New - Kuti, Fela - Alagbon Close - LP

Alagbon Close was named after the headquarters of the Nigerian Criminal Investigation Department in Lagos. It was where Fela was detained after the 2nd raid on his home failed to find anything incriminating. The title track calls out the Nigerian police’s violence, arrogance and apparent immunity from prosecution. Alagbon Close was also the first of Fela’s albums to have a sleeve designed by Ghariokwu Lemi, whose artwork became an integral part of Afrobeat's message. To mark its 50th anniversary, the album is presented on colored vinyl in a single pocket, wide-spine jacket with gold foil OBI strip.

Alagbon Close, originally released on the independent Jofabro label in 1974, marks the first full flowering of Afrobeat, as a music and as a principled political philosophy. Instrumentally, the album brings together the several signature elements of Fela's Afrobeat, which had not previously been molded into such a unified, finely-balanced form on record.

Almost two decades after his death, vindication has come to Fela Kuti, Africa's musical genius. AfroBeat, his gift to the world, is now an international staple on his own uncompromising terms, social content intact. Throughout his life, Fela contended that AfroBeat was a modern form of danceable, African classical music with an urgent message for the planet's denizens. Created out of a cross-breeding of Funk, Jazz, Salsa and Calypso with Juju, Highlife and African percussive patterns, it was to him a political weapon.