Customer Reviews

Poor Man No Get Brother: Assembly & Revolution 1969-1975

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Early '70s Nigerian funk, with a heavy, heavy debt to James Brown's Bootsy-era jams. This disc collects music from two incarnations of Bucknor's band, the first being the Assembly, and the second, the more politically inclined Revolution. Like Fela Kuti, Bucknor saw music as a way to attract people to politics (and politics as a way to attract people to music), and many songs have an interesting socially conscious component. Overall, this sounds pretty static, with one song after another "staying on the one," in the James Brown style, but it's still a pretty cool document of a little-known chapter in African pop history.

If you're a serious collector of Afrobeat this needs to be in your collection. I was a bit uncertain about it the first time I put it on my stereo, but the grooves are hypnotic and there is some seriously funky stuff going on. I actually bought it on the recommendation of a reviewer from amazon.uk and was very pleased I did. It's an Afrostrut recording, and as Afrostrut has now gone out of business there will be a time when it's impossible to get it any more. I love all the tracks apart from about one, and there's some things on here that really make you think while you're shaking your thing!

subtler than fela, more james brown to fela's sly stone. very pleasing, very sophisticated.