Afro beat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti died on August 2nd 1997. His first
son Femi sent out a special message to his father on twitter. May his
soul continue to rest in peace...Amen.
THE PHENOMENON
Over a decade after his death, vindication has come to Fela Kuti,
Africa’s musical genius. AfroBeat, his gift to the world, is now an
international staple on his own uncompromising terms, social content intact.
Throughout his life, Fela contended that AfroBeat was a modern form of
danceable, African classical music with an urgent message for the planet’s
denizens. Created out of a cross-breeding of Funk, Jazz, Salsa and Calypso with
Juju, Highlife and African percussive patterns, it was to him a political
weapon.
Fela refused to bow to the music industry’s preference for 3-minute
tracks, nor did he buckle under entreaties to moderate his overwhelmingly
political lyrics. He went down in 1997 still railing against the consumerist
gimmicks that taint pop music, with the aim, he felt, of promoting and imposing
homogeneous aesthetic standards worldwide, thereby inducing passivity.
The fact that AfroBeat is today globally winning hearts in its original
form – lengthy, ably crafted, earthy compositions laced with explicitly
political lyrics – suggests that Fela’s purgatory on earth may have served to
awaken a sensibility in people to appreciate authenticity and substance.
THE MESSAGE
Fela’s rise in the early 1970s paralleled the downfall of the hopes
Africans pinned on their newly won Independence. As a whole, Africans were
again living in incarcerated societies; Nigeria, he said, was a “prison of
peoples”. Africa had fallen mostly into the hands of uncaring thieves and scoundrels
who were unmindful of wrecking society in order to sustain insolent lifestyles.
To reclaim Africa’s stolen dignity became Fela’s obsession.
As many of these new countries turned into terror-drenched,
neo-colonial states, Fela summoned his people to return to their senses and
principles of old: self-pride, self-reliance, and decency rooted in traditional
cultural norms. To achieve these, he prescribed forsaking the corrupting ways
of Western society, its capitalist greed, its Communist despotism, the
straitjacket moral conventions of Judeo-Christianity and Islam. He saw
imperialism, colonialism and racism as scourges to be universally eradicated,
and the structures that sustain them dismantled, before humankind could
advance.
Fela’s seismic music infused freshness into the reality of rotten
politics. In song after song, he summoned revolt, not solely against erstwhile
tyrants and exploiters (“Zombie”, “Army Arrangement”, “Coffin for Head of
State”) but against self-damaging prejudices and assimilationist alienation
(“Yellow Fever”, “Colonial Mentality”, “Teacher, Don’t Teach Me No Nonsense”,
“Gentleman”, “Lady”). He chastised the West (“International Thief Thief”,
“Underground System”) and the local elites that fronted for multinationals
(“Beasts of No Nation”, “Government of Crooks”).
Ordinary Africans embraced songs such as “Shakara”, “Sorrow Tears and
Blood”, “Upside Down” and “Why Black Man Dey Suffer” for accurately mirroring
their frustrations. They welcomed the graphic words of “Expensive Shit” or “Who
No Know Go Know” as down-to-earth explanations for their lowly condition. More
importantly, Fela’s music was a clarion proclamation that it was possible to
reverse their lot (“Water No Get Enemy”, “Africa Center of the World”).
Groomed and pampered in youth by a pre-independence middle class but
morphed by Black Power and pan-Africanist politics into a revolutionary ghetto
hero, Fela voiced relentless condemnation of the so-called New Africa,
attracting to himself a deluge of repression. His personal life became a
harrowing tale of police beatings, victimization by the court system,
near-death encounters with the Nigerian military.
Fela’s casual, uninhibited approach to sexual relations, his affection
for nudity, further alarmed the uptight elites. Because of the Judeo-Christian
concept of “sin”, he believed, humans were constrained by an “Adam-and-Eve”
loathing of their own bodies. Monogamous marriage, individualism and
“body-phobia”, he said, were Islamic-Arab or Judeo-Christian importations.
Few aspects of his life caused more affront, and media curiosity, than
his marriage to twenty-seven beautiful fellow singers and dancers, aggravated
by his impenitent use of marijuana. Though no woman ever claimed to have been
coerced into marrying him or remaining at his side, these young, resourceful,
intelligent and highly politicized co-wives were considered an insult to “good
society”.
Nigeria’s rulers regarded Fela’s “Kalakuta Republic” as a Sodom and
Gomorrah to be purged with sulphur and gunfire; this elicited from Fela a
response whose trademark extravagance signaled out-and-out defiance. When
convenient, he provoked outrage, rode it as if surfing a wave, and used it as
political capital.
A life pockmarked by scandal allowed Fela to project himself as
indestructibly macho, an image he relished and cultivated. This was as much a
manifestation of patriarchal narcissism as an attempt to blunt the fear the
Nigerian military’s ferocity had instilled into ordinary citizens.
THE MAN
Fela was a Promethean spirit, in a constant face-off with Death. In the
solace of intimacy, he was jovial, boisterous and loquacious, but he was
mercurial – reflective and wistful at times, irascible and distant at others.
His father-brother-lover relationship with his wives was overall affectionate,
their love and loyalty for him undeniable. But his angry outbursts at errant
household members or defaulting band personnel were intimidating.
Anyone who knew him well was aware that he was a nurturing democrat as
much as a charismatic autocrat. Intensely loyal to friends and family and a
profoundly generous man, he could be quite dogmatic, inconsistent and arbitrary
in views and behavior, reigning unfettered as a benevolent King over his
Kalakuta commune.
Much of what Fela said may be questionable, but most of what he
actually did is not. Intuitive, and shot-from-the-hip, Fela’s ideology was all
his own – disjointed and contradictory, but powerful and original. His sincere
commitment to the world’s underdogs is indisputable, as was his passionate love
for Africa.
Although his uninhibited life-style openly challenged the
nuclear/monogamous marriage structure, paving the way for progressive
discussions of multiple forms of partnership, Fela’s take on sexual orientation
and identity echoed archaic notions. He recognized the need to renegotiate the
social pact between the genders and stood up for the rights of prostitutes as
“sexual workers” deserving respect and legal protection. But he exhibited much
confusion about homosexuality; faced with such issues, he retreated to the safe
ground of established patriarchal/heterosexual socialization.
So, what is it about this quixotic rebel and libertine that fascinates
us?
TRANSFORMATIVE INSUBORDINATION
Partly it was his transgressive deviation from conformity; partly, his
willingness to pay a heavy price for defending freedom.
Above all, as an artist, he has left us an imperishable music that is
indeed classical. His masterly compositions are a sort of people’s dictionary,
translating into accessible art the complex ills afflicting society.
AfroBeat is about social, political and cultural literacy. It confronts
the geography of world complacency, greed and fear and calls for a
trans-formative insubordination.
baba sun ree oooo
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