Antibalas

As the music of Afro-beat pioneer Fela Kuti slowly leaks into the popular vernacular, acts that follow in his footsteps have seen their statures rise in proportion. Of these, Brooklyn’s Antibalas is the best known and most daring. Even while hewing pretty much exactly to the Afrobeat style—long songs, trance-inducing repetition, jazz and funk spun through assorted strains of West African music—Antibalas treats the genre as a box to escape. The big outfit’s current gig, as the house band for the new Broadway musical Fela!, probably helps pay the bills. 

Updated 11/23/2009