ANIKULAPO-KUTI, Fela

7, Gbemisola Street, off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos.

The Message In the Myth (Femi Osofisan). Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was not born into your typicalwell-to-do Yoruba family. His mother was an outspoken feminist and considered radical for her time, while his father was a renowned educationist and Anglican priest. Never theless, for him, as well as for his contemporaries, the white man’s ways were superior and sacrosanct; the Lawwasjust, becauseit protected property and the rich who owned them; all a man needed for suc cess,wassimplytoconformand behavehimself. Suc cess for a musician meant fame and glamour, money andrespectability. Fela was what could becalled an ideological innocent. Though the Biafran War had started inearnest, with atrocities accumulatingon both sides. Fela the musician felt totally distant from it. In his own words, “… at that time, when the war was goingon,Iwasn’tpoliticallymindedat all.Imademy comments as a citizen. I was just another musician playing with Koola Lobitosand singing love songs, songs about rain…. What did I know?*’ The really meaningful period in which he built for himselfa conscious, messianic image did not be gin until 1969. By then, Fela had been more than 10 years in the world ofmusic. He had been to London and studied music; he had returned and tried to set up a band called the Koola Lobitos. Frustrated, he had left for Ghana, only to return again, defeated. He then left for America, and it was there he had his political awakening. It was in Los Angeles where he met Sandra. She had been active in the then explosive Black rights movement, and she opened up a totally new world for the musician from Africa. Her credentials were perfect because she was generous and courageous; because she had suffered from police brutality and even imprisonment, but had remained steadfast in her fight for justice; but above all. because she was bril liant and informed. Her effecton Fela was overwhelm ing. Describing the process ofhis transformation af ter one evening ofarguments, Fela said “. . .1 must have said something because she said, ‘Fela, don’t say that. Africans taught the white man. Look, the Africans have history.” I said, ‘They don’t have . .•. no history, man. We are slaves.” She got up and brought me a book. She said that I should read it And that was the beginning. “Sandra gave me the education I wanted,. .. she’s the one who spoke to me about Africa. For the firsttime, Iheard things I’d never heard before about Africa.” This marked the genesis ofthe myth. The newknowledge thatFelaacquired, hewouldtry hence forth to translate into the medium of music. He would setawholegeneration ablaze,andbecausesuch fires ofenlightenment haddangerous implications forthose within and without, who would rather keep Africa enslaved,singing senselesshosannahs, Fela hadun wittingly turnedhimselfintoa markedman. “I came back home with the intent to change the whole system. I didn’t know I was going to have … such horrors!Ididn’t know they were gonna give me suchoppositionbecause ofmynewAfricanism. How could I have known? As soon as I got back home, I started to preach … and my music did start chang ing,accordingto howIexperienced the lifeandcul ture ofmy people.” The lessons of Sandra had been internalized. The nextstep was to find a new and appropriate mode of musicto expressthisnew awareness. Clearly,the imi tationsofjazzandhighlife oftjieKoolaLobitos would not do. Neither would the usual soporific lyrics of pop music. The now enlightened musician looked around for a new source ofinspiration. James Brown and Victor Olaiya were passe, obsolete gods. Fela searched for something more ancient and yet more modern, closer to Africa and more authentic, yet devoid of cheap exoticism. That was when he recalled his experience in London, and found a model, at last, in the music of Ambrose Campbell, that genius who has influenced more than a generation of African musicians. He took Ambrose Campbell’s music, did his ownmagicalcocktailwith it,by mixing itwith piano andtrumpet, and with chant, rather than song; he had found a new exciting beat. Though its first ‘outing’ wasdoneatthedecrepitCitadelde HaitiClub,runby the then unknown Bernie Hamilton on Sunset Boul evard, the immediate, warm response of the audi ence, was sufficient confirmation that a new and ex citingsoundwasinthe making. Thusitwasthat Afro- beat wasborn,and Felahad begunhisjourney back home. Allthesame, the final political transformation of Afro-beat did not begin till Fela’s return to Lagos in 1973. Once at home, he embarked straight-away on a kind of radical Black evangelism. First, he changed the name of his band and of his club. The ‘Koola Z.o6/7o.s’thus became ‘Africa’70’ (“to look forward to the future, to the coming decade”, and Afrospot be came ‘The Shrine’. “I wanted some place meaning ful,” he said to Carlos; “… progressive, mindful of background with roots. I didn’t believe playing any more in night clubs.” The result was an instantaneous hit with the Nigerian audience. Within a year oftheir arrival, the ‘Africa ’70’ had become the leading band in Lagos, especially for the young, and TheShrine, the leading club, where you not only listened to good music, but also to Fela’s yabbis, a nightly exhortation on Black history, politics, andculture.Felawasseekingtochange the minds of his colonized compatriots, just as his own mind had been radicalized in that fruitful en counter with Sandra. That was the beginning of his trouble with the authorities. In Nigeria, power has always been, since independence at least, in the hands ofa certain elite, made up ofmen who got their wealth through being the local agents ofwhite companies. Fela’s message, that we should stop serving the white man, that we should develop our own Black resources instead, was a direct threat to this ruling class. His message, that we should turn away from the colonial religions, be cause they had been and were still the instruments of enslaving our minds, turned the numerous Christians and Moslems against him. His message finally, that men should be free, and that uninhibited sex was a natural and joyful ex pression ofthat freedom, frightened parents, teachers and priests. In short Fela had come to challenge the system,and the system has always had itspolice ready to crush such challenges. With unprecedented savagery, the ruling class launched its forces against the rebels of the Shrine. On 30 April 1974 came the first ofthe nu merous police attacks on the Shrine. “Oooooooh!” recalls Fela, “I was beaten by police!so much . . . How can a human being stand so much beating with clubs and not die?” The irony of it was in fact, that the attack, brutal as it was, was to prove mild, com pared with future assaults. The Shrine would be re peatedly raided, andthemembers ofthe’Africa ’70’ jailed, brutalized andmaimed. The place, however, went on irrepressibly, (even changing its name to Kalakuta Republic), until that fateful day in 1977, whenthe military junta in Lagossent athousand sol diers to raze it. The details ofthat savage incident are well known and too frightful to be repeated here. Nevertheless, the spiritof The Shrine didnot die. Thebrutal andrepeated persecution ofFelaand The Shrine bytheauthorities helped to raise his name to the level ofmyth. Hebecame theunderdog and their victims were celebrated as martyrs in face of the sav age attack by the power of the State. The military found that, though they had power to crush bones and burn houses, they could not as much as dent the indomitable spirit ofFela and his followers. It was a memorable expression ofthat defiance and indomitable courage that took place on 30 Sep tember 1979, the day before Obasanjo handed power over to the civilians. Fela and his people defied all the guards to lay the coffin of his mother right on the door step ofDodan Barracks, a statement ofthe ulti mate futility of state power over the liberty of the human mind. We have gone into this long background his tory because it is vital to an understanding ofthe con text in which Fela’s songs were composed. A full ap preciation will be impossible, and many ofthe com positions may well be misunderstood, unless this im portant point is taken into account; that most ofhis songs were songs ofresistance. As such, they were mainly written for the mo ment,for their maximum immediate impact, in order to have instanteffect on an existing malpractice, or to protect against a current act of injustice. They were thus, doubly courageous, in that their targets of at tack were usually men in the saddle of power at the time, who had sufficient authority and viciousness to unleash their forces against their critics. Fela’s lyrics were protests, composed mainly for the pleasure ofthe common man on the street, hence they had the fragility and brittleness ofpopular folk art. They relied heavily on street lingo and jargons; on pidgin English, and the current vulgarizations of working classes; the message was direct, simple and clear. Bourgeois art, which is written in moments of calm and contemplation, can afford to dwell on ex tended metaphors, on finely distilled images and ex pressions ofbeauty, its effect being meant to be ever lasting. The popular artiste like Fela, however, is a man in a hurry – he has to earn his living, he has his audience right before him, with their varied and chang ingtastes, and the many forms oftheir daily persecu tion. His art cannot afford the luxury of extensive polishingand distillation.Fela’s music, thus, appeals tothemiddleand upperclassesonlymarginally. They complain of its abrasiveand unmelodious tunes, of his excessive preaching. These complaints are not shared by the common people, however, who see in the artiste, their only authentic voice. His lyrics may notbe rich in poetry, buttheyare relevant to hisaudi ence and serve as reminders of the horror their lives have been reduced to. Itisthuspossible, simplybylistening to Fela’s songs, tocompile a list ofallthemajor crises ofthe past decade, as they affected the common peop/e. His first ‘hit’ on his return home,Jeun Ko Ku (Eat and Die), like the three other albums released the same year, Why Black Man Dey Suffer, Open and Close, and Life with Ginger Baker, immediately announced Fela’s revolt against the ruling class and against the prevailing conventions ofourneo-colonial society. All the themesthathe subsequentlyex plored throughout the turbulent ’70’s, are found in those four albums. His criticism ofthecorrupt military regime, then underGowon, had begun; for instance: “Chopandquench, He has come: He has eaten up everything… Thief,help chase himaway DebtorIdrive himfrom myhome…” As can be seen, however, the attack at this stagewasstill indirectand muted.Formostpeople, theattraction of thealbum was in its music, its novel arrangement andsyncopation, the warm throaty vo cals and the humorous tone ofthe lyrics. The time was coming, however, when Fela would be less oblique. The next album, WhyBlackManDey Suffer, was the first of the series Fela would do on his new found ideologyof’blackism’ andpan-Africanism, as oncedefined by Nkrumah. This was Fela’sabiding concern throughout his career: the need for black men to shed their colonized mentalities and recover their own authentic culture; to stop aping the whites and to come together as one continent and one people. Fela pursued this theme relentlessly, at once blazing away at our post-colonial complexes {Gentleman, He Miss Road; JJD; Colonial Mentality; Yellow Fever, Mr. Follow Follow etc), and simultaneously exhorting the superior virtues of blackism {Africa-Centre of the World; Blacks Got To Be Free, Black Man’s Cry etc). Fela talked about the danger ofthe ‘colonial religions’; how we have allowed them to blind us and kill our minds. We go on praying and praying, while the problems ofpoverty remain. One ofhis bestrecords isthus entitled ShufferingandShmiling, (1978). 0 Religion, the opiumof the people, makes us smile and endure our sufferings, whereas the real thing is not to endure, but to combat the source of suffering, and to challenge the priests who are not sufferingat all, butget rich on our sufferings. Fela sang against elitism {IkoyiBlindness, OppositePeople, Equalization ofTrouserandPant), against lopsided planning, and the betrayal ofthose in the positionofresponsibility. Listento him inOrigi nalSufferhead. Fela’s concern was always for the poor and thedown-trodden, and his message to them was that they must rise up and seize their rights. They must always be ready to denounce corrupt leaders. His most frequent theme is the tyranny of power. An unbroken victim of police and army sadism, Fela has recorded his experience in a number of memorable albums. Future historians will have more than a dozen of Fela’srecordsto judgethemilitaryrule. Eachtitle isa grim testimony ofofficial terror:Alagbon Close, Zombie, Soldier, Vagabonds In Power, Authority Stealing, Coffin for Head ofState, etc. Greater than this brutality, however, and greaterthanthis spectre ofhorror,isthe undyingvoice of resistanceFela’s voice- aftereach raid, rising upagain andagain to call for change and the refusal of fear: Heyyyy-ah!Heeeeaaaah!Everybodydeyrun run. Everybodyscatter scatter… Police dey come, armydey come.Confusion everywhere… Several minutes later all don cool down. Brother Police don go away.Armydondisappear. Dem leave sorrow, tears andblood, theirregulartrade mark… Fela is not unmindful ofthe fact that the authori tiesareabletoperpetuatetheiratrocitiesbecausepeo ple are alwaystoo terrified to act. They hold on so much to empty, mundane things, that they forsake their manhood. It is in such circumstances that op pression thrives. My people self dey fear too much Dem dey fearfor de thing we no see. Dem dey fear for the air around us. We jear.to fight for freedom. We fear to fight for progress. We always get reasons to fear. We no wan die. Weno wan quench. My mama dey for house,my pickin dey for house.I get one wife, I get one car. I get one car, I get one house. I jus’marry. So policeman go slap your face, you no go talk. Army man go whip your yansh. You go dey look like donkey… Dem leave sorrow, tears and blood, dem regular trade mark Fela’s lyrics were always full ofpunch and they addressed the major prpblems ofthe moment directly. Towards his death, however, his voice had startedto growfaint;hisvoice seemedto havelostits fire, to be fading into silence. What could have been the reason for this? Some have attributed it to weariness. When a messiah chants in vain for years on the mountain, some day, he must face the reality offailure and flee into retreat. Was Fela’s growing silence due to the despairhe felt at the fact thatthe situation ofsqualor and underdevelopment has only changed for the worse? It is hard to say, but this would be out of characterwith Fela’s noted courageand persistence. In Carlos Moore’s book, he suggests thatthe musician was becoming increasingly involved in mysticism, – a consequence of his mother’s death – and in turning inwards, perhaps he felt the need to with draw. There are perhaps more fundamental reasons why the Fela myth could only end in a cul-de-sac. Protest, like all fires, must die out at some time unless they are channelled towards some kind ofpositive action. Without disciples who went out and established Ap ostolic missions, the Christian faith could not have endured. Likewise Fela’s numerous confrontations with governments etc., are testimonies of protest and anger, but they lead to no solid ideology; they give no concrete proposal about how to restructure our societies. Blackism, pan-Africanism, are not ideologies, but belong more to the area ofethics. It is just that, faced with the numerous problems of daily existence, people tend in the end to relegate to the back ground, problems that relate to morals. They turn to the priest of pop, but only for temporary relief; they cuddle their myths, but only for the time of dreaming; when the day breaks, the people return to their former state. THE LEGENDARY HIGHLIFER by (Benson Idonije) Afro-beat icon,Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, made a lot ofmusic in his lifetime. Ifyou were an ardent listener to radio in the early six ties, you would have heard on the airwaves, songs like BonfoFere, LobitosSpeciallegendary highlife music recorded on R.K label as singles – in the style ofVictorOlaiya. If you were in Lagos in the mid-sixties as a young man, and you pub-crawled like most of us, you would have been treated to the plethora ofprogressive highlife, super imposed on jazz. These sessions later translated to recorded melodies such as Ololufe, Yese, Arabas, Delight, Oloruka, Ojo to su, Onidodo, Ajo,Abiara, Omuti, Oniwayoamongothers, most ofwhich formed Fela’s over33 records. Ifyou followed his musical career inthe seventies, you would have been exposed to the golden years of’Afro-beat’ which began with JeunKo Kit, but later featured such hits asLady Yel low Fever, Expensive Shit, Zombi, AuthoritySteal ingamong others. The eighties experienced a depar ture from this overtly commercial music – as exem plified by Beast ofnonationand other compositions -whilethe nineties mellowed him down to the com plexities of Confusion breakbone, Customs Check point, ODOO’ and the like, which he referred to as classical African music. Up till the time he died in August 1997, the icon never stopped beating out sounds with unabashed gusto. Despite this progressively adventurous development, a school of thought still believes that the most musical aspect of Fela’s career remains the Jazz-oriented highlife period of the sixties. And they might be justified in their preference. Looking at Fela’s musical career from the very beginning till 1997 when he passed on, it is obvious that the music developed progressively with the dynamics of our cultural evolution. Fela exemplified an artiste who never stopped experimenting with new ideasand exploiting new musical complexities. This was why he was relevantthroughout his lifetime. Atthe timehereleasedhis initialsinglesaround 1961, even though the style was basically Victor Olaiya’s style, the music displayed evidence ofprogressiveness. Itwasmoreprogressivethanthe highlife of Ghana’sStarguzen,Globekings, andeven the early Uhuru Dance Band led at the time by Nigerian’s Sammy Obot, a fine trumpet player who has since gone into musical oblivion. These were three ofthe bands which exhibited concrete potential in terms of modernorchestral structuring. Before his return to Nigeria in 1963, he had already established the foundation for hisjazzgroup inLondon, with West Indians and English artistes as sidemen. The album was never actually released, but he brought a white label version ofthe band’s record ing to Nigeria which was aired a number oftimes on the NBCJazz club programme which I presented at the time. In addition to the numerous highlife numbers he performed in the sixties – most ofwhich were not recorded because he was not encouraged to continue inthat direction by his famous American tour of1969 – he also did soul music. This was because of the pressures mounted on him by members ofthe audi ence at liveshows – fans who had been won over by Geraldo Pino’s music which was in the James Brown tradition. He was not prepared to compromise his musicforsome foreignfadwhose relevance was bound to disappear within a short time, but he used the opportunity to demonstrate his composing and arranging power. As a composer, he came up with a tune called Homecoming,a soul-rock arrangement which he gave powerful vocal and big band treatment. Another song he played at Sunday jumps and night club dates when the audience asked for soul music, was Knock on wood, written by Eddie Floyd who also sang it. This song was one of the most popular soul recordings of that period. Fela’s version possessed great artistic value in terms of arrangement, and if recorded would have out-classed the original version. Fela’s career from Jeun Ko Ku upwards appears to be well known to most people. But the period be tween the departure from highlife and this Afro-beat beginning is very crucial to the transition of Fela’s music. The music that characterized this period has also been described by foreign musicians and critics as ‘highly musical.’ Some of them were composed in America in 1969 and were first recorded there during the period of his musical transition. Tenor saxophone player Houston Person, one of America’s greatest musicians with the passion for African music teamed up with Fela’s ‘Africa 70’ in America and such bril liant performances as Wayo, My Lady’sfrustrations, MioleJobe, including Viva Africa, an Afro highlife rendition which reduced Fela’s lyrical message to a monologue – advising Nigerians to live together as brothers and sisters, saying that ‘war is not the an swer*. The music came as a reconciliatory message for Nigeria in 1970 to mark the end ofthe civil war. The main thrust of Fela’s music at this time was African rhythms whosevarious patterns were in tegrated into repetitive themes. He backed this up with riffs, and orchestral harmonies against which solos ran profusely with the best of improvisations. His ‘Afro-beaf career which spanned the 70s, 80s, and 90s has been very well documented. The inter esting feature ofthis entire period is the way the mu sic logically evolved – becoming more complex with time. This is one of the hallmarks that attests to his musicianship and the depth of his artistic creativity. Even in terms of lyrical content and explora tion, the music was not static. It developed initially from love theme such asOlolufeandAyawa in 1965 through the social commentaries of JeunKo Ku, Lady and Yellow Fever in the early seventies. Messages became politically rebellious and confrontational to wards the end of that decade in such hits as Zombie, ExpensiveShit,Sorrow, Blood and Tears. In the 80s, his lyrics confronted government on the issues of corruption in high places and human rights abuses inAuthorityStealing andBeast ofNo Nations. The 90s saw him as a crusader who marched against injustice, corruption, mismanagement and all – even though the authorities were unyielding, and the situation remained the same. Confusion Break Bone best illustrates this trend. He never liked to play his old songs, but rather chose to identify with new sounds, new trends, new perspectives. Notwithstanding some people find his highlife of the sixties more challenging musically. The majority of these people are jazz enthusiasts and lovers of creative music. They have a good reason for this preference: a lot more went into their musical composition than Afro-beat. And so the music has registered a lasting impression. Highlife melodies were easy for him to create and restructure in those days. Some of them were folk songs and well known compositions by other artistes – like Julius Araba’s Omolereayee which he titledAraba’s delight. Others were his own original compositions. No matter the source of his songs. Fela was more interested in the arrangement technique than any other musical element. He treated all ofthem as jazz themes which needed extensions and improvisa tion. In this way he devised a multi-part harmonious technique for theKoola Lobitos even though it was only a nine-man outfit, using riffs, solos and orches tral pattern as embellishments for the songs. Rehearsals were frequent – three days a week, and music was scored for every instrument. One song, usually took three rehearsals to perfect because the guitar had to go through various chord changes. The bass guitar was played at the time by Ojo Okeji, a veteran who was previously popular with Adeolu Akinsanya at Western Hotel. He had various move ments and changes to contend with in any particular arrangement. Many times he had to perfect his part of the rehearsal privately at his own time. The horn players had a difficult time master ing their own parts – especially in terms of coping with tempos and rhythmic concepts. Even Tony Allen had his drum patterns scored for him because Fela’s idea of drumming for his brand of highlife was jazz oriented and was different from the type that was adopted by the conventional highlife bands of that period. On the other hand,Afro-beat, from the initial JeunKoKu, until the last song he performed in 1997 did not entail as many musical variations, even though the horn arrangements became more complex in later years. The bass movement was repetitive; the guitar chord structure was monotonous; the arrangements for the horn may have involved the repetition oftwo or three bars of music. These were the hallmarks that made the music popular and commercially viable. Lovers of Fela’s highlife music of the sixties do not, however, dislike Palaver and Nefe Nefetwo classical highlife performances which were re corded during the Afro-beat era of the seventies. This is because, even though arrangements and solos are less involved, they are pleased with the fact that emphasis shifted to definitive melodic inventiveness, and the vocal exploration of the message – to give the music some measure of commercial flavoring.