KUKU: Building Bridges from Ballads and Blasphemy - Canceled

The playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote that all great truths begin as blasphemies. Those are words that Kuku has taken to heart. For his sixth release the American-born Nigerian has found the sound of his own truth and stepped on to the bridge connecting his Yoruba heritage and his Western life with Ballads & Blasphemy (released on Buda Musique, September 4, 2015).

“It’s my revelation of free thinking,’ Kuku explains. “When I was thirty I turned away from religion. I understood it was the cause of more wars than anything else in history. I needed to work things through by myself.”

The result is a disc that doesn’t offer all the answers, but asks questions and holds out a hand in friendship, love and welcome, with Kuku’s velvet voice full of tender soul throughout, whether in the sadness of “Evil Doers” or the sweet hope of “If There Is A Heaven,” while “Open Your Eyes While You Pray” offers a quiet, heartfelt rejection of dogma of all kinds. Blasphemy? No, it’s honesty.

The influence of the Western music that bubbled through Kuku’s youth is here - Elton John, Kool and the Gang, and more – but this time it’s seen through an African prism that colors every song, melodically and lyrically, even more with legendary drummer Tony Allen appearing on the lithe “Wáya” and “Owó,” a song about the evils money lust can bring.

“I met Tony at a wedding and became friends,” says Kuku. “He’s like a father figure to me. I was reluctant to approach him for the album, but he was so happy to be involved that he not only played drums, he even did some of the arrangements.”

Kuku himself is a man of Africa and the West. Both cultures have nourished him. Born in the U.S., he grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, before returning to America for college and a stint in the U.S. Army. Although music had always been part of his life, he only began singing and writing songs after his discharge. Within three years he was playing the Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. By 2011, with three albums already under his belt, Kuku moved to Paris, France.

“I’d seen that plenty of my record sales came from Europe, and decided that it was time to really become serious about doing this,” Kuku remembers. “So I left my graphic design job and decided to rely completely on music.”

It’s a bold decision, but it’s paid off handsomely. He’s appeared on the Red Hot + Fela album, lent his voice to two cuts on Tony Allen’s Film of Life CD, and sung the classic football anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in a commercial for the 2013 Africa Cup.

It’s with Ballads & Blasphemy that Kuku’s created his masterpiece, however, daring to dig into himself and finding the kernels of truth that lie deep in the heart. He even touches the past when he added one song in French, “La Dernière Fois,” his version of the traditional gospel song “This May Be The Last Time.”

“The album was already finished and mastered,” Kuku recalls, “when I heard the song at the end of an episode of True Blood. I asked my wife what the title would be in French, then sat down and recorded this. The only thing added in the studio is some percussion. I think it adds something to the record.”

And it certainly does that, building one more bridge from Africa to America and on to his new home. With Ballads & Blasphemy, Kuku finds the thread of humanity that binds us all.