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If Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti (Fela) was still alive and healthy, he would be looking
forward to being 72 years old on 15 October, 2010. Hardly the age one
associates with mavericks defiantly dishing out double-fisted
‘black-power’ salutes, decked out with war paint, amulets and charms
strapped to a tight body displaying 6-pack abs most men would die for.
So today he would be greyer or even geriatric maybe, yet I suspect he
would still have been able to sweep on stage and pull-off a power-pose
with purpose, menace and sex-appeal. And the masses would roar, and his
music would still be giving me goose bumps.

Just listen to the
opening stanzas of his songs ‘Water No Get Enemy’ or ‘Otoriti
Stealing’; the mind-blowing horn arrangements in ‘Yellow Fever’,
‘Beasts of No Nation’, ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’; and the
orchestration in ‘Overtake Don Overtake Overtake’. Add to that
signature introductory first layer of sound a rumbling seemingly
primordial drum beat delivered in a merciless pulsating rhythm, and
then percussions, from the shrill shekere and kpangolo traditional
instruments to the deep conga drums. Pure Genius.

On Fela

I cannot claim to
have known the man personally, and despite his giving me the most
memorable display of the relationship between a father and daughter,
Fela did not know me at all. He was oblivious of my many visits to his
night club the ‘Africa Shrine’. Thankfully, so was my boarding school
principal. And come to think of it, my parents who had delivered me
safely into boarding school did not know of my nocturnal adventures
either, but I digress.

At that memorable
first and only meeting 33 years ago with Fela at a concert in Tafawa
Balewa Square Lagos, one of his daughters who happened to be dating a
friend of mine sneaked us backstage to introduce us to her father.
“Fela, this na my bobo and him friend”. Fela looked my friend over and
then spoke around the inevitable stick of marijuana hanging
precariously from his lower lip. “So na you dey do my pikin, ehn?”

As a comment made
by a father in the presence of his daughter and two young strangers, it
was just too good, beyond translation or rephrasing. In its original
delivery format faithfully reproduced here, it remains deliciously
memorable. Some moments are frozen in time and this was certainly a
classic one.

I want to point out
quickly that Fela was not my role model so I never aspired to his
lifestyle, yet to me he was the ultimate icon. The man was undoubtedly
a musical genius, an inspiration for my part-time musical ambitions and
most certainly the chief proponent of Afrobeat, the music genre he is
credited with pioneering or popularising, depending who you ask.

On “Afrobeat”

According to Albert
Oikelome in his piece “Stylistic Analysis of Afrobeat Music of Fela
Anikulapo Kuti” – “In musical terms, Afrobeat clearly draws upon jazz,
blues, soul, funk, afro latin, highlife and folksong elements and
grafts them all into a West African rhythmic template.”

Also quoting
acclaimed photo journalist Tam Fiofori “… It is safe, sensible, and
factually logical to state that Afrobeat and its various flavours were
created by Nigerian musicians who were interested in expanding the
tonal and rhythmic frontiers of Nigerian highlife music… It is from
this distinct and unique Nigerian highlife flavour that the various
inflections of Afrobeat evolved through assimilation, experimentation,
cross-fertilisation, and individual musical innovation….”

I imagine in
reading these definitions, Fela in his typical continuous switch from
pidgin to Queen’s English would probably have retorted, “Which kind big
big grammar una want take confuse people?? Afrobeat is for the body and
mind, an On-the-ground spiritual game”

So for me, and I
wager that for others too, Fela’s Afrobeat with its signature call and
response pattern in both the music and the lyrics will always stir deep
emotions and feelings of the foot-tapping, head bobbing; chin holding
and occasional deep sighing variety, as we sway to the beat and ponder
what our beloved Nigeria might have been if we had listened more
carefully to his ingenious stories in song.

With Fela, Afrobeat
achieved international recognition and political purpose, evolving
alongside a Nigeria losing its innocence to civil war, military
dictatorship and rapacious corruption. Afrobeat became synonymous with
non-conformism and disaffection.

The youth,
especially the poor and disadvantaged, were drawn to it like bees to
pollen, even as parents squirmed and clucked their tongues in
disapproval of its proponent’s lifestyle.

I was fortunate
enough to be present at Fela’s club the Afrika Shrine on the night that
the ‘Overtake don Overtake’ was performed for the first time. A very
strange thing started to happen when the song got to the point of
describing the struggle of an ordinary civil servant trying
unsuccessfully to buy a fan to reduce the discomfort of sleeping in the
oppressive Lagos heat (“My friend wan come buy fan, him dey sweat where
him dey sleep for room”). I heard a restrained sob escape from the man
standing next to me, and when I looked around, realised that several
grown men in the audience where weeping quietly as they swayed to the
music! With this song, Fela was stripping bare the truth about their
lives in grim and excruciating detail – an overwhelming revelation of
their day to day non-existence (“Na now him come understand him life,
enjoyment can never come him way, na now him life dey go reverse, in
Africa him fatherland”). Later it occurred to me that the expatriates
in the audience that day must have thought these men had smoked a
particularly potent strain of marijuana and were literally “stoned to
tears”! To this day, the memory of that surreal night still makes me
break out in goose bumps. Such is the power of his music.

On Fela the Rebel

After Fela
metamorphosed from as he put it “a young guy enjoying himself around
town” to a powerful and fearsome social critic, he became widely viewed
as a “Rebel”.

I have questioned
this categorization of the man, and believe that his goal was promoting
genuine social reformation. He was not always coherent, especially in
his interviews, but once the music started you could always see an
immediate transformation in which he not only created but also directed
the merging of a thousand seemingly discordant notes into a harmonious
whole as a backdrop to the powerful story telling which he referred to
as “the on-the-ground spiritual game”. Raw, irreverent, and deeply
moving.

So for me, it has
and will always be about the music, this gift he had of storytelling
using the powerful Afrobeat platform. Perhaps some inspiration came
from the ganja he “rebelliously” and habitually smoked, but above all,
Fela was simply a unique being in which various elements came together
over a period of time to produce the equally notorious and revered
legend we know.

It was probably
this powerful effect he had over the masses through his music that led
Fela to think he could actually rule Nigeria as president. I watched in
astonishment as he attempted to register a political party and run for
elections, and even more ridiculous was the Government’s viewing of it
as a real threat, enough so as to actually employ time and energy in
frustrating his efforts!

On the live performances

For all his
anti-convention reputation, Fela ran his clubs with good old-fashioned
authoritarianism supported by corporal punishment. Other than
marijuana, his own personal narcotic of choice, it was apparently
forbidden to deal any other drug at the venues. Discipline was harsh,
meted swiftly and liberally. Patrons at Afrika Shrine apparently felt
more at risk from the ever possible police drug squad raid than from a
crime committed at the club.

Clad in adire-print
trousers, hand-made shoes from matching fabric and very often
bare-chested, Fela moved about on-stage, cigarette betwixt fingers, in
a casual, smooth (almost languid) stroll. Off-stage he existed mostly
in underpants. It was hard not to pay attention to him in a room full
of people. A late night performance at the Shrine was as much
showmanship as it was theatre, a musical concert and a “gaddem
on-the-ground spiritual game’!

Patrons showed-up
for yabbis i.e. irreverent commentary by Fela interspersed between
the songs about the inanities of Nigerian and African society. Fela
himself sang about his irreverent unstoppable mouth in the song Beasts
of No Nation “…basket mouth don start to leak again o..oo, basket mouth
don open up again o..oo!

Make I yab dem?
Fela would tease; Fela yab demmmm… the anticipating audience would roar
back, eager for a laugh at someone else’s expense. Contempt for the
affectations and pretentiousness of the ruling elite was dished-out in
equal measure with thorough verbal roastings of the ‘masses’ that
condoned these rulers in the first place.

A visit to Lagos
without a pit stop at Fela’s club was a less than fulfilling experience
for savvy foreigners, especially Europeans, who paid good money to
endure humorous but stinging jibes from a social critic conscious
always, about the legacy of colonialism and oppression.

For all of his
brilliance as a composer, arranger, keyboardist and saxophonist, it was
his prowess as a bandleader that held everything together. Supported by
a coterie of brilliant individualists like Igo Chico on tenor saxophone
and the peerless Tony Allen on drums; catchy and easily understood
lyrics largely in pidgin English flavoured by syncopated rhythms and an
awe inspiring horn section, were echoed and chorused by the female
singer-dancers whose shrill voices struck me as a throwback to the
witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Intense, raw and uncut.

No matter where he
was playing live, Fela was value-for-money. Whether performing with his
entire ensemble at the Shrine or at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) in
Lagos or just gigging impromptu with Tunde & the late Fran Kuboye
at the Museum Kitchen and later at Jazz 38 on Awolowo Road Ikoyi, he
effortlessly delivered a satisfying performance which friends and I
would talk about till the next show.

Even his habitual
lateness in arriving at his live performances did nothing to dampen the
anticipation of the crowd and the joyful roar that always greeted his
double fisted black power salute as he strode onto the stage, sometimes
six hours late!

Last thoughts

Yes, I didn’t know
the man personally but almost every time I watched him live, I saw the
visceral impact his music had on his audience, me included. He had the
ability to talk directly to each person in the audience. I now have an
extensive collection of his music as one of my most prized possessions,
and even to this moment, continue to discover new things about the man
through his music. Where did he get the opening stanza of ‘Water No Get
Enemy’?? What was he thinking? Why is this assembly of notes still one
of the most recognisable musical phrases in Nigeria, across gender and
tribe? Why would a light skinned woman be described as “Yellow Fever”?
I get the “Yellow” but the “Fever” beats me. Was she hot to the touch
or just hot to look at??

There are many more
such questions waiting when I head into blissful retirement with Fela’s
music, and it will be a joy to ponder on them and perhaps find answers,
if only in my head.

Epilogue

I have heard other
Afrobeat bands and artists keeping the music alive, listened to sampled
versions of his music by young international artists, and even seen the
Broadway show “Fela!” that is now making waves on the global
entertainment circuit and introducing the Fela phenomenon to new
audiences worldwide. This is AWESOME. The Emperor sleeps and the people
ponder and talk amongst themselves!

More respect, Abami Eda (The strange being), more respect to you as you rest. I am still getting those goose bumps.