Album: Red Hot + Riot

MCA

With more than 70 per cent of the world's 40 million HIV or Aids sufferers living in sub-Saharan Africa, it's fitting that this latest benefit album from the Red Hot organisation should take as its theme the music of the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who himself died from the disease in 1997. Punctuated by fragmentary interludes of Fela in full flow at his Kalakuta base, the tracks comprise new versions of righteous diatribes such as "Sorrow Tears and Blood", "Colonial Mentality" and "Shuffering & Shmiling", as realised by international singers, rappers and musicians. Macy Gray, D'Angelo and Fela's son Femi, for example, collaborate on "Water No Get Enemy", while "No Agreement" features Baaba Maal, Ray Lema and Archie Shepp, the latter an influence on Fela's own tenor sax style. Sade Adu and her band bring some nice dubby touches to "By Your Side", though the most successful tracks are those that find fruitful connections between continents and cultures, such as "Tears and Sorrow" featuring MeShell Ndegeocello, Philly rapper Common and guitarist Djelimady Tounkara of Mali's Super Rail Band, and a 10-minute "Trouble Sleep", on which Baaba Maal, Taj Mahal, the kora player Kaouding Cissoko and Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas combine in atmospheric desert blues. The fiery political content of Fela's work is respected throughout, never less than in Talib Kweli, Bilal and Dead Prez's additions to "Shuffering & Shmiling": "What is it worth to have the biggest religion/ When the people got miserable living conditions/ No water, no lights, no rice/ All over Africa we fight, but we got to unite".