Sunday 18 October was the final day of Felabration; a weeklong annual
musical jamboree to celebrate the life, times, music, and ideology of
the phenomenon called Fela. Born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti
on 15 October 1938, this scion of the popular Ransome-Kuti family of
Abeokuta was a singer/songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist.
They gained worldwide popularity as a foremost Nigerian family. The
family has put the country on the world map, being as popular for their
musical heritage, as they are for their political activism. Fela’s
musical genius was never in doubt, and even in death, eighteen years on;
his great body of work is still being studied, enjoyed, and reworked,
finding a presence in every corner of the globe. An off Broadway
production of Fela Anikulapo- Kuti’s life titled Fela, and a full length documentary titled Finding Fela have even been produced.
A cursory look at his family tree reveals that Fela was not an
accident, in his case the apple did not fall far from the proverbial
tree. This son and grandson of Anglican priests (popularly known as the
musical priests) simply carried on the family tradition. The story
begins with the Reverend Canon Josiah Jesse Ransome-Kuti; an Anglican
priest responsible for composing many of the hymns sung in the Anglican
Church, both within and outside Nigeria. He recorded a series of songs
in the Yoruba tongue for the Zonophone record label in London. JJ it was
who took the name Ransome, in honour of the missionary who converted
him.
Next comes the Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a priest like
his father, he was an educationist who went to become the Principal of
Abeokuta Grammar School, and also president of the Nigerian Union of
Teachers. His wife Funmilayo was an activist, and women’s rights
campaigner, who received the Lenin peace prize in 1970. Mrs. Funmilayo
Kuti’s marriage into the family brought political activism into the Kuti
family. The couple had four children; Olikoye, Bekolari, Fela, and
Dolupo. Olikoye; a renowned doctor, and Professor was at various times
Minister of Health, and Deputy Director-General of the World Health
Organisation, Beko also became a doctor, and was Secretary-General of
the Nigerian Medical Association.
As was usual with the offspring of the upper middle class Nigerian
families of his day, Fela was a young colonial Nigerian male music
graduate of an English university, playing a fusion of Jazz and highlife
music charting a course for himself. In 1969, he went to Los Angeles on
tour with his band, and met Sandra Smith, now Izsadore. Smith belonged
to the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, and was overjoyed to
meet Fela as she hoped to learn more about African history from him. To
her surprise and dismay, she discovered that he knew next to nothing
about the history of Africa, thereafter she took him under her wing and
opened his eyes to the vista of African consciousness, and the black
power movement. They became lovers, and by the time Fela returned to
Nigeria nine months later, his psyche, and music had changed. He left
Nigeria a colonial relic, but returned a proud black man.
As radical as he was talented, Fela discarded the family name
Ransome, saying it was a “Slave name”, taking on Anikulapo, which means
“He who has death in his pocket”. He also turned his back on the
Anglican, nay Christian faith of his fore bearers, preferring to return
to his African roots. For the rest of his life, Fela would practice the
African traditional religion. He entered the Guinness book of records
for wedding twenty seven women in one day. The wedding was blessed by
the chief ifa priest of Lagos. Fela was often vilified for
licentiousness, but as his son, Seun puts it, “Fela was just a very open
person, and lived his life as he wished. Many men were guilty of the
things he did, they only tried to hide theirs. Many men have children
showing up after they are dead and gone. Quite a number of people from
all works of life smoke Marijuana, but prefer to hide it.”
Continuing the family tradition, albeit in his own way; Fela trained
his eldest son in the age old way of the apprentice learning at the feet
of the master. Residents of the John Olugbo axis of Ikeja, Lagos in the
early eighties remember a father teaching his young son to play the
keyboard; he would play a note, and ask the lad to do the same. It was
no joke, only the already famous Fela taking the time to teach his heir
the rudiments of the family business; unknowingly preparing him for the
international stage and stardom. Although his father had a degree in
music, Femi’s success and subsequent superstardom without a music degree
are testimony to the genius of the afrobeat icon. Speaking to the
Nation Femi said, “When my first international hit album broke, Fela
asked me, ‘ Do you now see what I have been trying to teach you all
these years? You can now feed yourself through music’. And I agreed.”
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was the matriarch of the clan, and was a great
source of inspiration to her large brood. Her granddaughter; Yeni Kuti
vividly captures this when she said, “My grandmother is my role model.
She inspired me a lot. She once teased Femi about his laziness in
rehearsing his saxophone, wondering how he could succeed as a musician
without rigorously rehearsing. Femi never missed daily rehearsal ever
since.” Fela was a very hardworking musician as visitors to the shrine
can testify. During his lifetime, Fela was known to play his saxophone
into the wee hours of the morning; meticulously blowing his sax day in
day in day out, year in year out. This acerbic tongued Egba woman was
also known to be self-sacrificing as she was part of the group that
campaigned for the abolition of women paying tax at the time. Why? Women
were already overstretched, supporting their husbands in taking care of
their families. As the wife of a middle class reverend gentleman, and
educationist, she was financially comfortable enough to have buried her
head in the sand, but chose to fight on the side of the oppressed.
A chip off the old block, Fela’s music was often critical of the
different corrupt, and profligate Nigerian regimes; whether military or
civilian. He churned out hit after hit; songs as aesthetically pleasing,
entertaining, and thought provoking as they were full of acidic wit.
Songs like Unknown Soldier, Soldier go soldier come, and Zombie
ruled the airwaves during the military era, oftentimes causing him to
be brutally beaten, his house and properties burned, in addition to
being thrown behind bars. He quickly got used to going to prison. As his
daughter Yeni puts it, “It was a challenging time for us because when
we left home for school in the morning, we did not know if we would meet
him on our return, or even when next we would see him”.
Dede Mabiaku paints a more graphic picture of the ire Fela’s songs
drew from previous governments when he said, “How many people even know
that the last time Kalakuta was burned that they beat the merciless
bombastic element out of everyone there, to the extent that his mother
was thrown out of the window, that is true, to the extent that they even
tore somebody’s stomach open, and he held his guts in with his hands.
Nobody told you about that, they wanted to jab Fela with a bayonet, and
somebody flung one of the boys on top of him, so the bayonet pierced the
guy’s stomach, and his guts came out. Let me paint a picture for you,
they held his guts in hands to the hospital (the guy is still alive
today). But that was not the issue, they stripped Fela naked, flogged
him silly, broke his leg. He was bleeding all over profusely from being
caned with whips, down to his privy . . . .”
Surprisingly, with their political activism, and patriotism one would
have thought that one or the other member of the family would vie for
political office. But as Yeni puts it, “As long as the political terrain
of Nigeria remains as it currently is, I can never play politics.”She
goes on to say, “I would never want to do anything to disgrace the name
of my family.”
A down to earth and humble lot, they made friends with people from
different strata of the social divide. Charles Oputa, a much younger
artist to Fela has this to say about Fela, “When my friend; Tina
Onwudiwe graciously paid two years rent for an apartment in the Gbagada
area of Lagos for me, in a bid to encourage my movement to Lagos from
Oguta, I was overjoyed.” Can you guess the superstar who visited him the
day of his housewarming party? Yes, Fela. Charlie Boy continues, “When
he showed up at my apartment that day. I was so shocked, because I
usually visited him at the shrine, Fela was not known to visit
musicians, and I felt honored to be the only one he visited.” That was
not all, Oputa quipped, “Fela stayed the whole day, chatting and goofing
around. I finally had to tell him, ‘Fela, a beg I wan sleep’ before he
left late that night.”
Are the Kuti’s a lucky family, or is there something in their gene
pool responsible for their success? What character traits stood them in
good stead to continually conquer whatever stage they found themselves?
What reasons can be adduced for their success? As Seun Kuti puts it,
“Our direct fore bearers were so accomplished that we have to work hard
to live up to their standards.” Speaking about the man Fela, Dede
Mabiaku; his protégé has this to say about his late mentor, “He was a
perfectionist. He was one who believed that if something had to be
done, it had to be done the right way. Fela scored his songs by himself,
he scored notes for everyone and the instruments; for the guitar, the
drums, the horns, the tenor, the alto sax, and gave everybody. So you
had to rehearse it to his dictates”.
Tracing directly from JJ Ransome Kuti, to Reverend Oludotun Ransome-
Kuti and beyond, the musical line directly continues through the late
Fela, to his sons Femi, and Seun who have continued the family tradition
on the world stage; the former with his Positive Force Band, and the
latter as the helmsman of Fela’s band. Femi’s son; Made is the fifth
generation of the musical family, and is presently in the UK studying
music at his grandfather’s alma mater.
Like him or hate him, Fela was not a man you could ignore. When he
died of an AIDS related complaint in 1997, Lagos state stood still to
say goodbye to the man who bestrode the Nigerian musical, and
sociopolitical terrain like a colossus. More than a million people
comprising fans, friends, well-wishers, and even critics turned up for
his funeral at the old shrine premises; Nigeria had never seen anything
like it, and probably never will.
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