The Nigerian icon was harassed, censored and imprisoned for singing truth to power. Today power celebrates him.
Every time I see politicians and statesmen honouring Fela Kuti, I
chuckle to myself and wish I could be there to ask with the utmost
seriousness: "Are you, sir, recommending Fela to younger generations as a
role model?"
I definitely had a good laugh when French President
Emmanuel Macron came to
Nigeria
and, accompanied by Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, visited the
New Afrika Shrine to pay tribute to Fela. It is funny because the state
authorities Ambode represents now shut down the Shrine nine years ago
for "disturbing" public peace.
In October 2017, he also unveiled a monument of Fela to
mark 20 years since his death. The famed musician, composer, human
rights activist and fierce political critic is now immortalised in
central Lagos in a fibreglass statue clad in tight, gold-coloured
clothes, reminiscent of the vibrant, eye-catching outfits he used to
wear.
It is indeed funny and ironic that Fela is getting so much attention
from those in power in Nigeria and elsewhere, given that he spent his
whole career dissing their kind. He sang against governments and
dictators, against colonialism and injustice, against oppression and
censorship.
What he taught young people in Nigeria and beyond was to defy power,
rebel and speak out - behaviour that both the Nigerian and French
authorities are known to crack down on.
Fela, the one who captured death
Fela was not an ordinary man and he was not an ordinary artist.
He accurately called himself "Abami Eda", a Yoruba phrase that roughly
translates to "the strange one".
He was born Olu'fela' Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti in 1938 to a
father who was both a priest and a teacher, and a mother who was an
anti-colonial activist. Fela's family was relatively well-off, and he
had a more comfortable childhood than most. He had access to the best
education available at the time in Nigeria. He attended Abeokuta Grammar
School and was eventually sent to Britain to study medicine, just like
his two brothers.
In London, his rebellious and artistic spirit came out, and he
decided to study music instead of medicine. He enrolled in the Trinity
College of Music and formed a band named the Koola Lobitos. His band
played "highlife" - a unique fusion of jazz and native African drums
and rhythm popular in 1960s West Africa.
In 1963, Fela moved back to Nigeria. On a tour of the United
States in 1969, Fela met Sandra Smith (also known as Sandra Izsadore) a
member of the Black Panther Party. Smith's ideas had a significant
influence on Fela. After meeting her, his music moved away from the
feel-good rhythm and spirit of highlife and evolved into a new,
politically conscious and rebellious Afrobeat genre, which he pioneered
on his return to Nigeria. As the themes of his lyrics changed from love
to social issues, Fela renamed his band The Afrika '70.
Fela soon dropped "Ransome" from his surname and replaced it
with "Anikulapo", a Yoruba phrase meaning "one who has captured death
and put it in his pouch", to convey a sense of invincibility.
At that moment, the legendary Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was born.
In 1970, he established a commune where his family and band lived and where his recording studio was set up. In
1971, he established a nightclub at the Empire Hotel in the Mainland
area of Lagos called the Afro-Spot, where he would hold regular shows.
As the commune grew, he decided to call it the Kalakuta
Republic after the Kalakuta cell in which he was kept during one of his
many arrests. He made it a "republic" because as he said, "I
wanted to identify the ways of myself or someone who didn't agree with
that Federal Republic of Nigeria created by Britishman. I was in
non-agreement."
In time, the Kalakuta Republic expanded to include neighbouring
streets. In that creative space, everyone was permitted to do
everything they wanted without harassment from the military regime that
was then ruling Nigeria. Fela regularly smoked cannabis and encouraged
his followers to do the same. Sex was also freely discussed and casually
had among members of the community.
When he abandoned Christianity as a relic of colonialism and
embraced local traditional religion, the Afro-Spot started to be known
as the Afrika Shrine and him as its chief priest.
Fela performed there three times a week from Friday to Sunday,
with the Friday show, dubbed the Yabis Night, drawing the largest
crowds. On Yabis nights, Fela opened the show by mocking himself -
mostly the shape and size of his head - and then moved on to mocking his
band, the audience and finally government officials. Fela would
diligently point out the silliness of a new government effort, dismiss
it as a failure and then break into his famed free-flowing Afrobeat.
Over time the word "Yabis" came to mean "using light-hearted sarcasm to address serious issues" in the Nigerian lexicon.
His poignant lyrics often focused on the state of Nigeria,
Africa and the rest of the world, but he would also often throw in some
lewdness. He would often break off criticising the government to talk
about the beauty of a woman's body in an explicit manner.
His shows gradually became a focal point of the growing
opposition to the military regime, which started to perceive Fela as a
serious threat and used every opportunity to put him behind bars. He was
regularly arrested on a variety of charges, most frequently for
possession of marijuana.
The straw that broke the camel's back was his song titled
Zombie, in which he sang about soldiers as mindless zombies who had no
free will and followed orders without hesitation. The military decided
it had had enough of Fela and his music, and sent hundreds of soldiers
to raid the Kalakuta Republic under the pretext of an anti-drug
operation.
The soldiers burned several houses in the area to the ground and beat
up and arrested residents. Fela's mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was
thrown out of the second-floor window of her home.
When she died a few months later because of the injuries she sustained,
Fela put her body in a coffin and took it to the gates of Dodan
Barracks, which was the seat of power in the military regime of General
Olusegun Obasanjo.
He was beaten by soldiers for his efforts, but his stunt
further fuelled the Nigerian public's growing outrage about the
incident. Obasanjo was forced to deny that he authorised the invasion
and claimed that the act was carried out by an "unknown soldier". Fela
later wrote two songs describing the events, named Unknown Soldier and
Coffin For Head of State. In the latter, the artist sang frankly about
how Obasanjo and his deputy Shehu Musa Yar'Adua killed his mother and
how he carried her coffin to the gates of Dodan Barracks.
After the destruction of the Kalakuta Republic, Fela moved his
shows to the Crossroads Hotel and made the Ikeja area of Lagos his new
home. He continued living his Bohemian lifestyle, famously marrying 27
women in one day. His attitude towards women would be questioned and described as misogynist. Fela's
life with his multiple wives was later turned into a musical, titled
Fela's Life With His Kalakuta Queens, by Nigerian arts connoisseur,
Bolanle Austen-Peters.
In the 1980s, the authorities continued to harass Fela. He resumed
writing hit after hit and speaking truth to power. In his songs, he
frequently criticised General
Muhammadu Buhari
and his deputy Tunde Idiagbon. In 1983, Fela was sentenced to five
years in jail on trumped-up charges of "currency speculation". When he
was released in 1986, he started writing
Beast of No Nation in which he mocked Buhari for launching a public "discipline" campaign:
"Make you hear this one
War against indiscipline, ee-oh
Na Nigerian government, ee-oh
Dem dey talk ee-oh
My people are useless, my people are senseless, my people are indiscipline"
His lyrics also attacked then-South African Prime Minister PW
Botha, British PM Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan. He
also slammed the United Nations for not taking action to end the
apartheid in South Africa.
When Fela Anikulapo-Kuti died of AIDS in 1997 at the age of 58,
over one million Nigerians attended his funeral at the Tafawa Balewa
Square in Lagos Island.
After his death, his children continued his legacy. His son
from his first marriage, Femi Kuti, who had started playing in Fela's
band in the late 1970s, continued to follow in his father's footsteps
and make music. Moreover, together with his sibling Yeni Anikulapo-Kuti
he founded the New Afrika Shrine - an open-air entertainment centre in
the Ikeja area of Lagos.
Recognised by power, forgotten by the music industry
One of the thousands of people who visited the New Afrika
Shrine a few months after it opened in 2002 was a young intern at the
French embassy. So captivated was that young Frenchman with what he saw,
that he returned to the venue some 16 years later as the president of
France.
On July 3, at a special event at the Shrine, Emmanuel Macron bantered
with Femi Kuti, whose music and performances he had become familiar
with during his time in Nigeria. Femi later told me that he offered to
take the president to the upper terrace of the Shrine, and he agreed. He
described how they went upstairs, with Macron's security detail and
Governor of Lagos State Akinwunmi Ambode tagging along.
After years of persecution and abuse, it seems Fela's legacy is
finally receiving the respect it deserves from the authorities he once
mercilessly criticised.
But while his music and activism are finally gaining widespread
respect, the Nigerian music scene is moving away from his legacy. In
recent years, artists from Nigeria have won global acclaim for their
songs - conveniently referred to as Afrobeat - but their music lacks
Fela's spirit of activism or rebellion.
Conscious music - the type Fela created - is music that wakes people
up to the things around them, to the reality in which they live in. It
stirs the mind of the listener to reflect on life. Conscious music comes
from an artist who is himself conscious of the world he lives in.
But Nigerian artists today seem to be living in a reality of
flash and cash: singing about money and the good life while ignoring the
daily struggles and misery of many of their fans. Some of them say
their music is a reflection of what the fans want - in Fela's time there
was also a good market for feel-good music, but he chose a different
path.
And this is where the true irony lies. The man who was despised
by the authorities is now recognised and celebrated by them in his
death, but artists who claim to be inspired by him continue to sing
songs about an illusory reality.
Demola Olarewaju
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
