E-Mail This Article to a Friend Afropop muses Femi Kuti, Papa Wemba, Emeline Michel, and Daby Touré come to Boston BY BANNING EYRE
	Related Links Emeline Michel's official Web site Daby Touré's official Web site Papa Wemba's official Web site Afropop.org

Balancing the loyalty of a home audience with the fickle demands of the international touring circuit is a major challenge for world-music stars. Nigeria’s Femi Kuti, who plays the Paradise July 14, has met that challenge; so have the African artists — Papa Wemba, Emeline Michel, and Daby Touré — who’ll perform as part of the French Library’s 30th annual Bastille Day celebration the following day.

Kuti is descended from royalty: before his death in 1997, Femi’s father, Fela, invented Afrobeat and held court at a Lagos nightclub called the Shrine. Femi’s new CD/DVD set Live at the Shrine (Palm) attests to his determination to revive the venue. The DVD documents an October 2000 gig by Femi, interspersing interviews, street scenes, and footage of public rehearsals. The CD compiles 12 unreleased songs from the concert.

Live at the Shrine has low-tech appeal, from the shadows and the sepia tones of the informally lit stage to Femi’s homeboy stage banter. (At one point he says, "Obviously, you are too drunk to listen to my announcement, so we will continue.") There’s an unvarnished urban African reality here, as if we’d dropped in on Femi’s frenetic home life, and it’s a welcome departure from his slick touring act. A certain artifice haunts Femi’s repackaging of his father’s chaotic world, from the female dancers’ painted faces to Femi’s bare-chested stage bravado and take-no-prisoners political rhetoric. But he’s made the Shrine and Afrobeat accessible to outsiders — something Fela never attempted.

Femi has also eschewed Fela’s grandiose song forms. He updates his father’s Africanization of American ’70s funk and groove jazz. But where Fela’s songs rarely clocked in at under 20 minutes, Femi packs a scathing rant and a taut, percolating jam from Positive Force into just four on "I Wanna Be Free." The band are tight, and the lyrics and hooks carry Femi’s less-than-stellar voice, but he rarely plumbs Fela’s emotional depths.

The Bastille Day headliner, Papa Wemba, was once seen as the master of catering to multiple audiences. Back in 1988, when Wemba made his US debut in Boston, he led two bands, one aimed at the Congolese public, one who experimented with everything from Otis Redding covers to techno bush grooves and pop ballads. It’s been seven years since the latter outfit released Molokai (Real World), but when I reach him in Paris, Wemba says he still has his international band. It’s now called Tendances, or Tendencies. What sort of tendencies? "Well," he replies enigmatically, "there are always tendencies, aren’t there?"

Wemba’s not bringing that band on tour; instead, his Congolese juggernaut Viva la Musica will join him. "I think it’s important to give people Congolese music, Congolese rumba. So I will defend the repertoire, but not only the repertoire of Papa Wemba. There will also be songs by some of the founders, like Tabu Ley and Franco."

Congo music has a rich history, from the Cuban-inspired, guitar-based "rumba" of the ’50s and ’60s to the hyper-kinetic, high-tech modulations and tempo shifts of the current ndombolo. Wemba’s 2003 Somo Trop (Next) is a sprawling, two-disc set that refers to all stages of that history. "Yesterday is not today. We can’t just live in the past and work the way we did 20 years ago. But in the end, it is the same music."

Wemba has a new album out in France, but it can’t match 2004’s Papa Wemba & Viva La Musica 1977-1997 (Stern’s), a two-disc set that showcases the breadth of one of the most affecting vocalists in all of African pop, with everything from the guitar-driven boogie of "Mère Supérieure" to the mellifluous rumba "Kitida." When I mention that he’ll be playing the night after Kuti, he answers, "We don’t sing many songs of a political character. Our music is much more about love."

Recently, though, he found himself in political hot water. After a highly publicized trial in France, he served four months in jail and paid a 10,000-Euro fine for helping undocumented immigrant musicians enter France. Although he’s grateful to his fans for their loyalty, Wemba refuses to discuss the ordeal.

It is, of course, ironic that artists from former French colonies are gathering to celebrate Bastille Day, and that’s not lost on Haitian singer Emeline Michel. "It’s an interesting ride," she muses over the telephone from New York. "I think there are still mixed feelings and bitter thoughts about what Haiti went through with the French in our history. But it is important also to just let go. This is a great occasion for me to discover other artists, so we must celebrate."

In 1998, Michel won a contest sponsored by American Airlines, and she quickly emerged as one of Haiti’s most charismatic performers. Her new Rasin Kreyol (Times Square) — her eighth — is one of her best. Her voice has the richness and the punch of Angélique Kidjo, and she ventures into rasin, Haiti’s rootsy percussion and vocal voodoo music, adding grit and spiritual weight to her pop repertoire. "It was tricky, because when you come from a Christian family and you use that music, it’s two different entities. The first time I ever saw a voodoo ceremony was when my father took me in the north of the country for a vacation. He said, ‘Come in and let’s see something that you have never seen before.’ So I’m listening to seven congas going with different kinds of exciting melodies, and these people are out of their minds dancing. My father was telling me, ‘You should never mingle with people like that, because they are possessed by evil spirits.’ But I got excited. I was about 14 years old, and I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to dance like that.’ "

Michel studied voodoo music clandestinely in Port au Prince, but only with Rasin Kreyol, a decade after her father’s death, did it become a real presence in her music. The album merges heartthrob ballads, melodious compas, gospel choral work, and, on the standout "Beni-Yo," South African–tinged reggae. "Lò’M Kanpe" laments the plight of Haitian refugees: "Scholars from my homeland are chopping meat at McDonald’s." "Zikap" strings together proverbs and idioms to deliver advice about AIDS.

The least-familiar name in the Bastille Day line-up, Daby Touré, hails from a new generation of the Touré family that yielded late-’80s Afropop trailblazers Touré Kunda. Daby Touré grew up in Mauritania but returned to Senegal as a teenager to play guitar and tour in a latter-day reconstruction of Touré Kunda. He landed in Paris in the late ’90s, playing acoustic singer-songwriter fare pioneered by African artists like Habib Koité, Wassis Diop, and Lokua Kanza.

Touré’s 2004 Real World album Diam is more personal and broader in its musical references than the Afropop of Touré Kunda. Acoustic-guitar picking, velvety vocals, and a spare lushness in the production all reflect the Euro-mainstreaming of African music — a major phenomenon of the past decade. When Touré sings about the late-19th-century hero Samory Touré, the music is closer to bossa nova than the gritty bombast of West African griot. It’s another apt Bastille Day irony that Samory Touré tormented the French for a decade before his capture.

Femi Kuti | Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | July 14 | 617.228.6000

Bastille Day Street Dance | Papa Wemba + Emeline Michel + Daby Touré | Marlborough St, between Berkeley and Clarendon, Boston | July 15 | 6–11 pm | French Library 617.912.0400 or World Music 617.876.4275.