Album Notes

The SF Music Award-winning ALBINO! is a 10-piece Afrobeat ensemble that honors the fiery legacy of Nigerian musical revolutionary Fela Kuti. ALBINO's high-energy grooves and explosive stage show thick with hypnotic percussion, a heavy horn section, African dance, outrageous costumes, and infectious group choreography have firmly established the band as the West Coast's premier Afrobeat act.

Live in San Francisco was recorded in July of 2006 during ALBINO’s performance at the Second Annual Afrofunk Festival. “We were amazed by how well the ecstatic energy of ALBINO’s live set was captured in this recording so we knew we had to release it as soon as we heard it,” says the band’s co-founder and tenor saxophonist Nathan Endsley.

According to the SF Weekly, "ALBINO's ass-inspiriting percussive engine comes from a rhythm section of local all-stars; together, they form rhythms based in the West African tradition which holds at its heart the inseparable union of drumming and dance. Atop the band's rhythmic maelstrom ride tightly figured five-part horn lines. The section's 'heavy heavy' bottom end features a snarling dual baritone-sax yawp. This is world music that lives up to the name."

In keeping with the revolutionary message central to Fela’s Afrobeat legacy, the majority of songs on Live in San Francisco offer scathing sociopolitical commentary and urgent calls to civic action. For example, “Deconstruction of the Transitional Movement” confronts the erosion of American civil liberties in the name of national security. “Are We Safe Yet?” questions our current administration’s misdirected military aggression in Iraq and its perpetuation of a culture of fear in the name of counter-terrorism. Furthermore, “No Go Sell Me” is a tirade against consumer culture and the advertising industry’s pollution of the media. Finally, “Puppet Boy” skewers a certain incompetent, fraudulently elected Chief Executive by pulling back the curtain to expose the ominous forces Roving behind this figurehead.