The past few days, I’ve been diving into the brilliant, ostentatious, moving, tragic world of Fela Kuti. What a testament to human expression. This man was relentless in his expression against all odds. He claimed, “I refuse to live my life in fear.”

Fela Kuti
October 15th, 1938 – August 2nd, 1997

“My name is Anikulapo.
I have death in my pouch. I can’t die. You can’t kill me.”



Fela Kuti is the father of Afro-beat. He pursued his journey into music from 1958 (when he decided to study music in London instead of traditional medicine) to August 2nd 1997 when he died of Kaposi’s sarcoma brought on by AIDS. During that time, he expressed himself to the max of his abilities and in the face of great tragedy.

In 1977, Fela and the Africa ’70 released Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the zombie metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military:

Zombie
lyrics by Fela Kuti

Zombie-o, zombie (Zombie-o, zombie)Zombie-o, zombie (Zombie-o, zombie)
Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (Zombie)
Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (Zombie)
Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (Zombie)
Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie)
Tell am to go straight
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Tell am to go kill
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Tell am to go quench
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Go and kill! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Go and die! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Go and quench! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Put am for reverse! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way
Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way
Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way
Joro, jara, joro
Attention! (Zombie)
Quick march!
Slow march! (Zombie)
Left turn!
Right turn! (Zombie)
About turn!
Double up! (Zombie)
Salute!
Open your hat! (Zombie)
Stand at ease!
Fall in! (Zombie)
Fall out!
Fall down! (Zombie)
Get ready!
Halt!
Order!
Dismiss!



His fans praised Zombie. The government was infuriated and on February 18, 1977, they attacked his commune, the Kalakuta Republic, in the night. One thousand soldiers savagely blitzed the commune. Fela was severely beaten, the Kalakuta Republic burned down along with Fela’s studio, instruments and master tapes, and Fela’s elderly mother thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. Fela claimed that he would have been beaten to death if it were not for the intervention of a commanding officer, the “Unknown Soldier”, titling one of two songs in response to the attack. The second, “Coffin for the Head of State”, was accompanied by the delivery of his mother’s coffin to the main army barrack in Lagos.

In 1978 he marked the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic by marrying 27 women (many of which were his dancers, composers, and singers) and performed two notorious concerts. The first, in Accra, broke out in riots during the song “Zombie”, which led to Fela being banned from ever entering Ghana again. The second was at the Berlin Jazz Festival after which most of Fela’s musicians ditched him when they heard rumors that Fela was going to use the entirety of the proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.

“Music is the weapon – music is the weapon of the future.”

Notable song titles:

Interview on KCRW
Wed. June 18, 1986
Tom Schnable

It was an initial trip to America and a visit here to Los Angeles in 1969 that got you interested in politics to begin with…

“Oh yes, that was it.”

You just emerged from 18 months in prison, can you tell us what happened? What happened at the airport, and what happened after that?

“I was just going to come down to America to play music. You see this tour was canceled about twice. I didn’t want to come on this tour at all. I didn’t want to come on this tour because I was having problems with visa. Every time we wanted to catch the plane in Lagos there had been some kind of misfortune. So we canceled the tour. But this tour came on again suddenly, so I decided to come on this tour, and on the way to the airport this guy was so funny, you know, this customs officer did his, you know – the way he did his shit was not, it was funny, like someone was waiting for me, but I did not believe they could delay me from coming on my tour, I didn’t believe that. But it was finally delayed and they took me to the police station and locked me in the cell. And then I went for the case. The whole thing about the government then was that people like me should be incarcerated. That was the whole policy of the government, but we weren’t aware of it. So the incarceration came and they gave me five years. So, I’ve been to Kota Nigeria many times, and I was very popular in my country, okay, that time I was very popular in my country. So it seemed almost impossible for someone to jail me unjustifiably. So people could not believe it was possible. But the government wanted to prove that they could do impossible things. They wanted to scare people – terrify the citizens. They had to do it, so I was sent to jail. So that’s the whole thing.”

Do you think they were afraid of what you might say when you came to the United States and that’s why they didn’t want you to fulfill your engagement at the Hollywood Bowl in December of 1984?

“Oh yes. They were afraid of what I was going to say because I had been saying many things in Europe, you know, so they didn’t want me to come and repeat the things I was saying in Europe. That’s all, and there were maybe things they didn’t want too, because for them Fela in America was not good at all, in their own outlook of things, you know. Which is quite, uh, quite low, low out look.”

Are you afraid now that they might come after you again?

“Oh, no. You see, that’s the whole point. I refuse to live my life in fear. I don’t think about it, so if someone wants to do harm on you, it’s better for you not to know, because when you don’t know then you don’t think about it, so I don’t think about it at all. But, um, I can say I don’t care.”

But you’re not caring is a little different from not suffering and smiling.

“What I mean by I don’t care is to say I’m ready for anything. So I don’t want to think that anything could really worry my existence, if it was a terrible thing, I don’t think so.”

Fela Kuti in Concert – Army Arrangement
I love this track, and this video. It begins with a clip from an interview with Fela.

“Do you think it’s strange that people get lynched in Lagos? Nigeria should be immensely rich with its many minerals, but the majority of the population doesn’t have light, gas, water and hardly any food. Groups of young people start to take care of themselves and start gangs. The police, you say? They don’t care about these kinds of futilities.”

Because the media in Africa didn’t dare to broadcast Fela’s ideas, he was forced to make use of music. He was the leader of the MOP, Movement of the People. One of the most important goals of this movement is the realisation of a pan-African state which he grinningly calls USA, “United States of Africa”. Fela: “Pan-Africanism is an idea of Marcus Garvey and was implemented by, among others, Kwame N’krumah (The Jamaican Garvey was one of the founders of the Back to Africa movement, which inspired both the Nation of Islam and the Rastafari-movement. N’Krumah turned the country Gold Coast into Ghana, the first independent colonial state in Africa). It’s the only way to save our culture. There are many ideologies in Africa that don’t belong there. The capitalist and communist systems have always regarded Africa as a milking cow and a territory to settle their own conflicts.”

Although it is easy to tag Fela as a womanizer, one must take some effort to really observe where he was coming from. “In Africa, we teach ‘No jealousy.’” To me, Fela, in a certain sense, fully liberated himself to enjoy life as a human to the fullest without judgment, and he combined that with the cultural traditions of his country. His wives joined him in that attitude. If you look at them, they are happy. Even his eldest wife sits with him and supports him as a wife, not as a victim to ideological oversight.

“You Europeans let the church and the government tell you when you’re allowed to fuck a woman. I think that’s not normal, not natural. A woman isn’t sexually mature at a legally specified age, but at the moment she is ready for it. That time is dictated by nature and not by some law. If a woman is ready to get fucked, she gets fucked. The universe consists of structures that intertwine like rhythms, each part must do its duty. A woman … is the one that has children, that’s her task.”

“I don’t believe in your artificial laws. You call me conservative, but I’m a natural man. If my women don’t get laid, they get sulky and they are hard to live with. If I’m busy and I can’t sleep with my women, there’s a terrible atmosphere. In Africa men are the boss, there’s no doubt about it. Women think this is perfectly normal. If you would forbid an African woman to stand in the kitchen, she’d attack you. She would think you hate her and you were expelling her from her territory.”

This man was so full of vigor – Life coursed through his being and all he could do was surrender to the brimstone that fueled the fires of his passion to express. The more he yielded to Life, the more Life took advantage of his willingness with the drive to record a wapping 45 albums, lead a 70 person ensemble, perform songs 10-30 minutes in length, and pleasure 27 wives on a regular basis.
“Because I love sex I manage to keep this group of women together, I fuck as often as I can. On average I sleep with two or three women a day. That’s a necessity. If they don’t get their share regularly, they become very moody and there’ll be trouble.”

It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo Kuti to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw – bands have based entire careers on single strands of his music. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an irredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac.

I used to have a band teacher that would say, “When something challenges you, that means it’s pushing you out of your comfort zone – GO THERE! The only way you will really grow and master your instrument is by being willing to be uncomfortable for a little bit and push the edge of your abilities, of your comfort zone. And when you’re getting done with your session and you’re feelin’ the pain in your face, just push yourself another 5 or 10 more minutes longer. Push the envelope people!” This has been priceless information for all of my life, all applications and interactions. I think Fela helps us to grow. If you listen to the song “Custom Check Point” on the mp3 player (skip through a few if it’s not already playing), the first minute or so is pretty uncomfortable. Then it goes into a mesmerizing, ceremonial worship slash funk Aphro-beat – perfect for headphone listening – that sets you on a journey to the streets of Lagos. You can feel the commotion, the violence, the raw, unfiltered expressions, the kids selling marijuana on the streets, the bums sleeping outside the clubs, packed with people sweating out their angers, their fears, their love thumping the world of Nigeria, of Africa, sending out a message to the world: “We will not lay down our bodies, our voices, our culture, our families to the rule of oppression in our country. You may try, and many may die for it, but to sacrifice who we are, our expression and love for Life, is to sacrifice our lives. It is a genocide. If you take that away, there will be no Africa left. There will only be a hollow shell where there was once a soul – the soul of Africa.”

I think Fela is a perfect of example of how you can’t judge someone simply by their actions – you must be willing to get real with what’s really behind the man’s doing. It’s not what you do, but who you are that matters. Really feeling into Fela, the man was without hesitation fully engaged in passionate love making with Life in every breath that he yielded to. He was wild, fierce and feral, yet powerful and commanding, and even yet humble and dignified and treated all his family with equality and mutual respect. You see this in how his family looks at him. Several fought for him when he was incarcerated. Don’t let his experiences of unfathomable trauma mislead you, this man was no victim. For he was a triumphant victor in life. He loved Life, he loved Africa, and wanted nothing more than to simply bring his family together in peace and unity; to redeem the land as a home for his culture and for his human family. I believe in Fela Kuti, I believe one day his dream will come true.

“Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa.”



Fela Kuti in Concert – Nigeria




References/Sources:
http://www.afrobeatmusic.net/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrobeat
http://blacksounds.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/art-in-black/
http://blacksounds.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/fela-kuti-psicodelic-afro/
http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=mb860618fela_kuti
http://www.rocksbackpages.com/artist.html?ArtistID=kuti_fela
http://www.centreforafricanmusic.org/fela_kuti.htm
http://www.urbanimage.tv/docs/worldmusicfelakuti.htm
http://pitchfork.com/news/36549-fela-kuti-catalogue-to-be-reissued