Afrobeat Fever (No. 4) - Special Issue

World Passport

• Episode: Afrobeat Fever (No. 4) - Special Issue
• Website: World Passport
• Feed URL: http://ethnomusic.podomatic.com/rss2.xml
• Duration: 01:06:56
• Published: 2007-03-12 04:42

FELA KUTI & BROKEN ENGLISH




As the first truly Pan-African musical movement, Afrobeat was often sung in the most widely understood language in Africa at the time, known as Broken or Pidgin English. The Language’s invention was necessitated by local African and colonial commercial interests of the 19th century and developed as a means for many ethnic groups to communicate amongst each other as well as with Europeans.



Like other forms of colloquial pidgins such as American Ebonics and Creole, Broken is a highly inflected language. Specific tenses, prepositions and entire words are often left out. While fewer, the words that are actually spoken belie the multiple and complex meanings that can be derived from the context and tone of a given phrase.



Here's a link to an English translation of Fela Kuti’s “ODOO”, a musical masterpiece and epic poem about the state of African politics. This is a subjective and approximate translation because Broken English only truly exists through speech. It is also important to remember that broken is a language which, through irony and sarcasm, forces you speak about the most serious of issues in the most un-serious of ways.





33. Fela - Overtake don Overtake Overtake

34. Bola Johnson - Lagos Sisi

35. Geydu Blay Abolley - This Hustling World

36. Ikenga Super Sats - Soffry Soffry Catch Monkey

37. Fela - Swegbe and Pako



You May also visit the "Comments" link to see a version of the translation.