All I want is to breathe, Won't you breathe with me

Got the sex part of the evening out of the way before midnight (sexclub - nothing to write home about), giving me the opportunity to focus on music, smoking a bit of dope, more music, and of course junkfood (and more music).

I must've been looking through GoogleNews, and some article in the NYT grabbed my attention, which then pointed me to a Times article (How Fela Landed Me in Jail), but more importantly, that page points to special on Fela - FINDING FELA - Reflections On Africa's Music Legend (you have to scroll down the "Jail" page to find link) which is quite fantastic. And of course it pointed me to the New Museum's site, and it's current exhibit - Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (the place is so friggin' close to me, I really ought to go this week); and this is what got me going for hours - their Fela Project Music Program page.

"This selection of music represents a timeline from the 1950s to the present, a context for the cultural and political environment in which Fela's Afrobeat was created and developed. It contains the synergistic music of the eras during which Fela composed and the musical realms in which his legacy has been disseminated. Starting with West African highlife music as his base, Fela synthesized the funky soul of James Brown and the compositional complexity of American and Afro-Cuban jazz with Yoruba percussion and call-and-response singing to form a new genre he called Afrobeat. Today his music and aura have been carried into new directions within contemporary Afrobeat, rock, hip-hop, soul, afro-house, and electronic dance music."

I will no doubt be spending weeks trying to assemble the music listed on this page. Some of it I've heard, only a few tunes/albums do I possess (but then I went to HALF.com and nabbed a few bargains late late last night), and just a couple I've had the pleasure of seeing live - (Talking Heads of course, but also Hugh Masekela and Gil Scott-Heron).

And I still have an exta copy of RED HOT + RIOT, which I was hoping to figure out some sort of clever give-away, but haven't been feeling very clever lately (let me put that on the "to do" list - not getting clever, but the give-away). And e-gads! it's nearly 3pm and I haven't left this apartment yet today - time for some errands, and a shower sometime before my 6pm worshift.