and composer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, founder of the Afrobeat sound and one of
Africa's most influential musicians of the century. Fela is believed to have
passed away on Saturday, August 2, after a brief illness. The news comes quick
on the heels of the recent announcement of Fela's ill-health by his eldest
son, the singer Femi Kuti. Fela has been out of public sight for quite a
while, and in the past year put in less appearances at the Shrine, his popular
performance space and hide-out in Suru Lere, Lagos.
Born
on October 15, 1938 to the Rev. and Lady Ransome-Kuti, Fela studied
classical
music at Trinity College of Music and in the early nineteen-sixties founded
his first band in England, the Koola Lobitos, with the guitarist J. K.
Braimoh.
After a brief stint as a producer with Nigeria Broadcasting
Corporation,
Lagos, Fela left for Ghana with the trumpeter Zill Onyia in
1966,
having been challenged in Lagos by the new sound of the Sierra Leonian
Geraldo
Pino whose music was heavily influenced by James Brown. In the
mid-sixties
Pino and his soul-sound had blazed through West Africa,
overshadowing
both highlife and the rock and roll/twist wave that came with
the
world-wide success of Chubby Checker. In a remarkable move that would
characterize
him for the rest of his life, Fela rejected the big sound of
the
moment which he considered foreign, and in a press conference in Lagos
in
1968, introduced his Afro-beat.
While
on a tour of the United States the same year, Fela made the
acquiantance
of Sandra Taylor, a member of the Panther Party, who gave him a
copy
of _The Authobiography of Malcolm X_. This incident, Fela recalled many
years
later, was the beginning of his political education, and led to the
protest
music that would eventually become his most enduring legacy. "Sandra
gave
me the education..." he told Cuban journalist Carlos Moore in an
interview,
"She was the one who opened my eyes. Nothing about my life would
be
complete without her." Fela's encounter with the legend of Malcolm returned
him
to his own family tradition. His preacher father, who had been the first
President of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, received a bayonet wound from
a soldier for defying the British Flag. His mother was among the most prominent
leaders of the nationalist movement. A quarter of a century later,
his younger brother would be mildly poisoned in prison while leading the
Nigeran pro-Democracy organization, Campaign for Democracy. For Fela Malcolm
X was the quintessence of the committed man, and committment the essence
of a fulfilled life. Malcolm's influence on his philosophy and music manifests
most clearly in his first international megahit, Shakara/African Woman,
in which he attacked the adoption of decadent, Western ideals of beauty
by postcolonial African women.
Over
the next thirty years Fela built a reputation as perhaps the most
unique
and infuential modern musician Nigeria has produced, combining a
hard-edge
and unyielding political content with a masterful orchestration of
African
percussive systems and his signature saxophone sound. With his
Africa
70 and Egypt 80 bands, Fela not only kept up a severe critique of
successive
Nigerian and African dictatorships, he also created an inimitable
sound
that many believe still points the future to Nigerian music when the
Juju
dance-hall craze of the past few years dies away.
Fela
lived and produced his music under persistent state persecution. His
criticism
of state corruption and repression brought him much grief,
including
several detentions and jail terms, and perhaps most significantly,
the
manhandling of his mother, a veteran of the nationalist movement and
companion
of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, when soldiers destroyed his estate in 1977.
Funmilayo
Kuti died from injuries sustained during the incident. In 1978
Fela
was deported from Ghana by the government of General Archeampong. Though
the given reason for his deportation was an altercation between Fela and
a
stall
owner in Accra, the true reason was the release of his second international
chartbuster,
Zombie, in which he delivered a seering condemnation of the military
in
politics. All across Africa wherever the military installed their dictatorship,
Zombie
became the alternative national anthem. In the nineteen-eighties he was
given
a long jail sentence by the Nigerian government, only to be released
afterwards
with an apology from the Federal attorney-general. As in numerous other
cases, the marijuana in his luggage for which he was incarcerated had been
planted. His very last arrest was only a few months ago in April. The given
charge was the same: possession of marijuana. In the face of persistent
campaign of terror he was put through, however, Fela remained irrepressible
and relentless, creating new musical waves with every song he made, and
as Achebe once said of James Baldwin, after each tribulation, whenever
Fela emerged and raised his voice to sing, "those words of remorseless
prophecy began once again to flow."
A legend
and post-colonial icon who was once described by British radio journalist
Alex
Pascall as "the pulse of African music before Bob Marley," Fela will continue
to live in the minds of all who knew him as a man, and certainly all who
knew his music. He was a down-to-earth fellow who opened his home to the
homeless and catered for the poor. At his Shrine he provided a paid job
for everyone who was willing to work, and for those who couldn't, he provided
a roof nevertheles. In concert he was a phenomenon, yet every Friday for
the years that I knew him, he
would
appear at Jazz 38, the quiet Awolowo Road jazz club in Lagos owned by his
niece and her husband, where he would perform for free along with the house-band,
and share jokes with just about anyone who came along.
In
the seventies Fela replaced the Ransome in his name with Anikulapo, _he
who
defies
death_. "Death is a beautiful thing..." he once told Carlos Moore, "I will
do my part...Then I'll just go. Just go." He's gone now, but his legacy
defies death.
NB.
In 1994 Fela's younger brother, pro-Democracy leader Beko Ransome-Kuti,
currently
incarcerated by the military in Nigeria for allegedly plotting a coup,
concluded
a deal in London to remaster and reissue Fela's entire discography. The
true collector's items, however, will remain those records that Fela issued
on
his
own beginning in 1971, with Ghariokwu Lemi's inimitable hand-drawn cover
art.
[Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, composer and entertainer, October 15, 1938-Agust 2, 1997]
Obituary published on H-AfrArts [Humanities On-Line African Cultures List], The Africa List at the University of South Florida, and on Music.net [Portugal] (c) Olu Oguibe 1997