The band's name alone indicates who was an important source of inspiration when the band was founded ten years ago: Fela Kuti, the legendary musician, activist and inventor of Afrobeats.
Unlike the Nigerian, who packed his rebellious calls for justice into sharp song lyrics, the six Danes rely entirely on the international comprehensibility of rhythms and melodies.
At the same time, they see their witty and very entertaining music as political in a broader sense.
During the concert in the Brotfabrik, Gustav Rasmussen, one of the two founders of the band, said that the musicians not only performed in the halls provided for this purpose on a tour, but also went to people in the area in order to sometimes play directly in their homes.
It is true that one could not communicate with words, but music had become a kind of common language.
Anyone who pursues such an ideal would undoubtedly do well to keep abstractions in check so as not to overwhelm the potential audience.
The Kutimangoes throw themselves into many of their pieces with verve and esprit, skilfully weighing up pop and jazz stylistic devices, cunningly weaving characteristic African rhythms with a straight pulse.
The jazz roots are strong
The cast of the sextet seems a bit unusual in detail and often sounds like it.
While the combination of the agile drummer Casper Mikkelsen with the percussionist Magnus Jochumsen, who lets the congas rattle and other instruments clatter and ring, moves within the usual framework, the keyboarder Johannes Buhl Andresen replaces the bassist who is not present in the band with an analogue synthesizer.
Nevertheless, the trio sparks rousing grooves, and Andresen also gets space for funky solos on the Fender Rhodes piano, which reveal the jazzman in more expressive moments.
With the other three musicians, the suspicion of jazz roots is even more obvious.
It is true that Rasmussen grips the strings of an e-guitar in some pieces rather cautiously, eliciting swelling tones and sparkling runs.
Most of the time, however, he blows a slide or valve trombone, whose low registers reinforce the bass pressure.
In the solos, it is sometimes even clearer how Rasmussen, bursting with commitment, alienates his sound with electronic effects, via echo or a synthetic second voice.
Fan out and stir up
Michael Blicher and Aske Drasbaek vary the sound in a completely natural way by constantly changing instruments.
Their leitmotifs on two baritone saxophones, reminiscent of the incredible power of the fanfares of Jericho, are among the Kutimangoes' trademarks.
The sometimes massive, often long-toned phrases of the big horns are memorable, especially since many succinct themes are intentionally kept catchy.
While Drasbaek sometimes plays the tenor saxophone, co-founder Blicher also plays an alto saxophone.
For one piece, he switches to the flute and elicits rough, rhythmic jazz-rock phrases from it.
The saxophonists like to intonate parallel lines together.
In other passages they deliberately drift apart, fan out melodies on too slightly shifted,
The Kutimangoes are obviously not only inspired by Afrobeat.
A very urgent piece of the approximately one and a half hour long live program mixed with a rough blues rock riff on the electric guitar, metal castanets and typical rhythmic elements of Malian desert rock bands and the Gnawa traditions.
The sympathetic Danes play their encore in the middle of the audience and thus collect further charm points.