Friday, July 6 – Fela Kuti T-shirt Release Party
8 p.m.
Death by Pop
1844 Winter Park Road
thelazyafternoon.com
free admission, $23 for T-shirt
For those not familiar with Afrobeat, the name Fela Kuti probably doesn’t mean much. Known as the creator of the Afrobeat genre, Kuti was a Nigerian composer and rousing human rights activist in the 1970s. Similarly, local party-rockers Lazy Afternoon, a group of Orlando DJs (headed up by Jonathan Santino and Daniel Venegas), seek to “unify a community of music and art aficionados to fight ‘the good fight’ against pop culture.” They’ve teamed up with graphic designer Brandon Williams (aka BrandNu) to produce a commemorative T-shirt in Kuti’s honor. The Lazy Afternoon team – DJs Y-Not, LT Smash, Kittybat, Danny_Gram, Spreadsheets – spin Afrobeat rhythms, while $1 from each T-shirt sale ($23) will be donated to the Hope and Help Center, an AIDS outreach group in Orlando. (Kuti lost his battle with AIDS in 1997.) What better way to memorialize a legend than by screen-printing his mug on a T-shirt? Just show a little respect, will ya, and wash the thing once the pit stains set in? – Aimee Vitek
