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The New Afrika Shrine, Agidingbi, Lagos, is rarely busy on Monday mornings but it was on October 11, as it hosted the kick-off event for the 2010 Felabration. The week-long celebration of the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with ‘Viva Africa’ as its theme, started with a debate titled ‘Music as a Weapon’.

Professor of Law, Yemi Osibajo; political scientist, Carlos Moore; South African poet, Lesogo Rampolokeng; academics, Dipo Fashina and Sola Olorunyomi were the guest speakers while human rights activist, Femi Falana, moderated.

The Kuti clan was well represented, with Yemisi Ransome-Kuti; Sofia and Bose (wives of the late Olikoye and Beko), Fela’s children, Femi and Yeni in attendance. The illustrious family, noted Falana in his introductory remarks, comprised, “some of the greatest Nigerians in terms of fighting for the independence of this country.” He added about Fela, popularly known as Abami Eda, “If there is one cultural ambassador that Nigeria has produced, it is Fela Kuti.”

Bridge builder

The first speaker, Rampolokeng, discarded his prepared paper and spoke extemporaneously. He disclosed that he is of the 1976 generation, the year of the Soweto uprising from which two popular South African freedom songs emerged. Rampolokeng said he didn’t like poetry or literature when he started writing but that he later realised that poetry is music. He described Fela as a master musician and instrumentalist, and in tribute to him, read three of his poems titled ‘The Fela Sermon’, ‘Wailers of the World’ and ‘Bantu Ghost’.

Osibajo, a former Attorney General of Lagos State, began with an acknowledgement of the late musician some call Omo Iya Aje. “Fela, through his music, created a bridge across tribes; across classes. A bridge that was built on the collective anger of the people consistently traumatised by the ruling class. Fela’s protest against military dictatorship was founded on his own encounters with military injustice. Fela’s characterisation of our neo-colonial forces is apt in many respects. Fela’s self appointed role was to speak the truth rudely and tauntingly and at great personal risk. His defined and unionist stance against the fierce brutality of the state, especially under military rule, encouraged many. Fela left no doubt that he wanted his songs to anger the ordinary man enough to propel him into action.”

Speaking on Fela’s beginnings, the self confessed pastor and born again Christian, who laced his lecture with various numbers by Abami Eda, said Fela didn’t start out as a protest musician as seen in his early experiments with jazz and highlife music. Osibajo added that the musician’s initial political ambivalence was curious, given the antecedents of his parents; he began to like politics because his mother, Funmilayo, flogged him less due to political engagements which took her away from home. The speaker observed that Fela’s political ambivalence continued until a trip to the US in 1969, after which he began to sing political songs.

Osibajo added that though music is a veritable weapon of enlightenment, “Fela’s music cannot and will not change Nigeria” if we don’t change our attitude. “So long as we maintain a stance of ‘No Agreement’, then there is hope for Nigeria.” He advised that protest music must not stop.

Gentle introvert

Former president, Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU), Dipo Fashina, recalled his first encounter with Fela as a young school man. He said that though Fela fought against government, “inside him he was a gentle introvert. He had more than music and protest.” He called for Fela to be studied “as a social constructor who would have loved to construct a movement.” Fashina, popularly called Jingo by students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, where he teaches Philosophy, added that Fela scholars need to go beyond the surface to interrogate the influences that formed his consciousness.

The music, he further noted, can be discussed from many angles. “His idioms are worth studying and his choice of musical instruments political.” The political tone, he added, “wasn’t there at the beginning. The audience he had when he started was different from the one he had when he ended. His messages are more complex than we thought.” Abami Eda, Jingo further noted, was a Pan-Africanist, though anti-imperialism and class struggle are often suppressed in the study of his music.

Fela and his late activist brother, Beko, he disclosed, wanted to construct a movement people can use to liberate themselves but had limitations. “We have to create a political movement that will address the issues of the masses, the issues of culture, the issues of how to play our role in the liberation of the world. These lives must not be wasted; we must build a political movement.”

Continuous interrogation

Fela scholar and academic, Sola Olorunyomi of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, also spoke extemporaneously instead of presenting his paper titled ‘A Fela-sophy on Kalakuta Republic and African Citizenship’. The author of ‘Afrobeat! Fela and the Imagined Continent’ and six forthcoming works on the legend, told the audience that the way to ensure Afrobeat’s relevance is to continuously interrogate and institutionalise it in schools. Afrobeat, he noted, is not just music but encompasses performance, politics and choreography amongst others.

He charged legatees of Fela not to allow Afrobeat die because, “there is no vision that cannot die if you allow it so we need to recalibrate.” While noting that Femi is actively working on the Afrobeat scene, Olorunyomi expressed fears that inheritors of Afrobeat music may not be children of Blacks but those in the West. He concluded with Olu Oguibe’s poem, ‘The Voice’.

We miss you

Carlos Moore, author of ‘Fela: This Bitch of a Life’ who is on a book tour of Nigeria, also gave a passionate speech cum performance. Like the others, he abandoned his paper and spoke from the heart. He disclosed that he wrote the biography because Fela asked him to. Moore disclosed Fela’s dejection after his several face offs with the authorities when he arrived to write the biography. “Fela said I’m tired, I want to go, I want to die, I want to commit suicide,” Moore said. He added that Fela was not a superman but a mortal “who felt fear like all of us but he decided not to keep quiet about it.”

The Cuban now resident in Brazil further noted that had Fela been alive, he would not have joined in the 50th Independence celebrations. “Fela will be mourning 50 years of fear, 50 years of dictatorship, 50 years of mourning, 50 years of poverty, 50 years of hypocrisy, 50 years of manipulation and 50 years of oppression.” Fela, he added, knew that everything that came after Independence was “99.9 per cent wrong and that Independence was another form of indirect rule.”

He said the authorities tried to demoralise the Afrobeat legend because they knew he had a message they didn’t want him to spread but that Fela knew his music was not entertainment. “He introduced a form of music that broke with the customary, he introduced socially relevant music.”

Moore also disclosed that it wasn’t always plain sailing between him and Fela. “I had 1000 fights with him,” he said before dramatically launching into a conversation with Fela on the stage. Addressing him as if he was right in front of him, Moore started highlighting Fela’s mistakes. He told him he was wrong to have believed that AIDS is not a dangerous disease and the late Idi Amin of Uganda wasn’t a dictator. “Fela, you were right when you said the only way for Africans to become Africans again is to unite. We miss you. Goddamn it, we miss you,” he ended emotionally.

The cause of Fela’s death and Pan-Africanist inclinations were further highlighted during the interaction. Reacting to a commentator who alleged that Fela didn’t die of AIDS, Falana said Nigerians must be grateful to the Kuti family for disclosing the cause of Fela’s death -complications arising from AIDS. He noted that only the Kuti family and Nelson Mandela, who disclosed that his son died of AIDS, have been courageous enough to admit the truth about the scourge in Africa. Falana said the disclosure opened the eyes of Nigerians to the reality of AIDS.

Giving the vote of thanks, Femi condemned the maladministration and decaying infrastructure in Nigeria. He said Europeans and Americans should apologise to Africans for about 500 years of slavery. The ‘Bang Bang Bang’ crooner also canvassed a historical re-orientation of Africans. He said people should stop saying colonial masters but colonial dealers and that ancestors should be honoured. “We need to appreciate the efforts of our forefathers and foremothers. Fela is just one of them that will come and go. The sin will be if we don’t let our children continue to know about Fela.”