Performance

Afrobeat to Afrobeats transformation

0 upcoming performances in New York

At Jazz at Lincoln Center, *Afrobeat to Afrobeats* frames a living lineage, tracing how Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat vocabulary has been revoiced by contemporary Afrobeats without treating either as a museum piece. Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. leads a big band setting with bassist Michael Olatuja among the featured players, using jazz orchestration to map rhythm, politics, and dance-floor pulse onto the same timeline. In New York City, where African diasporic music has long shaped the sound of uptown clubs and downtown stages, the program reads as cultural reporting in musical form. The critical idea is simple and persuasive: translation can be a form of continuity.