Giovanni Cigui

Etuk Ubong: Africa Today

by Chris May
June 5, 2020

Lagos-based Etuk Ubong is part of a long line of fiery, Afrobeat-rooted, hard bop-influenced trumpeters which stretches back to Tunde Williams, who was in the 1960s a founder member of Fela Kuti's seminal band, Africa 70. Kuti's legacy figures large in Ubong's music, which he styles “earth music" and which is characterised by urgent tempos, powerful horn charts and highly charged socio-political lyrics. Ubong made his own-name debut in 2017, when he released Tales Of Life (Jazzagression). ...