Some Revolutionaries March; Afrobeat Dances

For Shereikis, the path to Afrobeat was a surprise even to himself. A self-taught guitarist, he'd been exposed to African music as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic in the early 1990s. But he was working on a PhD in cultural anthropology from Tulane -- and contemplating a career in academia -- when bassist Robert Fox approached him in 2004 and suggested they start an Afrobeat band.

"I thought he was insane," says Shereikis. (In fact, the band takes its name from a Kuti song meaning "crazy person.") "But my one stipulation was that we mix it up with rumba, highlife, jazz and other kinds of music. We play a lot of Fela's music, but we're going in a new direction."

As the band has grown to include members such as Kenyan singer Anna Mwalagho, the superb trumpeter Justine Miller and reedman Mark Gilbert (who's played with everybody from the Temptations to Root Boy Slim), the influences have expanded even further. The band's first CD -- planned for release by the end of the year -- will be "a strange new crop of songs," says Shereikis.

Reinventing Afrobeat may be the key to its survival, its proponents say. The music is unlikely ever to enter the mainstream -- "there's too much stuff in Afrobeat for the market to dumb down," says Perna -- but if it's going to take root in American soil, it needs to adapt. The new players are hardly African firebrands. They tend to be American, white and mostly suburban. The music even seems to be turning into new, hybridized genre -- call it American Afrobeat -- with an agenda of its own.

"Most of the groups doing Afrobeat are either multicultural or predominantly white," says Perna, whose own background is Hispanic. "How they address the privileges they enjoy -- male privilege, class privilege, skin color privileges -- will give American Afrobeat its depth; looking within themselves, rather than just pointing. Anybody can point a finger at George Bush, or the Iraq war, or police brutality, and write a song about it. But the real depth comes from examining these other systems of privilege. And we try to do that in our music."

And as far as Shereikis is concerned, the Afrobeat revival makes perfect sense -- even if it is happening in America.

"There's a lot of anger and frustration in the United States right now. So we try to think big, to address the macro political issues," he says. "The groove is important -- it's what keeps people feeling good and dancing. But the point of setting that stage is to get your message across."