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Nigerian police, seeking to put down this independent-minded rascal, tried to plant a joint on Kuti during a gathering at his home.

He escaped charges with some wily plotting, and then produced this song mocking the police for wasting resources on hassling him instead of furthering justice in Nigeria.

Opening brass rounds give way to interplay between Fela39;s narration about the episode and responses from his group of female singers.;Track List:1.

Expensive Shit;2.

Opening brass rounds give way to interplay between Felas narration about the episode and responses from his group of female singers.;Track List:1.

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Or I would be doing jazz, so maybe Id start with Ornette Coleman and go into Charlie Parker and then Lee Morgan, following along that kind of line.

Close Alert Close Meet the Man Who Used Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, and Other Fascinating Music to Try to Lure Aliens to Earth News Reviews Best New Music Features The Pitch Video Podcast Staff Picks More Chevron Search Search News Reviews Best New Music Features The Pitch Video Podcast Staff Picks The Pitch Meet the Man Who Used Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, and Other Fascinating Music to Try to Lure Aliens to Earth For nearly 30 years, John Shepherd broadcast freewheeling records from all over the world, to what he hoped would be an interstellar audience.

By Allison Husse y August 25, 2020 Facebook Twitter John Shepherd in the late 1970s, transmitting from his grandparents house in Michigan.

Provided photo. Facebook Twitter When NASA launched the Voyager spacecrafts to explore the cosmos in 1977, they sent along the Golden Record and with it, music from around the worldas a snapshot of humanity, should intelligent lifeforms ever find it.

But what if the aliens tuned in to the radio instead From 1971 to 1998, a man named John Shepherd probed that hypothetical question with astonishing dedication.

Aiming for interstellar contact, he beamed everything from reggae to Steve Reich straight from his grandparents living room in rural Michigan, broadcasting between six to eight hours every day.

He then expanded his operationcalled Project STRATinto a separate building on his grandparents property, complete with scientific equipment of his own design.

Though Shepherd eventually ended the radio arm of Project STRAT due to the high cost of maintenance, he is now the subject of a touching new short film, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, which recently arrived on Netflix.

Shepherd saw music as a way to invite extraterrestrials to connectto pique their curiosity and draw them close enough to Earth that he could study them.

Much of the music he selected was boundary-pushing and globally minded.

Albums like jazz-piano legend Keith Jarrett s Mysteries, Give Me Power by the roots reggae group the Itals, the krautrock classic Future Days by Can, and a late-70s Fela Kuti compilation make cameos in the documentary when Shepherd shows off his extensive record collection.

These shows varied in theme and tone, but they often delved deep into styles like early electronic music, exploratory jazz, and the ringing percussive music of Indonesian gamelan ensembles.

You dont need to translate if something can be felt through the soul, through the mind, Shepherd tells me over the phone from his home near Kewadin, Michigan.

Theres always that twilight zone in between reality and music that allows you a certain imaginary landscapeyou can go there and figure things out, or just sort of relax and cruise with flow.

Though he never made contact with extraterrestrials, he still managed to transmit traces of the unknown through the strange, beautiful music he broadcast.

Pitchfork: Did you start the project from the perspective of a music fan, or did the music aspect of it come later John Shepherd: I started putting together the equipment to do research into the phenomenon of extraterrestrial life.

But then I realized that I should send something out to draw their attention and get them closer to the lab, where we had instruments to measure energy missions and stuff like that.

The music influence came from a close friend, Mike Johnston, who had a huge collection of 4,000 or more vinyl LPs.

It was everything from early progressive British rock to more spacey music like Harmonia, Cluster, Neu, and a lot of acoustic music groups.

Music from Bali, music from India, and music from around the entire world.

Thanks to him, I got to hear stuff that most people never heard on the radio, at least in this country.

How did you go about building your DJ sets Everything was done on the fly.

Whatever happened to be that evenings broadcasts, I would select music in that area and then with the flow.

I would start out, say, with Kraftwerk and maybe move on to Tangerine Dream and then Harmoniaa lot of progressive, creative groups.

Fela Kuti Sheet Music