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Article Originally Appeared Here: “Recoil Magazine”

Sometimes the hardest part of holding together a band as large as Chicago Afrobeat Project is finding people to play with. The Chicago-based seven- to 14-piece ensemble isn’t near making Phish money, and each member’s paycheck from gigs gets smaller with each additional member.

It’s a problem guitarist David Glines worries about, but only from a musician’s standpoint. When the Afrobeat veterans are able to add more members for a show – he guessed that between seven and 10 would make the trip for the Dec. 13 show at Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo – the strength of the performance grows inversely with the size of their paychecks.

“Sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to find people that are interested in Afrobeat and understand world music but are also capable of traveling,” he told Recoil.

“It’s kind of hard; if you know anybody, we’re looking for brass players.”

Wikipedia defines Afrobeat as “a combination of Yoruba music, jazz, highlife, and funk rhythms fused with African percussion and vocal styles, popularized in Africa in the 1970s.”

Modern day Afrobeat musicians use one word: “Fela.”

“The first time I heard Fela I was kind of mesmerized by the sound,” Glines said. “It was kind of what I was looking for in a lot of music, and you know, I had come from a blues/rock background… and it was everything I liked about that music plus a little bit more.”

“Fela” is Fela Kuti, the genre’s best-known artist and (most would agree) father. The Nigerian bandleader weaved American styles of jazz and James Brown-influenced funk with his native music, and then added politically charged lyrics aimed directly at the country’s dictator. The music was popularized in the 1970s, but still thrives in many ways today, with American and European artists taking to the genre. Glines said he first heard Fela about 10 years ago.

“It was pretty captivating; it was just the funkiest music I’ve ever heard, and it’s kind of hard not to dance to it,” he said. “You’d have to be a corpse not to dance to it.”

The core of Chicago Afrobeat Project are well versed in Fela, and many of the horn players and previous CABP musicians have played with Fela’s band or his son’s band. But for guys like Glines who hail from the Midwest, it takes a little bit more effort to make Afrobeat work.

“As much as it definitely takes double duty to learn another style and a genre, and you have to be interested in it and have a feeling for the music, there are also roots in America,” he said, pointing to the influence American styles had on Fela. “Music is not standing still, and it’s always going to be influencing different cultures. And I think that’s really the coolest part about music is to watch it hop from culture to culture.”

Glines recently lunched with Tony Allen (Fela’s drummer of many years) and Ghariokwu Lemi, the man who designed 26 original Fela album covers and also the cover of (A) Move To Silent Unrest, CABP’s latest release. Allen explained how easy it was for Fela to find musicians because Nigeria was such a poor country.

“Cheap labor in Nigeria was all over the place – you could pay someone a couple of dollars… for an entire night. Where in the United States, the labor just doesn’t work like that,” Glines said, remembering the conversation. Fela was able to pay his band “well,” but it was only a small percentage of what a musician expects to be paid today.

Lyrically, CABP doesn’t follow the politically controversial stylings the genre was known for either. Only one song on (A) Move to Silent Unrest has lyrics. Glines said they can’t force it, because people know phony when they hear it.

“I think that everyone in our group leans to the left, and that everyone in varying degrees is socially active and wants to push things forward. I don’t think that I necessarily would be true to myself to come out there on an album and make a bunch of political statements like ‘Impeach Bush’ and things that I don’t think would necessarily convey what I personally believe. I don’t like Bush at all, and I clearly didn’t vote for this guy, and he’s a buffoon, but it’s just with our music…,” Glines said before stopping to collect his thoughts.

“Our version of Afrobeat is not necessarily the shock value of some of what Fela’s Afrobeat was. And I think… growing up in the seventies and some of the guys in the eighties, we didn’t grow up under a political dictator – a corrupt dictator at that – who is jailing our parents and throwing our mothers out of three-story buildings.” This is what happened to Fela’s own mother after he had clashed with the dictator for some time.

“There really is only one Fela, and we’re not interested in imitating Fela at all.”

For more information on the Dec. 13 show at Bell’s Brewery visit chicagoafrobeatproject.com. For more information on Fela visit

This article originally appeared in The Daily Iowan.

Camp Euphoria favorites Chicago Afrobeat Project will make another local appearance on Saturday at the Yacht Club, 13 S. Linn St. Intertwining American rock influences with Nigerian drum styles, the band looks to spread messages of diversity and unison through its ensemble. Sometimes featuring as many as 15 members, or as few as seven, only the core members will make it to Iowa City this time around.

“It’s tough to organize a huge band,” drummer Marshall Greenhouse said. “We don’t have 100 percent commitment from every member, which is a good thing. It gives our band huge variety.”

Featuring mostly white musicians, the band members say they’ve received criticism for playing traditionally African music. Despite these critiques, the band donated portions of the money made from its most recent CD, *(A) Move to Silent Unrest*, to Journalists Against AIDS Nigeria.

“Our music song ‘Media Man’ talks about the media’s criticism of us,” Greenhouse said. “But this isn’t music for a specific race, it’s just music that’s good to dance to.”

The full band features bass, keyboards, tenor sax, guitar, drum set, baritone sax, trombone, two secondary percussionists, djembe, talking drum, and two dancers. Their performance extends far beyond recordings and into the visual realm. The heavy Nigerian influences, combined with a jazzy feel, gives the band the vibe of an ethnically charged Coltrane, Roots, Big Band swirl (with a hint of the Doobie Brothers).

This slew of people is no oddity in Afro-beat groups, which even Iowa City has produced. On the local scale, Greenhouse said, he’d seen a lot of Chicago Afrobeat Project’s ideals and styles in the band Euphorequestra, and the two could possibly initiate a joint tour.

The article was originally published in the Quad City Times.

If the middle name of the Chicago Afrobeat Project sounds unfamiliar to its potential audiences, don’t worry.

It was that way to some of its players at one time as well.

“When the band first started, I had only heard five African songs in my life,” said Marshall Greenhouse, one of the band’s percussionists. “Now, I’ve heard hundreds.”

Afrobeat is credited to Fela Kuti, the leader of the Koola Lobitos, a popular Nigerian band in the style of “high life.” As a college student in Los Angeles in the 1960s, Kuti became influenced by the music of James Brown and the band Parliament, as well as the teachings of civil rights leader Malcolm X. He took the soul and jazz music he had become familiar with and combined it with the music of his homeland to create an Afrobeat sound.

Chicago Afrobeat Project will return to the Redstone Room inside River Music Experience, Davenport, for the fourth time on Friday night. The band also played in LeClaire Park last summer, during the RME-sponsored River Roots Live.

This time, it’s backing a new album that was released in early October, “(A) Move to Silent Unrest.” It’s the second album the band has released, after a debut two years ago.

“With the first one, I could hear more of a rock influence, because we hadn’t been playing Afrobeat as long,” he said.

The band has grown in several ways, Greenhouse said. While establishing more of a foothold in Afrobeat, it also has the freedom to branch out as needed.

“We’ve also tried to develop a sound to not even care if people think it sounds like rock or jazz or Afrobeat,” he said. “We want to do the music we feel like doing.”

The changes in the band have come gradually through the years, he said.

“There’s never been a moment when somebody said, ‘Let’s change and go in this direction,’” he said.

The band has as many as eight members that go on the road. Their ages range from mid-20s to early 50s, but the elder member of the group doesn’t perform outside Chicago, Greenhouse said.

Half of the band members have been with the group for at least four years, and the turnover gives the group some energy, Greenhouse said.

“New people come in and they have new ideas,” he said. “Our goal with the band is to keep it going for a really, really long time.”

Afrobeat can be an acquired taste, Greenhouse said.

“It depends on what you’re in for,” he said. “A lot of people like the music to go out for a night and dance — it’s good party music, but they aren’t necessarily going to go home and listen to the music.”

He doubts that it would ever find a mainstream audience, but wouldn’t discount it.

“I don’t think it can’t get popular, but if it was going to get popular it would have to be because a hip-hop artist came in and sampled Afrobeat songs,” he said. “But people said the same thing about reggae at one point.”