti’s monster solo, recorded during a tribute
to his father.
