Learning to Play Afrobeat First Hand

Getting the chance to learn to play afrobeat first hand in Lagos. Had two successive days of learning side-by-side with excellent players. 

First, finally got Showboy to come by and teach me some of Fela Kuti's music. Showboy is a legend from the years he spent anchoring Fela's horn section on baritone sax, and he is an encyclopedic repository of original afrobeat which he learned directly from its inventor and master. The music is all up in his head rather than written down on charts, scores and fake sheets. You can't buy a book of Fela sheet music anywhere to my knowledge. Showboy is currently music director of Egypt 80 which backs Fela's youngest son Seun Kuti. 

Showboy was injured badly in a hit and run accident in Lagos about three years ago and can't hold a sax because of damage to his left hand. He sure can sing, though, and he taught me Dog Eat Dog and Trouble Sleeps by scatting the themes and horn backing parts while I picked out the notes on my tenor. After about 90 minutes I had both down well enough to take a break before my brain exploded. I wasn't that familiar with Trouble Sleeps so we listened to it on iTunes a few times to catch the theme. Showboy taught it to me in Eb but the recording seems to be in Db so I had to transpose to match the record. It is all in the timing and phrasing and it is a challenge to play without a rhythm section - Showboy helped me by counting out the beats and conducting my entrances. 

Then last night, Femi Kuti's tenor player Dotsax came by and we jammed freely for an intense nonstop hour. He just got his horn out and started playing and of course I didn't have my Zoom on and missed recording our jam, given the choice between playing along or messing around with the recording equipment. He's a quiet guy and didn't say a word so I had to chase him entirely by ear, which worked out pretty well in the end. Spoke through our horns. Before he left he wrote down some patterns for me to practice, but of course he wrote them in DO-RE-MI format which I now have to convert to C-D-E or 1-2-3 before I can play them since I never learned the European notation system. Something clicked and patterns suddenly made sense as Dotsax has a Coltrane kind of sound. Our styles contrast as I tend to play more melodies and backing riffs than he does but he plays a whole lot more notes than I do. And plays them very well, I might add.