POP MUSIC REVIEW : KUTI IN HIS OWN GROOVE

If you walked in on Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Olympic Auditorium concert Saturday night, you probably wouldn’t guess that he’s a figure of great political and social controversy in his Nigerian homeland. And while you might get caught up in the singer-bandleader’s oddly engaging personality and the endless grooves of his band, you wouldn’t be likely to peg him as the Bob Marley of African music.

That’s one of many sobriquets applied to the 48-year-old Kuti, but unlike the late reggae leader, Kuti’s reputation rests more on his non-musical doings--most recently, his 20-month imprisonment by the Nigerian government.

The incarceration (on currency-smuggling charges) got him declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, but it was only the latest in a long series of run-ins with the authorities that have occurred since he became a provocateur of pan-Africanism. He ran for the presidency of Nigeria once, and plans to do so again in 1990.

On stage Saturday, Fela projected a contradictory profile: proudly heroic, slyly satirical and refreshingly unpredictable, but also somewhat flighty, imperious and petulant.

The music he drew from his huge group--guitars, percussion, female singers and dancers and lots of horns--consisted of trance-inducing grooves that cross traditional African rhythms with jazzy solos and big-band horn charts. Fela’s sound has been compared to James Brown, but at this show anyway, it favored an easy flow over the sharpness and snap of that kind of funk.

No song lasted less than 30 minutes, and while there were enough shifts in texture and dynamics to keep it lively and interesting, it didn’t have the anthemic, firebrand quality that let Marley’s music speak easily to the American audience.

But if the music was short of transfiguring, Fela as a symbol and personality pretty much lived up to his larger-than-life reputation. He has the makings of a charismatic if erratic leader--too bad he can’t run for office here.