Sometimes you just have to enjoy something for what it is. That is how I felt after the Femi Kuti show last night. There are a million different things that I wanted to write about in this entry, from his political affiliations to the history of his relationship with his famous father, from the way that he is percieved in Nigeria to the way he is percieved here in the U.S. but I am skipping over all that to just describe what was, at its most basic, an incredibly energetic, entertaining show.

Dressed in a tribal shirt and pants outfit matched with a pair of Teva sandals, Kuti displayed skill on each of the instruments he played, the sax, the keyboard and on vocals. Additionally he spent much of the time on stage spasmodically conducting for the brass band backing him up. Said brass band, all male and dressed in button down t-shirts which they must have all tye-dyed together, as they were all the same colors in varying patterns, played strongly through out the entire night. The female half of his troupe (and it truly was a troupe, with about 15 people on stage at any given moment) were far less dressed, wearing cropped tops with shredded skirts, as was appropriate to show off their amazing dancing (okay, really I mean bodies)

The back up dancers kept the energy up in this show like none I have ever seen before. Calling them back up dancers seems slightly unfair, as they shared the front of the stage with Kuti the entire time, and while the beautiful music came from Kuti, the beautiful booty shaking which kept my attention came from these lovely women. While I tried to figure out how I could move like that for 20 seconds (I swear to god, there has to have been motors hidden under those skirts), they managed to keep up these movements for two hours.

Kuti’s set was filled with his songs, as well as with breaks in the music for him to talk to the audience. The audience was well involved and rarely stopped dancing, though it did seem to get a little impatient with the talking, despite their clear support of his political messages.

Whether you know the background regarding Femi’s father and his creation of a musical genre, or if you wandered in off the street (I heard some kids offering to buy a bum outside the Showbox a ticket) this show was just simply the kind of beats that keep a body moving.