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FELA
FELA Kalakuta Notes Fela Kuti was the outstanding African musician of the 20th century and Afrobeat is his lasting legacy. This book, lavishly illustrated with studies by two of the leading photo-graphers of African culture and evocative snapshots by the author, adds a unique insight to the growing body of literature on Fela and provides a guide to the music that rocked a continent. John Collins stayed and played with Fela during the golden days of the 1970s and this is his account of that dramatic period. No-one else could have written this book and noone is better equipped to place these astonishing events in perspective. From now on, it’s a case of ‘Who No Know, Go Know’.
Kalakuta Notes
AFROBEAT NO GO DIE!
FELA Kalakuta Notes
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Collins
John Collins first went to Ghana in 1952 as a small child. He plays guitar, harmonica and percussion and has been actively involved in the Ghanaian and wider West African music scene since 1969, as a musician, band leader, recording producer and engineer, music union executive, writer and music journalist. He served on the Executive Board of the Musicians’ Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) in the late 1970s, ran his Bokoor guitar band during the 1970s, his Bokoor Recording Studio in the 1980s and 90s and from 1991 to 1998 was a Trustee on the Ghana National Folklore Board. He is currently a Full Professor in the Music Department of the University of Ghana, acting chairman of the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation (BAPMAF), manager of the Bokoor Recording Studio and co-leader of the Local Dimension highlife band that plays highlife, Afrobeat and northern Ghanaian sahelian music. He has published numerous articles on African music and over the past 35 years has influenced and inspired countless other activists, journalists, writers, historians, musicologists and musicians. His previous books include African Pop Roots. The Inside Rhythms of Africa (1985), Musicmakers of West Africa (1985), ET Mensah, King of Highlife (1986), West African Pop Roots (1992) and Highlife Time (1996).
John Collins Tropentheater
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FELA Kalakuta Notes
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FELA
Kalakuta Notes JOHN COLLINS with a discography by RONNIE GRAHAM and photographs by JAK KILBY, RICO D’ROZARIO and THIERRY SECRETAN
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KIT Publishers KIT Tropentheater
© 2009 KIT Publishers – Amsterdam © John Collins 2009 – Accra, Ghana
Mauritskade 63 P.O. Box 95001 1090 HA Amsterdam, The Netherlands
John Collins has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1958 to be identified as the author of this work
E-mail: publishers@kit.nl tropentheater@kit.nl Website: www.kit.nl/publishers www.tropentheater.nl
Text John Collins Photographs Jak Kilby, Rico d’Rozario and Thierry Secretan Discography Ronnie Graham Production and design Of the record press, London Studio Agaatsz bNO, Meppel Printing High Trade, Zwolle ISBN 9789068327489 NUR 680
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Foreword I FIRST HEARD Fela’s music in the late 1960s when early Afrobeat singles such as “Mr Who Are You”, “Chop and Quench” (“Jeun Koku”) became popular in Ghana. I first saw him play live in 1972 when he and the Africa 70 came to play at the University of Ghana. I worked with Fela on many occasions, both in Ghana and Nigeria, during the 1970s. In November 1974 I stayed at his old Africa Shrine (the Empire Hotel in Mushin, Lagos) with members of the Basa-Basa and Bunzu Soundz bands, the resident groups of Faisal Helwani’s Napoleon Nightclub in Osu, Accra, Faisal was Fela’s old friend from the 1960s and his first promoter in Ghana.1 On the first day of our stay at the Africa Shrine we were tear-gassed, as Fela’s Kalakuta Republic residence across the road was attacked by 60 riot police trying to retrieve a young run-away girl he had been harbouring. I stayed at the Shrine again in December 1975 en route to visit and play with Victor Uwaifo in Benin City. It was on this occasion that I formally interviewed Fela.2 In 1977 I acted in Fela’s autobiographical film The Black President, met his militant mother in Abeokuta and helped in the redubbing of the film’s soundtrack, destroyed by an army attack on the Kalakuta Republic. I also met Fela on the numerous occasions he visited Ghana in the mid-1970s, usually at Faisal Helwani’s club, which in many ways was a Ghanaian outpost of
the Kalakuta. The last time I saw Fela personally was in 1981 in Amsterdam when Fela and his band were on tour. In addition to my own reminiscences, diaries, interviews and journalistic work, and the 1975 interview, this book also draws on Ghanaian and Nigerian newspaper cuttings and interviews. Two interviews with Faisal Helwani, were undertaken shortly after Fela’s death. I also enjoyed long conversations with two eminent Ghanaian musicians, Stan Plange and Joe Mensah, both of whom knew Fela intimately in the early days. I also spoke to George Gardner, Fela’s Ghanaian lawyer during the late 1970s, and the musician Johnny Opoku Acheampong of the Ghanaian El Eldorado’s band (included Afred ‘Kari’ Bannerman) that toured Ghana with Fela in 1968. Fela employed several Ghanaian musicians in his band and I have included an important interview with his 1970s’ conga player, “JB” Koranteng, and also Fela’s 1980s percussionists Frank SisiYoyo and Obiba Sly Colllins. Nigerians I talked to include the musicologist Meki Nzewi, and Smart Binete, who organised Fela’s last Ghanaian tour. I interviewed the Ghanaian musicians Mac Tontoh of Uhuru highlife dance band (later the Osibisa Afro-rock band), and Nana Danso, whose Pan African Orchestra currently includes instrumental versions of some of Fela’s songs,
1 In 1974 Faisal and Fela teamed up to record at the EMI studio in Apapa, Lagos, including two Afrobeats, “Onukpa Shwapo” and “Yeah Yeah Ku Yeah”, on which I played harmonica. These were later released on the Makossa label as “Makola Special” and “Volta Suite”. 2 This interview was first published in my 1985 book Music Makers of West Africa (Three Continents Press Washington DC/Passeggiatta Press Colorado). Later, edited, versions appeared in two other of my books: West African Pop Roots (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) and Highlife Time (Accra: Anansesem Press, 1996).
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FELA: KALAKUTA NOTES and Dr Willie Anku of the University of Ghana, who has transcribed several of Fela’s songs. I would also like to thank the following for keeping me up-to-date on the current Nigerian popular music and international Afro-beat music scene: Sola Olorunyomi (Ibadan University), Lemi Ghariokwu (artist), Pascal Ott (French Embassy Nigeria/Ghana), Jahman Anikulapo (Nigerian Guardian newspaper), Austin Emielu (Ilorin University), Dapo Adeniyi (Lagos Glendora Art Magazine), Kole Israel Payne (Nigerian music distributor), Fidelis Akpom(Nigerian music promoter), Orlando Julius (Nigerian Afro-soul pioneer), Panji Anoff, (Ghanaian Pidgin Studio music producer), Wolfgang Koenig (German Multi-Cult Radio), Robert Urbanus (Sterns Records UK), Jesse Shipley (American music scholar), Stan Rijven (Dutch World Music journalist), Peter King (Nigerian trumpeter), Bas Springer (Boudisque Amsterdam), Rita Ray (Afrika Shrine UK), Charles Eassmon
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(Afro-Caribbean Circuit UK). Thanks for assistance with initial editing and formatting to Ronnie Graham, Roger Thomas and Julian Hynes. Thanks for the discographical assistance (Chapter 16) from Ronnie Graham, Rikki Stein, Toshiya Endo and Michael Veal. Photos credits Thierry Secretan/Cosmos, Jak Mushin Kilby, Creole Records, the John Collins/BAPMAF music archives in Accra, Yemo Nunu, Lemi Ghariokwu, www.worldbeat.canada.com, Cary Sullivan, Sir ‘Afro’ Fifi, Mac Tontoh, Bugs Steffen/Ade Bantu, Victor Uwaifo, Strut of London, and Kip Consult and the Evergreen Musical Company of Lagos. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the research and travel expenses given me in 2002/3 from the West African Research Centre in Dakar, Senegal. I have also included abbreviated transcriptions of many of Fela’s lyrics, where ■■■ they are relevant to the story. RICO D’ROZARIO
RICO D’ROZARIO
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Contents Foreword
5
About the author
10
Introduction
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Part 1: EARLY DAYS 1
The birth of Afrobeat
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2
Joe Mensah remembers
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3
Fela in Ghana
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4
Stan Plange remembers
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Part 2: CONFRONTATION 5
Kalakuta is born
37
6
‘JB’ talks about Fela
43
7
The Kalakuta Republic
49
8
The Black President
69
9
Amsterdam and after
75
Part 3: RETROSPECT 10
Mac Tontoh on Fela
85
11
Frank talk about Fela
93
12
Obiba plays it again
101
13
Smart Binete sorts it out
107
14
Anku checks out the beat
109
15
Nana Danso orchestrates
115
16
Fela: the full works
123
17
Interview with Fela
131
18
Afterthougts, updates and ‘Felabrations’ 139
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About the author JOHN COLLINS (full name E. John Collins) first visited Ghana as a child in 1952 and has been actively involved in the West African music scene since 1969. He plays guitar, harmonica and percussion and has worked, recorded and performed with numerous Ghanaian and Nigerian bands and individual musicians including the Jaguar Jokers, Francis Kenya, Koo Nimo, Victor Uwaifo, ET Mensah, Abladei, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Kwaa Mensah, Bob Pinado, the Bunzus, the Black Berets, TO Jazz, SK Oppong and Atongo Zimba. During the 1970s Collins ran his own Bokoor Band Band and between1982 and the mid 1990’s was operating the Accra-based Bokoor Recording Studio which has released nine records on vinyl, 60 commercial cassettes and, recently, four CDs (Electric Highlife on Naxos, Vintage Palmwine and Bokoor Beats on the Otrabanda label and Guitar and Gun on Earthworks/Sterns). Collins is also a music journalist and writer with around 100 publications on African popular and neo-traditional music. His most recent book is African Musical Symbolism in Contemporary Perspective: Roots, Rhythms and Relativity (2004). He has made numerous radio and TV broadcasts, including more than 40 for the BBC. In 1978 he wrote and presented the BBC’s first-ever series of radio programmes on African popular music, In The African Groove. He has been consultant/facilitator for eight documentary films: including the BBC’s Repercussions, Brass Unbound by IDTV of Amsterdam, Highlife for Huschert Realfilm of Germany, African Cross Rhythms/Listen to the Silence for Loki Films of Denmark, Ghanaian Art Music
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for Bavarian TV and Astronaut/One Giant Leap music-video film for Palm Pictures/Island Records. He is a graduate in sociology and archaeology of the University of Ghana and has a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was on the Executive of the Ghana Musicians Union in the 1970s and together with Professor JHK Nketia and Koo Nimo was in 1987 made an honorary life member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). In the 1990s he was technical director of the three-year joint Universities of Ghana/Mainz African Music Redocumentation Project, and for seven years was with the Ghana National Folklore Board of Trustees/Copyright Administration. He has toured New England in the US with Ghanaian folk guitarist Koo Nimo. Collins is the acting chairman of the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation (BAPMAF) which has a permanent Highlife Photo Exhibition at his house in Accra. He was a consultant for the Ghana Old Musicians Welfare Association and is currently a patron of the Ghana Music Union MUSIGA, Basil Yaabere’s Kings Drama Company and Nii Akomfrah’s Afika Obonu Drum and Music Therapy Ensemble. He is a Full Professor at the Music Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, from where, with the department’s xylophone instructor, Aaron Bebe Sukura, he runs the Local Dimension highlife band which has toured Europe several times and released it maiden album N’Yong in 2002 on the French ■■■ Disques Arion label.
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Introduction F ELA ANIKULAPO-KUTI was Africa’s archetypal Pan-African protest singer, whose lyrics condemned neo-colonialism in general and the Nigerian authorities in particular. During his turbulent lifetime, and particularly since his death in 1997, this controversial Nigerian creator of Afrobeat and spokesman for the poor and downtrodden ‘sufferheads’ of Africa, has generated an enormous level of international interest. He has been the subject of several books, at least one PhD and hundreds and thousands of column inches, both in Nigeria and elsewhere. In the mid-1980s he became an official “prisoner of conscience” of Amnesty International. Throughout his stormy career, he been the source of more wild and uninformed gossip than almost any musician of the 20th century. Fela, the “chief priest” of Afrobeat; the aspiring “Black President”; “Anikulapo”, “who carries death in his pocket”; “Abami Edo”, “the weird one and strange being”, died in Lagos aged 58 on 2 August 1997. However Fela did two remarkable and unique musical things in his life. First of all and almost single-handedly he created Afrobeat, a major new genre of African popular music which is adored by fans throughout Africa; has influenced numerous African musicians and is now affecting a whole new generation of international fans of jazz, funk, ‘world music’ and techno dance-floor music. Secondly, with his unsurpassed militancy, he took African music into the arena of direct political action; a fighting spirit reflected in his own contrary life-style and his catalogue of anti-establishment songs dedicated to Pan Africanism and the down-trod-
den Nigerian masses or “sufferheads”. I call Fela a “Musical Warrior” as he has drew heavily on age-old connections between music, militancy and violence. Lyrically, his music dwelt on the confrontational aspects of life, from which he obtained enormous inspiration. Indeed, if there was not sufficient confrontation to inspire a song, he would create that confrontation first – a unique creative device that often resulted in direct battles with the Nigerian authorities. In his songs Fela went much further than the oft-quoted pantheon of international protest singers such as Bob Dylan, James Brown and Bob Marley. Whereas their confrontations with established authority were couched in terms of “The times they are a-changing”, “Say it loud I’m black and proud” and the evils of “Babylon”, Fela’s songs not only protested against various forms of injustice but often fiercely attacked specific agencies and members of the Nigerian government. “Coffin for Head of State” was directed against Nigeria’s then military ruler (and much later a civilian President) General Olusegun Obasanjo. “International Thief Thief (ITT)” criticised the US multinational company, International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation, which set up a telecommunications system in Nigeria under Chief Moshood Abiola. “Alagbon Close” mocked the police CID headquarters in Lagos where Fela was imprisoned in 1974 and “Zombie” is an insulting caricature of the Nigerian army mentality that became a battle cry across a continent that was plagued by military regimes. When the dust has settled over Fela’s fiery, promiscuous, rascally and egoistic life-
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FELA: KALAKUTA NOTES style, his Afrobeat groove will live on. He will always be remembered as the most radical musical spokesman of the African poor
and it is difficult to imagine anyone else taking his place. His peppery character in the ■■■ African soup will be sorely missed.
Some books and articles on Fela Bryce, Jane “ ‘Animal can’t dash me human rights’: interview with Fela Anikulapo-Kuti” Index on Censorship 18, 9 (1989), 12–13 Collins, John Post-war Popular Bands in West Africa, In African Arts,U.C.L.A., California vol. 10, no.3, April 1977, pp. 53-60 Collins, John Music Makers of West Africa, Three Continents Press, Wash. DC/ Passeggiata Press, Colorado, 1985. Chapter 16, ’Fela: The Chief Priest of Afrobeat'. (ISBN No. 0-89410-076-9) Collins, John West African Pop Roots, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992. Chapter 8, 'Fela and the Afrobeat Revolution' (ISBN No. 0-87722-916-3) Collins, John Highlife Time, Anansesem Press, Accra, Ghana, 1996. Chapter 38, 'Fela Anikuklapo-Kuti Nigeria's Controversial Afrobeat King' (ISBN No. 9988-522-03-3) Collins, John Fela and the Black President Film. Glendora African Quarterly of the Arts, (ed) Dapo Adeniyi, Lagos, Nigeria, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 57-73, 1997 Graham, Ronnie “Fela Anikulapo Kuti.” in Ronnie Graham, Stern’s Guide to Contemporary African Music, London: Zwan/’Off the Record Press’, 1988, 62–5 Grass, Randall F “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: the art of an Afrobeat rebel” TDR: The Drama Review 30, 1 (1986), 131–4 Gray, John “Anikulapo-Kuti, Fela.” in John Gray, African Music: A Bibliographical Guide to Traditional, Popular, Art, and Liturgical Musics of Sub-Saharan Africa, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991, 295–9 Howe, John “Fela Anikulapo Kuti: An Honest Man” New Left Review 225 (1997), 127–33 Idowu, Mabinuori Kayode Fela: Why Blackman Carry Shit, Ikeja: OpinionMedia Limited, 1986 Ikuenobe, Polycarp “African Aesthetics and the Music of Fela A. Kuti: ASemiotic Analysis” Literary Griot 6, 2 (1994), 1–13 Jackson-Opoku, Sandra “Lady in the Slip” Journal of African Travel Writing 1 (1996), 64–84 Labinjoh, Justin “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Protest Music and Social Processes in Nigeria” Journal of Black Studies 13, 1 (1982), 119–35 Lemi, Ghariokwu “Producing Fela's Album Jacket” Glendora Review: African Quarterly on the Arts 2, 2 (1997) 54–6 Moore, Carlos Fela, Fela: This Bitch of a Life [Fela, Fela: cette putain de vie] trans. Shawna Moore, London: Allison & Busby, 1982 Olaniyan, Tejumole Arrest The Music: Fela and his Rebel Art and Politics. Indiana University Press, 2004 Olatunji, Michael Yabis: A Phenomenon in Contemporary Nigerian Music. Article in The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol. 1, no. 9, 2007 Olorunyomi, Sola “Fela: Mask on Broadway: A Reading in Aesthetics and Counter-Culture Performance: Halfway Report.” IFRA Ibadan Newsletter 6, 3 (1997) 13–15 Olorunyomi Sola Afrobeat: Fela and the Imagined Continent. Gold Press Ltd, Ibadan Nigeria, 2005 Schoonmaker Trevor (ed) Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2003 Schoonmaker, Trevor (ed) Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Stanovshy, Derek “Fela and His Wives: The Import of a Postcolonial Masculinity” Jouvert 2, 1 (1998) [http://152.1.96.5/jouvert/v2i1/stan.htm] Stewart, Gary Breakout: Profiles in African Rhythm, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 Tannenbaum, Rob “Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Nigeria's Fabled ‘Black President’ Makes Music His Weapon.” Musician 79 (1985) 23–30 Van Pelt, Carter “Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Africaman Original” The Beat 16, 5/6 (1997) 52–9 Veal, Michael “Jazz Music Influences on the Work of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti” Glendora Review: African Quarterly on the Arts 1,1 (1995) 8–13 Veal, Michael E Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000 Waterman, Christopher A “First Word: Chop and Quench” African Arts 31, 1 (1998) 1, 4, 6, 8-9
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Part 1 Early days
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THIERRY SECRETAN
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The boy is father to the man: Fela displays a photo of himself as a student (detail right)
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1
The birth of Afrobeat
F
ELA KUTI – Olufela Olesegun Ransome-Kuti – was born on 15 October 1938 in Abeokuta, a Yoruba town about 50 miles north of Lagos built around a defensive and natural fortress-like outcrop – the famous Abeokuta Rock.
An Abeokuta dynasty Fela’s father, the Reverend Israel Oludoton Ransome-Kuti, was an Anglican priest, a strict disciplinarian and the headmaster of Abeokuta Grammar School. Fela’s mother was the famous Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who in 1948 organised tens of thousands of Egba market women against a British-imposed tax. This demonstration at one point
involved surrounding the palace of Oba (King) Olapado Ademola II of Abeokuta and dethroning him. As well as being the leader of the Nigerian Women’s Union, Funmilayo was a leading member of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s nationalist party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons. This militant lady met Mao Zedong; was the first Nigerian woman to visit Russia, where she received the Lenin Peace Prize; and the first to drive a car. When Nigeria became independent in 1960 she became one of Nigeria’s few women chiefs. Fela’s maternal grandfather was Pastor Thomas, a Yoruba slave freed in Sierra Leone. His paternal grandfather was the Reverend Josiah Ransome-Kuti, a musically inclined preacher who spread Christianity to many parts of Yorubaland. He was also one of the first Africans to record vernacular hymns when, in 1929, he released 44 sacred Yoruba pieces for piano and voice on the Zonophone label. It would seem that Fela inherited his musical gifts from his grandfather, his radicalism from his mother and his rebelliousness from his adolescent reaction against both his grandfather’s and father’s stern Victorian attitudes. These illustrious antecedents are more than matched by the achievements of Fela’s siblings. His older brother, Olikoye, went on to became a doctor and, at one point, Nigeria’s minister of health. His
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FELA: KALAKUTA NOTES older sister, Oludulope, went into nursing. His younger brother, Beko, became a doctor, then as a lawyer became an activist in the 1990s in Nigeria’s human rights struggle. Nobel Prize laureate writer Wole Soyinka is Fela’s cousin.
Music calls Fela attended his father’s school where he played piano and sang in the school choir. However, his rebellious nature soon became pronounced. His father often felt impelled to beat him and Fela formed an anarchistic schoolboy group and newspaper called The Planless Society, which was banned by the Abeokuta Grammar School authorities. Fela’s first venture into popular music was in 1954 when, as a precocious 16-year-old, he occasionally joined up as singer with the Cool Cats dance band of the famous Nigerian highlife musician Victor Olaiya, who, in turn, had been influenced in the 1950s by Ghana’s
Fela goes to London In 1958 Fela’s parents decided to send him to England to study medicine or law. But against their wishes he switched to music, which he studied at Trinity College, London. There he got his training in formal music and trumpet and also fell in love with jazz and with the highlife of the London-based Nigerian musician Ambrose Campbell and his West African Swing Stars. In 1961, while still in London, Fela first formed a jazz quintet and then the Highlife Rakers. Later came The Highlife Jazz Band and then the Koola Lobitos, with his close friend “Alhaji” JK Braimah on guitar and Bayo Martins on drums. According to Martins, Fela at this time was “a cool and clean non-smoking, nonalcohol-drinking teetotaller”. While in London JK, Fela and his cousin, Wole Soyinka, shared a flat in the White City area of West London. It was in London that Fela met his wife Remi, who had Nigerian, British and Native Courtesy of JOHN COLLINS
Victor Olaiya’s band in the 1960s: Fela sang with them occasionally in the 1950s. Olaiya is in the centre of the picture on trumpet
pioneering highlife dance-band musician ET Mensah, who took his Tempos dance band on numerous tours of Nigeria at that time.
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THE BIRTH OF AFROBEAT American ancestry. Even though she says Fela was a rascal and Teddy Boy (a sort of early English juvenile delinquent rocker) she fell in love with him. They got married in 1961 and had three children. Yemi and her brother Femi were born in London in 1960 and 1962, respectively. Their younger sister, Sola, was born in 1963 in Lagos.
The Koola Lobitos After returning from England to Lagos in 1963 Fela, together with JK Braimah, re-formed the Koola Lobitos dance band, which played highlife tinged with a jazzy and Latin-American style. Fela played trumpet and keyboards and the group was based at the Kakadu Club. They played alongside King of Twist Chubby Checker and the young Jamaican ska artist Millie Small, who toured Nigeria in the mid-1960s. While running a band, Fela was working as a music producer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) a job he considered dull and deadening. He was sacked after a few years. Dr Meki Nswewi (now a musicologist at University of Nigeria, Nsukka) was Fela’s colleague then. He says: Nothing was very radical about Fela in those days [1965]. He was running his Koola Lobitos group at the Kakadu Club at a hotel he had taken over on Macaulay Street. Fela had a very good Yoruba sax player called Igo Chiko whom I later recruited for some university drama productions. In Studio A of NBC there was a grand piano and Fela would go in there and experiment with his compositions during office time. He was concerned with trying to find a sound as he wasn’t happy with his jazz-highlife. The NBC also had a good record library which the British had set up (which Fela used). Fela was also having problems with the NBC. The organist, Mr Ola-Deyi, was in charge of the Music Department and as he was a fairly old man he didn’t like
Fela whom he thought didn’t take things seriously – coming late for work, etc. Also, in those days no-one was getting paid music royalties and Fela was agitating for royalties to be paid for his music. So his records were not played. Another reason for this banning was that he was beginning to use a language they called “not to be broadcast”.
One of the Koola Lobitos hits of the time (1967) was “Yeshe Yeshe”. But although Fela was to become popular in Nigeria from the 1970s he was then relatively unknown. And it was in Ghana – the birthplace of highlife – that his music first really caught on. Koola Lobitos made several trips to Ghana from 1967, the first being with Nigerian trumpeter Zeal Onyia.
Ghanaphilia Fela came to like Ghana so much that when he was in Lagos he had to have a constant supply of Ghanaian tea-bread and Okususeku’s gin sent to him. He also fell in love with Ghanaian women and the country’s legacy of Nkrumaism. It was Fela’s friend Faisal Helwani and his F Promotions company that organised these early tours. As Helwani recalls: The Nigerian promoter Chris Okoli came to Ghana in 1964/5 with Fela’s manager or agent, Steve Rhodes. I went to Nigeria with them as I wanted to bring some Nigerian musicians to Ghana. Ghana was like Hollywood for Nigeria at that time. So Chris Okoli introduced me to Fela at the Kakadu Club and we became friends straightaway and he become like a brother to me. I visited him a few times in Lagos before promoting him here in Ghana. At the beginning Fela had a lot of sense of humour. As for the womanising – it was there, but he was married and was living with his wife. He was jovial and liked to have a good time. At that time Fela was not into politics.
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CREOLE RECORDS
FELA: KALAKUTA NOTES ticket money and dashed them taxi money to go home. Now, driving back to Accra from Kumasi and when we were almost at the doorstep of Nkawkaw more that halfway back, we saw this huge tree that had fallen across the road, completely blocking it. Now we had to drive back to Kumasi and take the Obuasi road to Accra through Cape Coast. While I’m going through all this agony Fela was sitting next to me in the Benz bus with half a bottle of Okukuseku gin. He said: “Ha-ha-ha promoter, rain beat you, me I’ve got my money.” The next day I still had a balance to collect for Fela, so I sold one of my taxis to pay him. Fela always respects me for that.
Crossover sounds
Fela with drummer Ginger Baker: they collaborated on the 1971 London recording Fela Live With Ginger Baker
Then I started promoting here in 1967 and the Ghanaian tours made him popular in his own country. He liked to work for me as I never cheated him. If I’m on tour I pay him in advance, rain or shine. On one of these tours that I brought him to Ghana for, out of 14 days it rained heavily for 13. There was only one day left for the tour to end and my hope was on that day, which was in Kumasi. I went down to Kumasi with Fela and another band called the Shambros (the resident highlife band of the Lido Night Club in Accra) in two busloads. The weather seemed OK and we said thank God. But as we reached the outskirts of Kumasi it started to piss down. We set up our equipment to play but the rain wouldn’t stop. By 9.30 pm only two people had bought tickets. Now, how to pay accommodation? No money. So I decided to drive back to Accra as we had a hotel booked there. I paid the two people their
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In the late 1960s new outside musical influences, besides jazz, began to affect Fela’s music: soul music and the associated Afro fashion introduced in live form to Nigeria in 1966 by the Heartbeats band of Sierra Leone led by Geraldo Pino (Gerald Pine) with Francis Fuster on percussion. A period of experimentation took place between 1967 and 1969, with Lagos artists such as Fela, Segun Bucknor and Orlando Julius creating various blends of Afro soul. Segun changed his band’s name from Soul Assembly to Revolution in 1969 and Fela released “Mister Who Be You” in 1967/8, a song that complained against “bigmanism” and pomposity. In 1968 Fela coined the name Afrobeat for this new style and launched it at the Kakadu Club, which he began to call his Afro-Spot. According to Carlos Moore in his 1982 book Fela, Fela: This Bitch of a Life, Fela coined the name Afrobeat while listening to James Brown’s soul in Accra in 1968 with the Ghanaian/Nigerian music producer Raymond Aziz. James Brown, incidentally, played in Nigeria in 1970. Although Afrobeat was created in 1968, its lyrics were not at first so confrontational or politically and socially
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THE BIRTH OF AFROBEAT critical as they were to become later. Fela’s politicisation and radicalisation was accelerated when he went to the US in August 1969 for 10 months. While there he and his eight-strong group made a record called “Keep Nigeria One”, a song that supported the Federal Government during the Nigerian Civil War. He also met the African-American singer Sandra Iszidore (Smith) at a NAAC show in Los Angeles. Sandra was associated with the militant Black Panther movement of Stokely Carmichael and others and she gave Fela The Autobiography of Malcolm X to read. It was then that Fela began to be “exposed to African history”, as he put it.
Anikulapo Kuti is born
Courtesy of JOHN COLLINS
On his return to Nigeria, Fela Africanised his name by removing the colonial “Ransome” from his surname RansomeKuti and substituting it with “Anikulapo”, which means “he who hold death in his
pocket” (or “pouch”). He also changed the name of his Club from the Afro-Spot to the African Shrine and set up in it an actual shrine dedicated to Kwame Nkrumah and surrounded by the flags of some of Africa’s independent nations. He changed the name of his band from the Koola Lobitos to Africa 70 and his Yoruba and pidgin English lyrics became more radical. In fact he even made one song with Sandra Iszidore (Smith) called “Upside Down” that was later (1976) released by Decca West Africa. This is about a man who travels the world where the telephones, light supply, transport system, etc. all work in an orderly way. However, when he comes back to Africa he sees plenty of land but no food, plenty of villages but no roads, plenty of open space but no houses. In short, education, agriculture, communications and the power supply are in confusion. Fela’s reference to electrical failures is a quip on the state of NEPA,
Sandra Iszidore: she began Fela’s radicalisation and collaborated with him musically
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FELA: KALAKUTA NOTES failures is a quip on the state of NEPA, the Nigerian Electrical Supply Authority, which in the 1970s broke down 10 to 20 times a day. In 1971 Fela teamed up with Ginger Baker (formerly with Eric Clapton’s band Cream). The British rock drummer had crossed the Sahara Desert that year and made a film of the journey, as well as making a visit to Ghana’s veteran master drummer Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren). In 1971 Ginger Baker worked with Fela and his Africa 70 at the Abbey Road studio in London to record the album
Fela Live With Ginger Baker. Baker subsequently went into partnership with a Nigerian and set up Nigeria’s first multi-track studio, ARC Studio, Lagos. Because of Fela’s long connection with jazz, in 1972 he was invited to play at the Berlin Jazz Festival. It was Afrobeat’s first international outdooring. The same year he released his much-loved Yoruba Afrobeat “Sakara Oleje” about loud-mouthed boasters and braggarts. In the box below is an abbreviated form of the lyrics transcribed into English ■■■ from the album cover.
THIERRY SECRETAN
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N
SAKARA OLOJE Any Any time time you you meet meet aa loudmouthed loudmouthed braggart braggart He He is is full full of of praise praise for for his his power power And And what what does does such such talk talk amount amount to? to? Empty Empty boasts boasts He He threatens threatens I’ll I’ll whip whip you you like like aa dog dog I’ll I’ll beat beat you you until until you you are are lifeless, lifeless, you you tiny tiny nothing nothing Haven’t Haven’t people people told told you you about about me? me? If If you you are are not not aa coward coward just just wait wait for for me me Give Give me me time time to to remove remove my my cloth, cloth, I’ll I’ll beat beat you you mercilessly mercilessly But But it’s it’s all all show show of of course course He He can’t can’t fight, fight, all all idle idle talk talk and and empty empty boasts boasts [He [He says] says] Don’t Don’t dare dare you you touch touch me, me, why why put put yourself yourself in in trouble trouble Don’t Don’t you you know know II can can smash smash you, you, How How dare dare you you look look me me in in the the face, face, you you nobody nobody from from nowhere nowhere You’re You’re like like aa helpless helpless lost lost goat, goat, II am am superior superior to to you you But But it’s it’s all all lies lies and and empty empty boast boast
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THIERRY SECRETAN