Fela lives on!

The Nigerian musician’s legacy is still intact.

02/08/2002 - 

Five years have passed since that fateful day on 2 August 1997 when the news spread around the world that Fela Anikulapo Kuti had died in his home in Lagos. The legendary musician was 58 years old. Like Marley, he was the voice of a people forgotten by the West. Like Marley’s reggae, Fela’s afro-beat had the power to frighten political rulers.

Fela stood for hope and democracy, tolerance and exhilarating freedom and his vision of Afro-centrism is still, unfortunately, a red-hot issue today. The spirit of the man known as the “Black President” lives on in his 70 or more albums, in his scathing songs and the ideals they sowed in peoples’ minds and in the tribute album Red, Hot & Riot : A Tribute To Fela, to be released in October 2002.

Marley suffered from cancer, Fela from AIDS, but both chose not to fight against their illnesses until the very last moment. The two legendary musicians shared an incredible sense of fatalism. As if their inevitable sacrifice could wash us of our sins while serving as a warning at the same time. Both were icons who embodied an ideal of freedom in their music, not only giving a voice to the oppressed but also shielding them from their oppressors. Miles Davis had liberated jazz, Fela would break the chains which fettered African culture. Five years after his death however, not much has changed on the African continent: corrupt regimes, intolerance and violence, hunger and disease are still rampant. As long as these injustices continue, Fela Anikulapo Kuti will continue to live on through his music.

And as if to prove this, last year, the song Time Travel was the opening track on Chicago rapper Common’s third album Like Water For Chocolate. Sub-titled A Tribute To Fela, the electrifying album featured the voice of Fela’s son Femi Kuti and the legendary trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
And then later this year there will be the release of Red, Hot & Riot : Tribute To Fela, a compilation featuring a range of afro-beat, jazz and hip-hop collaborations and interpretations of Fela’s music by African artists such as Babaa Maal, Cheikh Lo, Ray Lema, Manu Dibango, Positive Black Soul and Fela’s prodigious son Femi Kuti and American artists such as Bilal, Macy Gray, d’Angelo, Meshell, Nile Rodgers, Archie Shepp and Taj Mahal. As with the previous Red Hot compliations: Red, Hot & Blue (1990) (interpretations of Cole Porter songs), Red, Hot & Cool (1994), Red, Hot & Rio (1996) (compilation of Brazilian standards to raise awareness in a country where the virus is spreading at one of the most rapid rates in the world) and Red, Hot & Rhapsody (1998) (compilation of Gershwin pieces), the idea behind the Fela compilation is raising awareness of the dangers of the HIV virus and raising funds for research.
Red, Hot & Riot : Tribute To Fela is a reminder that although free love was an explosive part of Fela’s revolt, it was his sexual promiscuity which ultimately caused his death. At his graveside, his brother Olikoye Ransome Kuti said: "Fela died of heart failure, the result of numerous complications related to the AIDS virus which he had contracted."

Femi’s mother Remi Taylor Kuti, Fela’s only legal wife died on 13 January 2002. The couple were married in London in 1960 a few months after having arrived to study music in Trinity College. A natural charmer, Fela easily captivated future brothers-in-arms-musicians, such as Ginger Baker, the drummer from Cream (Clapton’s group) who would later record Fela’s London Scene with him in 1970. In the Marquee and London clubs, Fela was confronted with black R&B adapted from the US scene. After meeting the legendary Nigerian in 1973, the “godfather of soul” James Brown was to take inspiration from Fela’s pure African beats for his album The Big Payback, acknowledging that he was directly influenced by Fela when he composed tracks such as Time Is Running Out.

Fela’s political sensibilities were awakened while in LA in 1969, sparking off a lifelong revolt against oppression in Nigeria. He discovered Malcolm X, Elderidge Cleaver, the Black Panthers, Afrocentrism… and the incendiary soul of James Brown. His visit to America was a political and musical electric shock. The laid back jazz of his group Koola Lobitos disappeared, black consciousness and the new world which opened up before Fela had transformed him. In his own words: "I was just another musician singing love songs, songs about rain. What did I know about politics ? ". That is, until he met black activist Sandra Isidore who had defiantly suffered imprisonment in her fight for black rights. She provoked Fela’s revolt: no to the idea of Africa as a slave nation, no to the myth of the white man’s infallibility and his neocolonisation through capitalist corruption.

When he returned home to Lagos, he fuelled his music with this political ideology, which would raise him to such heights. His idea, his intent was to change the whole system. He injected piano, then keyboards and finally a horn section along the lines of a James Brown show into his music. With Africa 70, his radical new line-up, Fela launched his revolutionary afro-beat. He set up headquarters at the Shrine, the club where people came in ever increasing numbers to listen to Fela’s nightly funky “shamanic” exhortations which would continue until dawn. Fela would slam western companies and their stranglehold on African economy through the so-called black elite enslaved by the fruits of corruption. He declared all men free and equal and preached expression of this freedom through sex and taking igbo, the local marijuana, to open the mind.

In 1973, the year he returned to Lagos, Paul, Linda McCartney and their musicians arrived in the Nigerian capital to record what was to become their masterpiece Band On The Run. Paul had already got his hands on numerous Fela recordings back in London and as soon as he arrived in Lagos, the ex-Beatle headed straight for Yaba, the suburb where the Shrine was to be found. “When Fela and his group began to play, recalls McCartney following on from an unbelievable intro, I gradually felt the tears welling up and before long I couldn’t stop myself crying for joy: it was a very unnerving experience! " After an hour long introduction, Fela would enter the club just before midnight, to a smouldering instrumental afro-groove, and head for a shrine set up to all his African heroes where he would pour libations, smoke “Nigerian natural grass” and recite incantations. Then he would take a long drink of ogogoro, the local illicit gin and, taking his time, like a warrior chief leading his army to battle, Fela would finally reach the stage and the emotional marathon, which would continue until the early hours of the morning, could commence.

Before each song, he would speak directly to the crowd, setting the scene for the songs. Fela knew how to suspend time - his inflamed compositions would sometimes stretch to over half an hour. He would take advantage of the numerous solos to dance with abandon with his wild black panthers, the 27 pelvis-gyrating singers and dancers who, in an act of provocation, he wedded all in the same ceremony. The group would be right with him, the drummer and guitarist setting the base rhythm as Fela installed himself at his Hammond organ, shouldered by the horns before launching into his wild fevered rhythms. After a long 2 hour or more set, the musicians could finally take a break while Fela would launch into his Yabi sessions, his long diatribes naming and slamming corrupted politicians. Nobody was safe from Fela’s invectives, not even the head of state. The Shrine was a breath of fresh air, an oasis of freedom in a desert of oppression. Fela suddenly became the most popular man in the country.

His growing notoriety brought with it trouble with the Nigerian military authorities. The first attack was on 30 April 1974 when hundreds of policemen invaded the club at dawn, violently assaulting the crowd inside. Men and women were indiscriminately thrown to the ground and beaten up. "Ooooooh, I was beaten by police ! So much…" recalled Fela. "How can a human being stand so much beating with clubs and not die ?". But that was only the beginning. Over the years, the Shrine would be repeatedly raided and the "Black President" regularly jailed, on the whims of the Nigerian generals and their elastic notion of power. Despite all this, Fela always remained firmly rooted in Lagos, refusing all the gilded offers of exile in the West. To defend himself, he built a utopian bunker, the Kalahura Republic, but the barbed wire and walls couldn’t hold back the army tanks.

Violence rained down on Fela yet again and his mother Funmilayo Ransome Kuti was thrown out of a window during an attack by Obasanjo’s troops and later died as a result of her injuries. A wounded lion can be dangerous: Fela, in protest, laid the coffin of his mother, the ex-leader of the Union of Nigerian Women, on the steps of the presidential palace and wrote the furious Coffin For A Head Of State relating the incident, a record which was heard the world over. Up until the end of his life, Fela would be persecuted, imprisoned and exiled in the name of justice. His message is, unfortunately, as relevant today as it was 20 years when he was chanting International Thief Thief (ITT) denouncing the evils of capitalism and globalisation. No Agreement he sang, echoing the Spanish republicans cry against Franco’s men No pasaran. Fela, we miss your purity, uprightness, integrity and utopian ideals so much… but that is probably exactly why you still live on!

Black President : The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, an exhibition of works by artists who have been inspired by Fela is scheduled to open on 10 July 2003 at the New Museum Of Contemporary Art in New York. The exhibition will continue until October and then travel internationally, passing through Paris.

To be released in October 2002: Red, Hot & Riot : Tribute To Fela (Universal)
All about Fela on-line

Gérard  Bar-David