.... around a distrust of Nigeria's elites. Now they're the audience for the musical about his life.
It’s a humid Thursday evening at one of the most exclusive hotels in
Lagos, and police are everywhere. They check drinks at every entrance,
supervise metal detectors and patrol the lobby in bulletproof vests
while hundreds of wealthy Lagosians and expats sip overpriced cocktails
and munch on fancified street food.
Security is always tight at
private events in this city of 22 million, but the cops’ presence feels
especially strange because the guests who paid $15 to $160 to be at the
Eko Hotel are there to see a bare-bones version of a Broadway show
celebrating the life and music of a singer who built his reputation on
his fervent hatred of the Nigerian elite and the police who protect
them.
“Them dey break, yes, them dey steal, yes, them dey loot, yes,” Fela Kuti sang about the police and military, before he died of AIDS in 1997. “Them dey rape, yes, them dey burn, yes, them dey burn.”
Across
town, Kuti’s son, Femi, was preparing for his weekly public rehearsal
at his family’s legendary concert hall, the Shrine, where entrance is
free most nights of the week, cold beers are $1.50, and a joint doesn’t
cost much more.
The contradiction of these two coinciding events underscores some of the
inherent challenges of reproducing a Broadway show in the city where
it’s set. That’s especially true in Lagos, the West African megacity
defined by its vast income inequality, a theme central to much of Fela
Kuti’s music.
Kuti was known worldwide as the king of Afrobeat. He produced about
50 albums of politically conscious music that enraged the Nigerian
government and defended universal struggles of the working class,
earning himself comparisons to Bob Marley.
The musical “Fela!” premiered off-Broadway in New York in 2008 and moved to Broadway the following year.
Since its debut, more than a million people have seen the production
across the United States and England, and it has racked up three Tony
Awards. The show chronicles Kuti’s difficult life, features his original
music and offers audiences a lens into his rise to fame, which led to
his violent encounters with police and soldiers who targeted him for his
political lyrics.
When Kuti’s son, Femi, a famous musician in his own right,
first heard about the show celebrating his father, he claimed he would
only watch it in New York if the producers promised it would later come
to Nigeria. “When I finally saw it, I cried like a baby,” Kuti said. “I
wasn’t ready. They took my mind back.”
And
the production team kept its side of the promise, bringing “Fela!” home
for the first time in 2011 and the second time last month. But there’s a
discord between the somewhat glamorous story of Fela’s ascent and the
way a musical celebrating him had to be packaged when it was brought to
his hometown.
“When you present this play in New York or in
London, it’s a story,” said Rikki Stein, Kuti’s longtime manager and
friend, who served as executive producer for “Fela!” “In Lagos, it’s
history.”
To Nigerians, Kuti was much more than a singer. He was
one of the country’s first musicians who tried to use his fame as a
force for good. His lyrics criticized the Nigerian government for
corruption and human rights abuses, and Kuti paid the price: He was
arrested about 200 times, and his mother died from injuries she
sustained during a military raid on their home. At one point, soldiers
assigned to stop his performances burned down the original Shrine.
None
of that slowed Kuti down. He even tried to run for president. “He
proclaimed that his first act upon being elected would be to enroll the
entire population in the police force,” Stein wrote in Kuti’s obituary.
“Then, he said, ‘Before a policeman could slap you, he would have to
think twice because you’re a policeman, too.’” (Unsurprisingly, Nigerian
officials barred him from participating in the election.)
Even
two decades after his death, Kuti’s music is played and replayed across
the country, and his lyrics remain ever relevant to Nigerians’ daily
lives.
Lagos is the most populous city in Africa, and Nigeria’s massive oil
industry has created a visible wealth gap here. Decades-old waterfront
slums now sit in the shadows of high-rise condominiums, and there’s so
much demand for luxury apartments that developers are building man-made
islands to create more space to accommodate them. The cost of living in
the city’s most expensive areas is comparable to Los Angeles or New
York.
In the poorer areas, deep in the heart of mainland Lagos,
where Kuti’s son Femi lives, electricity will go out for weeks at a
time. And an unemployment crisis has prompted so many Nigerians to leave
the country that they accounted for 10% of all migrants and refugees
who crossed the Mediterranean during 2016, according to the United
Nations.
Despite Nigeria’s class struggle, time has changed Kuti’s
legacy here, allowing the very people he criticized to come to
appreciate his music and his movement. “Fela! The Concert” ran for four
nights in Lagos in April, and while it may have been marketed to a
higher-income bracket, its goal was to continue to share and celebrate
Kuti’s life and impact in Nigeria.
Kuti earned his fame while the country was ruled by a military dictatorship. It has since transitioned to a fledgling democracy, and while corruption and abuse of power
remain rampant, Kuti’s international recognition and the passage of
time have softened his reputation. Once seen solely as a maker of
protest music, now he is embraced with pride by mainstream Nigerian
culture.
In the latest rendition of the musical, the producers
dropped much of the original storyline to create a stripped-down show of
Kuti’s most famous hits. The downsizing was largely a logistical
decision, Stein said. When the musical cast visited Lagos in 2011, it
took 40 tons of equipment, five trucks and 94 people just to unload and
install the set. Despite the adjustments, the most recent show didn’t
disappoint: It was complete with a 10-piece Afrobeat band, a troupe of
dancers, and of course, Kuti himself, played by American actor Sahr
Ngaujah.
On
opening night, Kuti’s fans flooded excitedly into an air-conditioned
concert hall at the hotel, and those in the front rows were soon on
their feet. Many of the attendees who dished out for tickets are not
regulars at the Shrine, where Femi Kuti still plays twice a week. Still,
the younger Kuti understands his father’s reach, and has become more
open to remembrances that honor him in different settings.
“Everyone loved him because his touched
everyone’s pain,” Kuti said of his father. “Plumber, carpenter, driver,
house help — everybody understood him.”
Ola Abidakun, a local
government official who paid $75 for his seats to the show at the Eko
Hotel was drawn to it in part because it wasn’t a Nigerian production.
“When I heard it was performed by non-Nigerians, non-Africans, even, I
thought, ‘That’s amazing,’” he said. “‘I just have to see it.’”
Abidakun’s
comments run contrary to what Femi described as the most common
criticism his father’s friends and fans have expressed over the original
show. When talk first emerged about the American interpretation of
Kuti’s stories, many people believed it should have been produced and
cast by Nigerians. But Femi came to disagree with that sentiment, and
now sees the benefits of showcasing it with an international hook. The
level of dramatic and musical training needed to make the show work
couldn’t have happened without the support available on Broadway, he
said.
In 2011, at Femi’s request, the “Fela!” cast performed one
show for a jam-packed crowd at the Shrine, and tickets were only a few
bucks a pop. But the sheer cost of moving a massive performance abroad
means that just to break even, the tickets can’t always be so
affordable. After that opening night, the show moved to the Eko Hotel,
where it also lived for the entirety of its return to Lagos last month.
On that first night at the hotel in April, the audience called for
encore after encore.
“Fela’s life deserves to be global,” Femi
said. “He deserves for everyone to understand Nigeria and the political
climate, what was happening in his mind and what his struggles were.”
Originally published @ latimes.com
