The Fela family commemorates the passing of the legendary Afrobeat musician today, August 2! Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a musician from Nigeria, was born on October 15, 1938, and passed away on August 2, 1997. Family and friends come together to commemorate Fela's life and legacy during his memorial service. The Yoruba word meaning strange, unusual, uncommon, or aberrant is Abami, and the word for a human being is Eda. Abami Eda is thus directly translated as Uncommon Personality. Though this label can be mistaken for being a freak or crazy, it actually only denotes genius!
Even after 25 years since the legendary musician's passing, Femi Anikulapo Kuti, his first son and one of the most celebrated African singers preserving the Afrobeat tradition admitted that he still mourned his father. In the early hours of Tuesday, Femi Anikulapo-Kuti said on social media, "After 25 years, you are still in our hearts, and I continue to miss you. We continue to implore that you let your light direct our path, Seun Kuti remarked. Ase!"
The musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti was incredibly rare and talented. When the tale of Fela is repeated, future generations may find it difficult to believe that such a character or person ever existed. His intellectual personality was based on a strong academic foundation. He was a musician who received his training at the London School of Music and came from a well-known family of activists and national founding members. He was ahead of his time and had unmatched confidence. Being the son of the suffragette Lioness of Lisabi and Dr. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, the first woman from Nigeria to drive and own a car, one could claim that his ancestry had a significant role in it.
The Reverend Israel Ransome-Kuti, Fela's father, was a skilled pianist who pushed Fela to pursue music as a young boy (though he wanted him ultimately to become a doctor). However, Fela wasn't always the way he came to be known by many. He used to be a shy, nerdy, and out-of-place bourgeoisie. He changed who he was.
He was a classically trained graduate of the Trinity School of Music in London, and in Lagos's seedy nightclubs, he came off as hilariously overqualified and effete. His preference for modern jazz was out of line with the prevailing native taste, which favored highlife, a straightforward, indigenous dance style with Caribbean influences. Ransome-Kuti was too much of a purist to find joy in such fusions, despite attempts by progressive musicians like the Afro-Jazz Group to unite sophisticated jazz with locally produced popular music. He would say to the Lagos Daily Times in 1964, "Look, I played highlife while I was in London, but anyone expecting to hear me play highlife now is wasting time.
Until I discover that jazz is not becoming popular in this country, I will continue to play it. Then, of course, I'll end everything and stop making music. Fela Ransome-aesthetic Kuti's was too foreign, too western, and too un-African for the typical Nigerian music fan for it to ever fully take hold. - Randy Weston, autobiography, African Rhythms. The genius of Fela's fusion of numerous musical inspirations and cultural experiences is what gives him his talent. I once saw a performance at the Shrine, his renowned nightclub in Lagos, where he seamlessly blended Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major with the Afrobeat genre. Imagine a combination of Prince, Theophilus Monk, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Joe Mensah as a well-trained multi-instrumentalist and composer. You will comprehend the requirement for you to listen to Fela's musical works if you find it difficult to imagine.
What gives Fela his talent is the genius of his integration of various musical influences and cultural experiences. I once attended a performance when he skillfully incorporated Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major with the Afrobeat genre at the Shrine, his well-known nightclub in Lagos. Imagine a well-versed multi-instrumentalist and composer who is a cross between Prince, Theophilus Monk, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Joe Mensah. If you find it impossible to imagine, you will understand why it is necessary for you to listen to Fela's musical compositions.
Regarding the lyrics, picture Nkrumah, Malcolm X, and Paul Robeson's lectures put together if you are familiar with their ideologies. This would make Fela known. He was an outstanding Pan-Africanist as well as a cultural and political activist. He created the musical genre known as Afrobeat, which fuses highlife, calypso, funk, and jazz with undertones of steady percussion beats and horns that create the mood for the harmonic songs, in this fusion and attitude. From other African traditional music genres like juju, Afrobeat was a departure. Having studied in London and married a prominent lady with a Native American and Nigerian background,
Fela and Remi Anikulapo Kuti Oluremi Kuti, mother of Yeni, Femi, and Sola Kuti, Fela was already aware, as most people of his era were, of some forms of challenges of black experiences. Nevertheless, an effort to explore the American market music market got him exposed to American Civil Rights and Vietnam protests, and the Black Power movement all over the place got Fela triggered to understand more about civil rights activism. The history of the movement was provided by Sandra, Isadore with whom he collaborated on an album titled Upside Down. He became more reflective, and while drawing inspiration from the American experience, Kuti realized that rather than reaching out to black America for influence, he would look inward and create something that helped fill the void that people missed. It worked.
After experiencing his own form of rebirth, Fela Ransome-Kuti left the United States for Nigeria about a month after the war came to an end. He had sent his Koola Lobitos band to the United States in June 1969 on what would turn out to be a disastrous tour, frustrated by the lack of support for his musical concepts in Nigeria. While there, he was influenced by the Black Power and Black Arts movements, which led him to reconsider how he felt about his Africanness.
Koola Lobito
Traditional African culture, which Kuti and other contemporary Africans took for granted or even derided as "primitive," was fetishized and cherished as a mother lode by Black Americans. Kuti came to the conclusion that turning within would be preferable to reach out to black America for influence. When the once westernized jazzman returned home in February 1970, he and his band were decked out in exotic African garb and playing a brand-new, funky African brew he called "Afrobeat." This spiritual awakening also sparked a musical one.
He started raising his Black Power fists in salute to his audience, changed the name of his band to Afrika 70, renamed his home performance space "the African Shrine," and finally converted it into a community property that he called the Kalakuta Republic. His notions about the universal brotherhood of blacks took some time to gain traction with an African public that was more focused on the whims of local politics. However, Kuti gradually accomplished what a number of colloquia of professors, philosophers, and essayists had up to that point failed to do: he made Pan-Africanism a well-liked concept among regular Nigerians. He did this through the compelling spectacle of his performances, his irresistible groove, and fiery testimonies from the bandstand.
He released songs like "Who're You," "Buy Africa," "Fight To Finish," "Why Black Man Dey Suffer," "Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality," and with Ginger Baker, "Let's Start," "Black Man's Cry," and "Ye Ye De Smell" after returning to Nigeria in 1970 after spending ten months in the US. The majority of his works from 1970 to 1976 were cultural reflections with an effort to promote African development. His many hits included Lady, Gentleman, Water No Get Enemy, Go Slow, Ikoyi Business, and others. He had constructed a big communal village-size residence for his family, band members, and other family members using his fame and riches.
Of course, narcotics and hemp were commonplace with artists and a harem of roadies; this utopian atmosphere attracted world-renowned musicians like Peter Touch, Paul Macartney of the Beatles, and other huge names. The region was known as the Kalakuta Republic, and it was a fiefdom with its own president, set of laws, and police force that had formally proclaimed its independence from the Nigerian state that was then governed by the military administration. Even though Fela disliked the Junta and would not associate with them, he was not opposed to aiding in social advancement and pan-African problems. Following a horrific civil war, Nigeria was the next country in line to host the FESTAC.
The First World Festival of Black Arts, FESMAN (Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres), which took place in Dakar, Senegal in 1966, was followed by the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC. However, FESTAC '77 was unmatched in terms of its size, breadth, ambition, and sheer flamboyance. Compared to FESTAC, which was a chaotic circus bursting with song, color, and sexuality, FESMAN felt more like an academic retreat.
The first of its kind event, FESTAC would also be the last. "For 29 days, black people from everywhere - from Africa, Europe, African-America, South America, Canada, and the islands of the oceans - attested to the haunting presence of blackness in the world," Ebony magazine rapturously praised the once-in-a-lifetime nature of the event. And this meant, at least viscerally, that the black family was once again complete, whole, and united for the first time since the Slave Trade took place more than 500 years ago.
Nigeria would play the part of the wealthy sibling in this family reunion, despite the fact that they were funding the event more for their own egos than for charitable purposes. FESTAC '77 provided Nigeria with the ideal platform to display its newly acquired prosperity as a petro-state and prove that it is deserving of the moniker "the Giant of Africa." However, the Nigerian government went too far, and as a result of its excesses, FESTAC '77 is mostly remembered 40 years later for rampant corruption, cynicism, brutality, and destruction, if it is remembered at all.
A snipet of FESTAC
It made sense to include Fela Kuti in the preparation and promotion of the upcoming arts festival as one of Nigeria's most prominent musicians and the nation's undisputed prophet of Pan-Africanism. Fela Kuti was one of the Nigerians who criticized government spending and the corruption that inevitably came with it. At first, he had high expectations for the event, thinking that with the right planning, it may be a good initiative "to refocus the thinking of the average man." Kuti received an invitation to join FESTAC's National Participation Committee, which is made up of notable figures in the field of arts and culture such playwright Hubert Ogunde, author Wole Soyinka, and director Ola Balogun.
The Commissioner for Information, Major General I.B.M. Haruna, and the NPC were tasked with developing the festival's cultural program and top priorities. Kuti alleged that Haruna turned down the nine-point plan he offered "to make the festival relevant," and he started to question why a military guy was leading the planning committee for an arts and culture festival rather than an artist or intellectual.
In July 1976, Kuti announced his separation from FESTAC at a press conference, calling it "a gigantic farce." Ogunde, Balogun, and Soyinka would soon leave the committee as well, but Kuti was the target of the government's ire. What Greece was and is to the history of Europe is what Nigeria is to Africa.
On February 18, 1977, the Nigerian Junta attacked Kalakuta Republic and set fire to the building complex. His brief detention by Nigerian officials led to his mother's passing the following year as a consequence of complications from a fall. He released a song titled Zombie about the Nigerian military government before to the raid on Fela's house. Because they blindly follow commands, soldiers are referred to as zombies in the song. A phrase from the song in West African Pidgin English reads, "Zombie don't go walk unless you tell me to walk," meaning that a zombie needs to be told to move before walking. Fela was angry with the Nigerian army's rank and file because they were complicit in the high brass's corruption and intimidation of their neighborhoods.
General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was then the head of state, was upset by the song's popularity in Nigeria. The military disapproved of Fela's frequent criticism and thought it improper to create a republic within a republic, according to them. Thrilling but unfounded reports of girls being enticed to the compound and corrupted by members of Fela's band were published in Nigerian tabloids.
Fela's first intention to wed 27 of his backup singers in a large wedding ceremony at the office of his lawyer, Tunji Braithwaite, to mark the one-year anniversary of the Kalakuta Republic's demise fell through. He secretly wed the 27 women, also referred to as "Queens," on February 20, 1978, in the now-defunct Parisona Hotel on Ikorodu Road in Lagos. Fela said he would not have marital relationships with all of the women as the tabloids suggested, but had married them as they could not find employment after the recording studio had been burned down. According to Fela, in Yoruba tradition, when a woman was in danger of being left destitute, it was the duty of a man in her community to marry her as a means of offering protection
It's still unclear exactly what led up to the attack on Kalakuta. According to eyewitness accounts, on the final day of FESTAC, a traffic argument involving a few young members of Kuti's entourage and a few troops led to the instigating incident. The "Fela guys," feeling invincible, are said to have exchanged blows with the military personnel, taken one of their motorcycles, set it ablaze, and then strolled out into the sunset, sure of their victory over the forces of authoritarianism.
They had no idea that a week later, the soldiers would return with more troops and a ferocious desire for retribution. Over a thousand men were part of the military force that stormed Kalakuta, according to witnesses. There was no way that this many men could have been recruited without orders from above—this was not just a basic band of renegade soldiers looking for a battle. Kuti did not hold back when asked who he believed was in charge of issuing the order. He described to Moore:
"They never forgave me for that one [for FESTAC's humiliation]! But Obasanjo waited till FESTAC was over and everyone had departed the city. He was aware that he couldn't trust [Inspector-General] M.D. Yusufu's security forces. Therefore, this time he employed regular army soldiers, guy. actual zombies Man, I'm telling you."
Kuti and his supporters were savagely beaten during the attack, the young girls living there were viciously raped, and Kuti's mother, who was 77 years old, was thrown from a second-story window and eventually died from her wounds. In addition, Kuti had just signed a million-dollar contract with Afrodisia Records and had decided to hide the advance in his bedroom rather than put it in the bank. The soldiers who were pillaging it also took it.
Punch, Nigeria
On his 1979 album Unknown Soldier, Kuti would later paint an emotional, poetic depiction of the mayhem. The violent and terrible sights he depicts could easily be taken out of context to refer to the British invasion of Benin in 1897. In a chilling irony, the assault on Kalakuta took place on February 18, 1977, exactly 80 years after the devastating mission to Benin's climax. The Kalakuta incident would result in years of inquiries, legal actions, and progressively irate musical commentary from Kuti, ultimately overshadowing all the honorable things FESTAC '77 could have accomplished. The attack permanently tarnished Nigerians' memories of FESTAC by being intimately linked to it.
FESTAC '77 was the pinnacle of Pan-Africanism, but it also seemed to mark a turning point. The trend started to lose popularity in popular culture after 1977 and was replaced by a sleeker, more commercial image. Early 1970s Afro music's rough, earthy tone began to fade in favor of western disco albums' slick studio ambience. Bands' stage attire transitioned from native exotica to showy, Blaxploitation-inspired clothing and European-tailored evening wear.
Album covers featuring traditional masks, sculptures, and paintings were out, and in came images of singers posing with capitalist success symbols like expensive vehicles, technology, and opulent furniture. Ethiopia, on the other hand, was unable to keep its promise to host the following FESTAC in 1981 because major political unrest in the late 1970s caused the nation to experience a catastrophic famine from 1983 to 1985. The FESTAC fantasy vanished abruptly, almost as if it had never been.
The Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola launched a project to repair the property and convert it into a museum in 2012. On October 15, 2012, the Kalakuta Republic Museum made its debut in honor of Fela's 74th birthday. Along with a restaurant and hotel, it features exhibits of Fela's attire, musical instruments, and artwork.
Even now, fifty-five years later, the typical Lagosian will direct you to FESTAC Town if you mention the word "FESTAC." A respondent in their 20s is unlikely to be able to explain the meaning behind the Lagos town district's name. Their sole recollection of FESTAC may be of it in its current state as a slightly rundown residential area along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway that is gradually becoming a slum. If they can recollect the 1980s, they may remember FESTAC Town as a posh residential neighborhood with premium apartment complexes that were raffled off to wealthy Lagosians once the festival visitors moved out.
The air in FESTAC Town, then known as FESTAC Village, buzzed with the melodies of many languages during that one month in 1977, and those apartments were home to a dizzying array of visitors from many far-off lands, representing a rainbow of culture. However, if they are older than 40 years old, their eyes might light up as they tell you stories about that time.
On the other hand, Fela has become exponentially more well-liked all across the world. In 2008, the musical performed Off-Broadway for one month. It had its Broadway debut on November 23, 2009, at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, and it ran there until January 2011. Lucille Lortel Awards were given to the Off-Broadway production for Outstanding Choreographer (Bill T. Jones), Outstanding Costume Design (Marina Draghici), and Best Musical. The 2010 Tony Award winners for Best Choreography, Best Costume Design in a Musical, and Best Sound Design of a Musical were the Broadway production, which garnered eleven nominations. Finding Fela, a 2014 documentary directed by Alex Gibney, primarily relied on Jones' interviews as it followed various aspects of the Broadway show.
Fela on Broadway
Felabration is an annual celebration of Fela's music, life, and times that began with his eldest child, Yeni, in 1998 and has since been held in Nigeria. Felabration presents a thrilling line-up of performers each year to satiate the appetites of music fans that swarm the New Africa Shrine. Since Fela's posthumous birthday celebrations are always included in the Festival, the Felabration Week always lasts through the week of October, which also includes the 15th day.
In the 1960s, the idea that Nigeria served as a spiritual center for the black race was comparatively new. Rastafarians once revered Ethiopia as the Promised Land, and in the 1950s, Ghana rose to prominence as a role model for African nations and a crucial stop for conscious-minded black diaspora dwellers. The East African Swahili-speaking nations came to be romanticized by many Pan-Africanists during the Black Power era as a source of metaphysical sustenance. But none other than Leopold Sedar Senghor, the philosopher-president of Senegal and the greatest poet of Négritude, always defended Nigeria and the crucial part it played in the development of the global black consciousness. Senghor thought of Nigeria as a black-colored Rome or Greece. Fela brought much contemporary awareness of Pan-Africanism, though the older generations were quite aware. After all the first president of Nigeria, and most of the Nigerian founding members were staunch pan-Africanists.
Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, Kuti's brother and a well-known AIDS campaigner and former minister of health, revealed that Kuti had passed away the day before from problems related to AIDS on August 3, 1997. As an AIDS denier, Kuti's wife insisted that he did not pass away from the disease. Nevertheless, the meme below is used to honor prominent people whole fell to the scourge of the disease.
After receiving an incorrect diagnosis of cancer in Nigeria, his daughter Sola Anikulapo Kuti passed away a month after Fela on October 9, 1997. She is honored with this memorial!
Sola Anikulapo Kuti