Afrobeat is not for the faint of spirit. Pioneered by the mercurial Nigerian Fela Kuti in the '70s, the genre is a Yoruba spin on James Brown-style funk. It's loaded with horn breakdowns, improv jazz solos, call-and-response vocals, and rhythmic figures woven as tightly as clay-dipped braids. The typical Afrobeat song is 15 minutes long and gives your brain the sweats. For a white American, it takes a pair of gourds to start an Afrobeat band — and about 16 or 17 musician friends with soul for spinal fluid. Josh Mobley has both. Beginning just over a year ago in his living room, the erstwhile Afterparty keyboardist and a few of his friends (many from the Dirty Force Brass Knuckle Street Band) set about tackling the music of Kuti. What began as an experimental jam session turned into a zombie-funk militia unit as the group's numbers doubled. And soon, local dance floors were under attack. With the addition of original tunes to the repertoire and charismatic hip-hop MC Les Izmore signing on as frontman, the Hearts are beating strong — and repping KC hard — as one of the only Afrobeat bands in the country.
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