Before becoming a larger-than-life character, musical icon, and post-colonial crusader whose brainchild has become one of the greatest musical exports from Africa and has dramatically impacted Nigerian music, Fela Akinkulapo-Kuti, born on October 15, 1938, had spent his time imbibing familial and cultural values from his hometown Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Anikulapo was not his initial name; it was adopted after the outlaw ditched the name ‘Ransome’ because he thought it a slave name, which didn’t uphold his pan-African beliefs.
Fela was born into a family that had a blend of both music and politics. His father was a pastor and a pianist, while his mother was a prominent political activist at a time when it was very rare to find women at the forefront of activism.
Sent to England to train as a doctor, Fela instead enrolled himself in a music school, Trinity College of Music. Learning the different European musical styles, Fela formed his band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and he quickly became a prospect in the London scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by a blend of foreign Jazz and African highlife. Its result was a distinct, rhythmic hybrid called ‘Afrobeat’.
Unbeknownst to most, Nigerian music legend Orlando Julius gave a musical direction to Fela and greatly influenced his Afrobeat. Although the legacy of Julius is less commonly explored, either because he’s usually mistaken for Orlando Owoh, because he lives a life devoid of pyrotechnics or because of his sustained troubadour in foreign lands. Still, Julius’ place in the birth of Afrobeat and as a political and social commentator is unquestionable.
“I started out playing highlife, and was the first to modernise it with rock, jazz and R’n’B. It was Afrobeat, but my record company named it Afro-soul,” Julius offered.
Like Fela would, Julius combined Funk, Jazz, psychedelic rock and Highlife, scaffolding that collective with saxophones and syncopations.
On Fela, Julius once revealed: “Fela came to my club every week, and when he formed his own band in 1964, I gave him four members of my group to get him started.”
Fela’s music no doubt transcends the notion of entertainment. It becomes a receptacle of multidiscipline such as culture, society, politics, gender and race. Although this is not to say that these songs privilege function over appeal since, being an inventor, the Afrobeat specialist was able to create a hybrid of styles distinct enough, woven with such impressive aesthetic embellishments and backed up with maverick instrumentals by maverick instrumentalists to catch the attention of listeners. The combination of his blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals and quasi-rapping Pidgin English make it impossible for his audience to get enough. His wild and psychedelic performances also ensure that his audience has a taste of his energy, deploying in his tracks his multidimensional charisma, which, till today, has made his songs alive, robust and entertaining.
No wonder Fela, with his distinct sound, is considered one of the best musicians that the African continent has ever produced, with Randall Grass terming him one of Africa’s most “challenging and charismatic music performers” and critically acclaimed rapper, Jay Z, referring to ‘Zombie’ as a ‘song for survival.’
Thus, Fela’s music ticks one of the primary significance of music: entertainment. Even so, there are several other significance that go beyond entertainment and are worth exploring.
Fela: A Custodian of History, Culture and Tradition
Fela’s music reflects the proverbs, musical tradition and culture of Abeokuta and Africa at large. Playing pure Jazz after his return from England, at his mother’s advice, the icon reverted to Highlife music from 1965 to 1970. He subsequently blended this African Highlife style with Jazz to form Afrobeat. The infusion of proverbs, axioms, values, iconographies and figures is quite interesting about this style. We see sayings and words like: “When cat sleep, Rat go bite im tail”, “Ifa”, “Babalawo”, “eni a wi fun, oba je o gbo”, “omi ti danu sugbon keregbe o fo” and many more.
Similarly, these songs function as a memory bank, ensuring that the present generation and those to come can take a saunter back in time and have a glimpse of the historical experiences that have shaped their nation through a reading of the songs.
Propaganda and Voice for the Voiceless
Fela’s music serves as a tool for propaganda and a voice for the voiceless. After encountering many African diasporic discourses, Fela discarded the veil of liberal senses and started seeing his environment in a new light. The masses were oppressed and extorted while their leaders carted away public funds. Yet, the people could not voice their disapproval to avoid military retribution. Fela took up the responsibility of a spokesperson, voicing the many injustices and maladministration of the repressive military and civilian rules. Only a few people – if any – were ready to take up that responsibility, but Fela did, risking his life and that of his family’s.
Fela was arrested on over 200 occasions during his career – including his longest stint of 20 months after his arrest in 1984, and his house was raided numerous times.
In one infamous raid, on February 18, 1977, 1000 armed soldiers stormed the Kalakuta Republic at 14A, Agege Motor Road, Idi-Oro, Mushin, throwing the place into chaos. Battering, molesting and harassing the inhabitants, Fela’s activist mother was thrown out through the window of the storey building, and she broke a leg, leading to her eventual death. Fela himself ended up with a fractured skull before being thrown in jail. The incident would later trigger the songs ‘Unknown Soldiers’ and ‘Coffin for Head of State’.
As a ripple effect of these raids and assaults, no one wanted to rent a house close to Fela because of the fear of being embroiled in the government’s retribution.
According to a 2021 Neusroom report, most people feared staying close to Fela so much that the Binities had to do him a “favour” by giving him a place at Pepple street. Even then, after “Fela died in 1997, the Binities demanded their land back and insisted they would not deal with Fela’s family leading to a long drawn legal battle” that came to an end on October 19, 1998, when a court order adjudged that the Anikulapo-Kuti family moved out.
Decolonisation of the Mind
Fela’s music tends towards the decolonisation of the African mind. These songs rally the colonised people that they have enough intellectual independence to successfully revolt against the colonial status quo and therefore decolonise their nation. As a result, many of his songs, such as ‘Beast of No Nation’, ‘Teacher do Not Teach Me Nonsense’, ‘Black Man’s Cry’, and ‘Gentleman’, have counter-hegemonic underpinnings.
Interestingly, this two-faced counter-discourse (against the whites and the ruling blacks) was espoused under a central ideology called Pan-Africanism, which Fela had been introduced to through his intensive reading of the postulates of former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, who epitomised the philosophy. Nkrumah believed that the less developed world will not develop through the goodwill or generosity of the developed powers but can only become developed through a struggle against the external forces that have a vested interest in keeping it undeveloped.
Music as Social Commentary
At the core of Fela’s music are social commentaries which sensitise the masses and arouse certain consciousness in them. The songs discuss the day-to-day events in the average Nigerian setting, which provoke or depict laughter, scorn, empathy, sorrow, love, pain and other everyday human emotions. An example is ‘Wa Dele’ (1965) which talks about the craft and wisdom needed to be able to live in Lagos, a place which is seen as boisterous. The song reveals: “Eko Logbon”, Lagos is wisdom and “Wa gba wa loga”, which means you will accept ‘Lagosians’ as masters.
Also, ‘Monday Morning in Lagos’ (1972) talks about the nightlife and party lifestyle on weekends in Lagos but balances by iterating how Mondays can be serious business. The song generally reminds people not to forget themselves in the life of wining and drinking. In ‘Trouble Sleep, Yanga Wake Am’ (1972), Fela talks about everyday issues such as rent payment, debts, betrayal and abuse of power.
In other songs, we see more dire social issues ranging from experiences in jail as seen in ‘Alagbon’ to the docility of soldiers as in ‘Zombie’ and ‘Army Arrangement’ (1985). We see the misery of the masses in ‘Shuffering and Shmiling’, looting and greed as in ‘International Thief Thief (ITT)’ (1979) and ‘Authority stealing’ (1980). These social issues are commented upon in such ways that the masses can easily connect since these are things they experience daily, even though some of the problems are personal to the author.
Fela: More than Just an Entertainer
James Currie in Music After All (2009) notes that “musicology may just be a comfy cushion, and as we have seen, a cushion does not function particularly well as a sword. But it might work exceedingly well as a means of slowly suffocating an enemy.” Therefore, the music of Fela becomes highly significant because it functions as a form of protest that unyieldingly suffocates the enemy. Of course, if there is a culture or tradition of governance, then there must be a counterpart tradition of protest or resistance because of the likelihood of politics being misused in the hands of politicians or people in power.
Fela’s music is this ‘counterpart tradition’ that failed to cease even in the face of stiff suppression. Fela’s political ideology on governance and Black Supremacy articulated through his music has had a far-reaching impact on the youths who not only accept his music but also dare to become political activists, fearless journalists, teachers and human rights activists.
To this, Tejumola Olaniyan in Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics (2004) noted that “Fela did not overthrow any government, his overall contribution was far more reaching, and his potent detachment of the power of truth from any putative hegemony that the state might profess remains his central political effect and significance.”
Fela’s music remains a tool of political mobilisation because several issues raised in his music decades ago are still prevalent in our society today. He may be gone, but he remains with us; he remains in our hearts, soul, and everywhere our music streaming device goes. Fela may be gone, but he remains the mellifluous propagandist; he remains ‘the one who has death in his pouch’.