Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 Announces International Spring/Summer Tour

Lagos, Nigeria – Legendary Afrobeat artist and Kuti family scion SEUN KUTI & EGYPT 80 has announced a US and European tour, manager Annie Ohayon of Knitting Factory Management announced today. Kuti and his Egypt 80 band kick off their tour in the UK June 1 and are currently booked through the new Format Festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA, September 23. They’re hitting stops at major festivals like Glastonbury and unique venues like the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix along the way—24 dates in all, with more European dates possible in October.

“I’m excited to return to touring after too long away,” Kuti says. “My band Egypt 80 and I look forward to retaking the world stage, and hope as always that our music will help make the world a more generous, kinder and more livable place, not only to fans but to its underrepresented people.”

On tour, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 will be performing songs from his catalogue and his most recent album Black Times. Kuti has also been rehearsing and recording several other new songs he expects to perform on tour. 

Seun’s taken time off the road, but has remained creatively active. He first performed “When We Move,” a collaboration with Common and Black Thought—co-founder and MC of The Tonight Show house band The Roots—last June to a worldwide audience alongside an all-star roster of musicians for UN World Oceans Day. In that song, Seun continues to ask the difficult questions: “Would they feel the pain like we do? Would they hear a cry like we do?”

The trio then debuted a live performance of “When We Move,” on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show last August, which featured Kuti’s performance and dance footage from The New Afrika Shrine in Lagos intercut with live performances by Common and Black Thought and The Roots on stage at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Current tour dates/venues are as follows:

Seun Kuti’s mission is as vast as the continent from which it sprang: “Inspire Africa to be what it is supposed to be.” With his weekly radio show, his mythical gigs at The New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, and a righteous social media presence, Seun is a towering figure in Nigeria and revered worldwide.  

The youngest son of visionary Fela Kuti, Seun has continued the family tradition of fusing music and politics into something transcendent. He started opening for his dad at age nine and joined the band before he was twelve. He assumed leadership of the band Egypt 80 following his father’s passing in 1997 and has led it ever since. Like his parents and grandparents, Seun is an activist on the frontlines – a revolutionary in every sense of the word. He has responded to our global moment of crisis in a burst of creativity.

Along the way, Seun both performed his father’s compositions and also added his own twists to the seminal Afrobeat canon, digging deep into various African traditions to reflect the continent’s struggles and cultures.  In 2011, Seun recorded From Africa with Fury: Rise, his first album for Knitting Factory Records. Co-produced by Brian Eno and John Reynolds, this live set proved to be his breakthrough, and landed on both Billboard and digital international charts. Today, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80—at full strength still retaining three-quarters of the group that played, protested, and were arrested with his father—are returning to touring the globe relentlessly, reclaiming their reputation for playing multi-hour shows as heavy on group improvisation as they are on composition. His latest recording, Black Times, received a Grammy® nomination in 2018; he joined Knitting Factory Management’s artist roster in March of 2021. Finally, the torch of justice has been passed to Seun, who’s been named Pro-Tem Chairman of Movement of the People, the political party launched by his father which Seun is resurrecting.

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