Zombie Review

Twelve and a half minutes, and the joke is laid out with parade ground precision. Fela barks drill commands at the band, attention, quick march, fall in, and the horns answer them mechanically, and then the chorus explains that a zombie will not think, will not turn, will not stop, unless somebody tells it to. Under all of it Tony Allen plays the pattern that makes Afrobeat work: a hi hat that never sits still, a snare that arrives slightly late and never apologises. The groove is the point. It does not develop so much as refuse to end, which is how satire this direct stays danceable for the length of a side.

The cost is the thing everyone knows. Around a thousand soldiers raided the Kalakuta Republic compound, burned the studio and the master tapes, beat Fela badly, and threw his mother Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti from a window; she died of her injuries. He delivered her coffin to the army barracks and wrote Coffin for Head of State about doing it.

The grade is not a memorial. Mister Follow Follow on the other side is a good groove with a thinner joke, the Lagos pressing is rough even for 1976, and the horn ensemble is loose in a way that does not always read as intent. Christgau gave it an A minus, DownBeat four and a half stars, and it became the first Nigerian album in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Earned, with the flaws showing.