Fela - worth your time
Orevaoghene Charles Obaro
THE ARTIST WHO SEES AND SAYS IT ALL
By Uduma Kalu
Fela
ART critics from Aristotle to even traditional African music teachers
agree that what confers greatness on a work of art is its timeless
relevance to the people.
This is where Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's music comes in. Of course, Fela
might not have been a relevant figure if he had continued with the
kind of love music he was composing and singing in his Koola Lobitos
days in the 60s.
Femi Osofisan in an essay, The Message in the Myth argues that Fela's
choice of love music was frustrated and he left for Ghana. After 17
months, he returned but was again, frustrated. Fela, before his music
education in London, as Chief Mofolorunsho Ojomo, his ex-manager said,
played the organ at Abeokuta Grammar School, his alma mater.
His life at this period in time was devoid of any clear cut ideology
of life. He was born into a well-to-do middle class family and had
grown up within a colonial enclave which taught the superiority of
the whiteman. Government was only alright when it protected the
wealth of those in government. Such a colonial upbringing produced an
individual whose ideas of success depended on conforming with these
colonial values, embracing Christianity and the colonial education.
For a musician achieving success was to chase fame, glamour, money
and respect. At this period, especially as it concerned the Nigerian
civil war, Fela said: "I wasn't politically minded at all. I made my
comments as a citizen. I was just another musician playing with Koola
Lobitos and singing love songs, songs about rain... what did I know?
"
It was his trip to the United States that changed Fela's life and
music. He got into contact with the Black Panther Movement and the
writings of Malcolm X through one Sandra. Sandra told Fela to reject
the statement that the whites taught Africans and that Africans were
slaves. Rather, Africa had its history.
Fela's understanding of Malcolm X's book was the education that
fanned his new, and revolutionary ideology. He returned to Nigeria
with this ideology that he was going to change the whole system. This
marked him out as a rebel, a trait in him which dates back to his
college days when he organised a group to reject orders from the
principal his father, and to his mother, a woman activist.
But Fela had to find a new and appropriate mode of musical expression
for new knowledge. The limitations of Koola Lobitos' jazz and
highlife imitation had to give way for an ancient African music that
must have a modern African appeal, yet authentically African. He
cultivated a strange personality and carved an aura of eccentricity
around himself. Fela said of this new appearance and its impact in
Lagos: "I came back with the intent to change the whole system. I
didn't know I was going to have such horrors! I didn't know they were
gonna give me such opposition because of my new Africanism. How could
I have known? As soon as I got back here, I started to preach and my
music did start changing, according to how I experienced the life and
culture of my people."
This new brand of music blended with the music of Ambrose Campbell
with piano and trumpet; and with chant which was more of a
declamation than song, Fela charged into the music world again with
Afrobeat whose finishing touches were in 1973 when Fela returned from
London to Lagos and embraced a kind of radicalism which opposed the
present military views of the time.
Fela changed his Koola Lobitos to Africa 70 and found a place for
himself called the Shrine since most hotels and public halls like the
City Hall rejected him with the police always in his trail.
This was the arrival of Fela. His strange behaviour made people
describe him in different ways. He was a rebel, prophet, a mystic,
social critic, philosopher. All these, combined with his brand of
music and directness make him evergreen and always relevant to the
people he represented.
The timelessness of his music transcends beyond the military years he
fought against and died in. Indeed, Fela's music stretches throughout
the precolonial, colonial and post colonial days as it refutes the
colonial claim of white supremacy to military dictatorship,
corruption, police brutality, state organised terrorism, cultural
relegation, racism, inequality and the democracy practised in Nigeria
and Africa in general.
He accused the police in Alagbon Close of abusing their positions and
of employing extra-judicial means to exert force in name of law and
order.
"Dem no get respect for human beings/dem no know say you get blood
like them/dem go send them dog to bite - bite you/dem go point the
gun for your face/dem go lock you for months and months/dem dey call
am investigation".
He condemned colonialism as the cause of black man's suffering "Some
people come from far away land/dem fight us take our land/na since
then trouble start o/our riches dem take away/in return dem give us
dem colony/dem take our culture away from from us/ dem give us dem
culture". He became critical of western values, including education.
We have lost, our sovereignty to western education and
intellectualism," he said in March, 1997.
Fela would thus rebuke those who bleach their skin to look like white
women. But bleaching does not stop their blackness. He would reject
the kind of African feminism adopted from a western view which
antagonised itself with men. He was later to label Reagan, Thatcher
and Botha as oppressors of black man.
He explored the life of the city, describing the chaotic situation of
Ojuelegba with its criss-crossing roads, its confusion and violence.
The city as depicted by Ojuelegba had first been explored by his
compatriot, Cyprian Ekwensi, whose novels were mainly set there.
Fela castigation even if centred on the city touched on government
bootlickers, corrupt contractors in ITT. Clear Road for Jagajaga is a
song which Fela used to lampoon the excesses of contractors and
frenzied rush for political gratifications. He lambasted religious
charlatons masquerading as divine representatives and spiritual
leaders.
Fela did not hold brief for official deceit and administrative
recklessness. He was impatient with government uncompleted projects.
In Beast of no Nation, Fela reasoned that government's declaration on
human rights were 'animal talk'.
Fela continued these verbal attacks beyond his music. In press
conferences, he accused the military and the civilian governments of
enriching themselves with its tragic effects on the people. He called
for democracy, not military rule. In 1986, shortly after Dele Giwa's
death, Fela repudiated the horrible society the military had created.
He accused those in power of being responsible for Giwa's death. They
are the drug barons but use the poor as couriers. These people, the
elite can kill when it is necessary to do so.
Fela was pessimistic about the legal system in Nigeria. In 1994, he
declared in a conference to mark his 50th birthday, "I will not go to
any court in Nigeria because there is no justice here and I have
learnt my lessons now". In the Unknown Soldier, a song that dwells on
how Fela's Kalakuta Republic was destroyed by soldiers and how a
court had judged that the nite club was destroyed by 'unknown
soldiers', he sees the legal system in Nigeria as government conduit
pipes, puppets that dance to the dictates of their payers. It brings
to fore, the hypocrisy of the judicial system and is the mark of the
highest judicial fraud.
But then many of such kangaroo courts have existed and still exist.
There are the Jankara courts in Lagos which try somebody by having
another person impersonating the accused. The real person would bear
the brunt of the court's ruling. This same court tried Ken Saro Wiwa,
Zango Kataf riots accused and the OLadipo Diya group condemned for
coup plotting. Many Nigerians are still languishing in police cells
across the land awaiting trial. They have spent years there, and the
legal system cannot defend them.
Democracy thus had its own definition in Nigeria for Fela. He was
sceptical of it, though, he was for popular participation in politics.
For Fela, the term like an unending meaning of a word can mean demon-
cracy or crazy-demon or demonstration of crazy and; was worse than
apartheid - black killing black.
People have their meanings of democracy. For some, it is an out come
of a trensition that throws up new people in power to loot the
treasury. He charged that all Nigerian leaders stole from the
national treasury. Democracy is to achieve fraud, rigging, corruption,
thuggery and violence resulting in murder and death.
This same pessimism is expressed in Overtake don Overtake Overtake
where he equated prison life with craziness of democracy. He lamented
the hopeless state of Nigeria, saying that he had said all that could
be said to change the country but nothing had happened. Police are
still hostile. The people are still suffering, jumping Molues and
sitting and standing like packed sardines with smiles. Political
instability and the wreckage left behind by those rampaging as
Messiahs of the people, from Liberia to Congo still existed.
Government, whether civilian or military are the same. It is a crazy
world, and this kind of world has produced a kind of government that
kills its own citizens, delighting in evil, theft, fraud, injustice
among other evils.
This spokesman and civil rightist posture endeared Fela to the people.
They loved and thronged to him. They saw him as their hero who could
speak out for them. And Fela spoke for them indeed. He charged them
to look more into their culture and stop being a robot for whites in
Mr. Follow Follow, Open and Close and Why Blackman Dey Suffer. These
songs marked his revolt against the ruling government and post
colonial dispositions. He had criticised Gowon's kleptomaniac years.
But the problems persisted.
Fela would summarise that the people are fearful, too cowardly to
kick unjust governments out. They fear for what they do not even know,
and the excuses for not taking the bull by the horn are usually
personal and selfish, showing no public interest. Yet, they move
about, suffering and smiling.
He rebuked the unavailability of basic infrastructure in the land.
Lack of electricity and water saying that only the elite and their
ruling class cronies enjoy these things in Original Sufferhead; but
he noted that people are left with military and police intimidation.
He would charge them to resist tyranny and protest. The authorities
can only be evil if the people let it be so.
For lovers of Fela's music, its relevance, its marked protestation,
his numerous confrontations with the system are signposts of
challenge to evil. Fela represented a moral obligation and aspiration
his people desired to express and chase their oppressors away. Like
Bob Marley's reggae music to its lovers, Fela chided those who
corroborated with the bad governments to inflict injury on their own
people.
Some people could smile away their problems as Fela said they do in
Mr. Follow Follow. Religion, being an opium of the masses make people
smile away their problems yet the problems still exist. The solution,
rather, lies in them, and for this, coupled with vigorous rhythm of
his music, makes Fela an irresistible artist to ignore.
****************
Friday, July 30, 1999
DRAMA RITUAL OF THE WEIRD BEING
Seun and Dede.... on course to night at the Satellite One Nite Club,
Surulere.
MOST people would readily agree that pidgin is a very seductive
language. This has, perhaps, accounted for its rampant usage amongst
such radical Nigerian writers like the late Maman Vatsa, Ken Saro-
Wiwa, Tunde Fatunde. Even the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka flirted
graciously with pidgin in most of his plays.
The term radicalism here means "an inclination, a tendency favouring
extreme changes, which may also include a return to the basic
principles of life distorted or dislocated through varied processes
of corruption". The radical individual is what Round Hayman, the
drama critic, called "serious challenger to orthodoxy." Perhaps more
than any other challenger to orthodoxy, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had
perfected the seductive ambience of pidgin in his Afro-beat genre of
music. Radicals in the mould of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti are predicated
upon what Robert Brustein called "broken hierarchies, discredited
values and lapsed institutions of traditional cultures." Undoubtedly
corruption and such cumulative of varied psycho-social factors
constitute the major stirrings to the iconoclast's artistic impetus.
Lindsay Barrett asserted that: "The theme of his rebellion never
changed and the basic anarchy of his vision was always tempered by
the fundamental truths which he sought to elucidate and express..."
Odia Ofeimun (of course he was arguing about universalism) once
hinted that Fela's music can be appropriated for an American
performance. However, this is a gross understatement of Fela's
artistic drive as a cursory review - discussion would reveal that
Fela's Afro-beat subsumes in the super-structure at the Afrikan
Shrine. Fela's artistic milieu can be classified into what Biodun
Jeyifo called "the ebullient and nuanced performance traditions and
idioms... of ritual theatre of Africa."
Fela's performance strategy embodies the quintessence of what
exponents of African theatre attempted to recapture, particularly its
method of community-oriented audience participation. Mention need be
made here briefly of Grotowski's liberation of the spiritual energy,
the fundamental paradigm that theatre be reduced to its essential
element, and also, Soyinka's "ritualistic sense of space" as in the
production of Kongi's Harvest in the bare floor of the Federal Palace
Hotel, Lagos.
Fela's shrine typifies, albeit crudely, that Grotowskian essential
element. Sola Olorunyomi reveals the adornment of Fela's shrine with
sculptural representation of four divinities and pictoral
representation of Nkrumah, Lumumba, Malcolm and Funmilayo Ransome-
Kuti. The juxtaposition of these ritual paraphernalia and personae
informs the wholesome construction of Fela's ideological framework:
Pan-Africanism which turns out kaleidoscopic expletives on the varied
forms of imperalism. Music, therefore, becomes a tool, a mere
instrument in Fela's ritual worship of the deities which also include
mask performance.
Mask performance is an integral theatrical aspect of the ancient
Yoruba. Fela's use of mask performance is reminiscent of the egungun
ritual festival, one of the historical sources of African theatre.
Richards Allain view, every town its orisha, every orisha its priest;
Fela was the chief priest of Afrikan Shrine.
Fela: Na true I want talk again o
Chorus: Well well
Fela: Na true I wan talk again o
Chorus: Well well
Fela: If I dey lie o
Chorus: Well well
Fela: Make Ozidi punish me o
Chorus: Well well
Fela: Odumare punish me o
Chorus: Well well
Invoking the deities and God, as it were, straightens Fela's creative
impulse through what Olorunyomi called "mnemonic devices". His
dramaturgic narratives becomes rather confrontational in songs like
Authority Stealing:
Fela: You be thief
Chorus: I no be thief
Fela: You be robber
Chorus: I no be robber
Fela: You be army robber
Other songs in this category include Zombie, International Thief
Thief, Vagabond in Power.
A great majority of Fela's songs were condemnations of the vices and
foibles of society. These songs include Confusion, Yellow Fever, Go
Slow, Lady, Trouble Sleep yanga wake am, Suffering and Smiling.
Generally speaking, Fela was recorded to have produced133 records.
And most were vitriolics on the foibles of the State, culminating in
the attack on his "Kalakuta Republic."
Finally, most critiques on Fela have tended to ascribe his ritual as
an aspect of his music. This is a misappropriation of Fela's psycho-
social and metaphysical world-view. Afro-beat, per se} is an offshoot
of Fela's cultic engagements in which symbolic codes of Yee paripa
had variously manifested in different songs and expressions.
Fela's music is a translation of the Oro cultic symbol into universal
language. Hitherto, ritual belong to an entirely coded milieu. And
its transposition in form of Afro-beat at the Afrikan Shrine
implicated Fela in what Robert Escarpit called creative treason.
- Contributed by Ajumeze Henry
****************
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hyde...@my-deja.com
> His life at this period in time was devoid of any clear cut ideology
> of life. He was born into a well-to-do middle class family and had
> grown up within a colonial enclave which taught the superiority of
> the whiteman. Government was only alright when it protected the
> wealth of those in government. Such a colonial upbringing produced an
> individual whose ideas of success depended on conforming with these
> colonial values, embracing Christianity and the colonial education.
> For a musician achieving success was to chase fame, glamour, money
> and respect. At this period, especially as it concerned the Nigerian
> civil war, Fela said: "I wasn't politically minded at all. I made my
> comments as a citizen. I was just another musician playing with Koola
> Lobitos and singing love songs, songs about rain... what did I know?
> "
> - Contributed by Ajumeze Henry
> ****************
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For africa orientation and more visit:
> http://www.africaservice.com/index.html
I think you missed the point a little. Most of your article seems
acurate, but the statment above I feel is a little off! I had the
pleasure of meeting with Fela on several occaisions before his death.
Maybe Fela saw governments that worked better than the government in
place in Nigeria. I am not saying that he thought that the other
governments were perfect, but far better than the one that he grew up
with. Better than the one which tortured him and killed his mother! Far
better than the one which leaves his people starving while driving
around like big men in giant mercedes! The sad thing is that most
Nigerians are fully aware of the problems as was Fela. Fela was the one
who was strong enough to say and do anything about it, and should be
remembered for that! The most sad part is that things are still that
way today, or even worse under the rule of your own people my friend!!
I am glad you posted the article though.
-----------------------------------------------
Steve Hyde
http://www.hydesite.com/
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