Yinka of Sabatta, a son of Nigeria gets a warm welcome at the Shrine.

For those of you not in the know The Shrine or Afrika Shrine was the name of the club Fela Kuti help create as a place to perform and share his music with the people of Nigeria. The shrine was a hot box of Fela's political aspirations and musical expressions.

- Fela Kuti's Shrine in Niigeria. 

During a raid on the Shrine in in 1977 after 7 years of shows and celebration the Shrine was burned down by the Nigerian government. Fast forward to today, 2011, there is currently a new Shrine in Nigera heralded by one of Fela's children, Femi, also the is the Shire in Harlem which is a homage to the original. This bring's us full circle to the title of this piece and Yinka Oyewole the man behind British rock outfit Sabatta. He's been on tour for a bit and decided to stop off on our side of the pond. Lucky for me I caught up with Yinka as he and locals Howard Alper and Brian Saltz, who backed him up, performed a few tracks off of the latest Sabatta self titled album,  

I have the album at hand and it's a beast of pure hard rock, a raucous good time. Check out some live footage of Yinka at the Shirne.

 

It was a great show and speaking with Yinka after the show he reviled to me that it was honor appearing at our Shrine, it turns out as a child he actually got to see Fela perform at The Shrine in Nigeria, talk about coming full circle. Maybe Yinka can be the voice of our generation, to find out if he is check out Sabatta's website, http://www.sabatta.net/.