BACKGROUND INFORMATION
BIRTH NAME:
Olufela Olusegun Oludotun
Ransome-Kuti
Also known as Fela Anikulapo
Kuti or Fela Ransome-Kuti
BORN:
15 October 1938
BIRTH PLACE:
Abeokuta, Nigeria
DIED:
2 August 1997 (aged 58)
in Lagos, Nigeria
GENRES:
Afrobeat, highlife
OCCUPATION(S):
Singer-songwriter, musician,
activist
INSTRUMENTS:
Saxophone, vocals, keyboards,
trumpet, guitar, drums
YEARS ACTIVE:
1958–1997
LABELS:
Barclay/PolyGram,
MCA/Universal, Celluloid, EMI Nigeria, JVC, Wrasse, Shanachie, Knitting Factory
ASSOCIATED ACTS:
Africa '70, Egypt '80, Koola
Lobitos, Nigeria '70, Hugh Masekela, Ginger Baker, Tony Allen, Femi Kuti, Seun
Kuti, Roy Ayers, Lester Bowie
WEBSITE:
fela.net
FELA KUTI (born
Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti; 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997), also known
as Fela Anikulapo Kuti or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist,
musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, human rights activist,
and political maverick.
Once Fela Kuti was accosted by the revenue department of Lagos state to
pay service charges for running a night club, The African Shrine.
Revenue Officer:
"Baba, we have come to remind you that you are owing about 5 years arrears
of payment"
Fela:
"Look my friend, that church in front" pointing to Apostolic Church
on Pepple Street that shared neighborhood with the Shrine- “have they
paid?"
Revenue Officer
Haaa Baba that is a church naah"
Fela: Oh that
na church, so what do you call here?"
Revenue Officer
"African Shrine!
Fela: Look
my friend can't you see that you're suffering from colomentality? The white man
called his place of worship Church and you don't tax him and Fela called his
own African Shrine and you are asking for tax! Are you and your government
okay?"
Revenue Officer
"But Baba, you sell drink and smoke here and play music and collect gate
fees naah!"
Fela: “You’re
a su egbe, the difference between African Shrine and the Church is that here I
collect my offering and tithe at the gate. But those people are thieves. They
ask you to come in free of charge and later line you up to pay you gate fees
which they call offering and tithe. If you still don't understand, take me to
court and we go meet una there"
BIOGRAPHY
EARLY LIFE AND CAREER
Fela was born Olufela
Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti on 15 October 1938 in Abeokuta, Ogun State,
Nigeria into an upper-middle-class family. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti,
was a feminist activist in the anti-colonial movement; his father, Reverend
Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a Protestant minister and school principal, was
the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. His brothers, Beko
Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, both medical doctors, are well known in
Nigeria. Fela was a first cousin to the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole
Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
He attended the Abeokuta
Grammar School in Abeokuta and later he was sent to London in 1958 to study medicine
but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music, the trumpet
being his preferred instrument. While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos,
playing a fusion of jazz and highlife. In 1960, Fela married his first wife,
Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he would have three children (Femi, Yeni,
and Sola). In 1963, Fela moved back to Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos and
trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He
played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All Stars.
In 1967, he went to Ghana to
think up a new musical direction. That was when Kuti first called his music
Afrobeat. In 1969, Fela took the band to the United States where they spent 10
months in Los Angeles. While there, Fela discovered the Black Power movement
through Sandra Smith (now Sandra Izsadore), a partisan of the Black Panther
Party. The experience would heavily influence his music and political views. He
renamed the band Nigeria '70. Soon afterwards, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service was tipped off by a promoter that Fela and his band were in the US
without work permits. The band immediately performed a quick recording session
in Los Angeles that would later be released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions.
After Fela and his band
returned to Nigeria, the group was renamed The Afrika '70, as lyrical themes
changed from love to social issues. He then formed the Kalakuta Republic, a
commune, a recording studio, and a home for the many people connected to the
band that he later declared independent from the Nigerian state. (According to
Lindsay Barrett, the name "Kalakuta" derived from the infamous Black
Hole of Calcutta dungeon in India.) Fela set up a nightclub in the Empire
Hotel, first named the Afro-Spot and then the Afrika Shrine, where he both
performed regularly and officiated at personalized Yoruba traditional
ceremonies in honour of his nation's ancestral faith. He also changed his
middle name to Anikulapo (meaning "He who carries death in his
pouch", with the interpretation: "I will be the master of my own
destiny and will decide when it is time for death to take me"), stating
that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name.
Fela's music was popular
among the Nigerian public and Africans in general. In fact, he made the
decision to sing in Pidgin English so that his music could be enjoyed by
individuals all over Africa, where the local languages spoken are very diverse
and numerous. As popular as Fela's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere,
it was also very unpopular with the ruling government, and raids on the
Kalakuta Republic were frequent. During 1972, Ginger Baker recorded
Stratavarious with Fela appearing alongside Bobby Tench. Around this time, Kuti
became even more involved in the Yoruba religion.
In 1977, Fela and the Afrika
'70 released the album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the
zombie metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The album was
a smash hit and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against
the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune.
Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother (whose house was located
opposite the commune) was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The
Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes
were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for
the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's
response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks
in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo's residence, and to write two songs,
"Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier",
referencing the official inquiry that claimed the commune had been destroyed by
an unknown soldier.
Fela and his band then took
residence in Crossroads Hotel, as the Shrine had been destroyed along with his
commune. In 1978, Fela married 27 women, many of whom were his dancers,
composers, and singers to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta
Republic. Later, he was to adopt a rotation system of keeping only 12
simultaneous wives. The year was also marked by two notorious concerts, the
first in Accra in which riots broke out during the song "Zombie",
which led to Fela being banned from entering Ghana. The second was at the
Berlin Jazz Festival after which most of Fela's musicians deserted him, due to
rumours that Fela was planning to use the entire proceeds to fund his
presidential campaign.
Despite the massive setbacks,
Fela was determined to come back. He formed his own political party, which he
called Movement of the People (MOP), in order to "clean up society like a
mop" In 1979, he put himself forward for President in Nigeria's first
elections for more than a decade, but his candidature was refused. At this
time, Fela created a new band called Egypt '80 (reflecting his reading of
pan-African literature) and continued to record albums and tour the country. He
further infuriated the political establishment by dropping the names of ITT
Corporation vice-president Moshood Abiola and then General Olusegun Obasanjo at
the end of a hot-selling 25-minute political screed entitled "I.T.T.
(International Thief-Thief)".
1980s AND BEYOND
In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari's
government, of which Kuti was a vocal opponent, jailed him on a charge of
currency smuggling which Amnesty International and others denounced as
politically motivated. Amnesty designated him a prisoner of conscience, and his
case was also taken up by other human rights groups. After 20 months, he was
released from prison by General Ibrahim Babangida. On his release he divorced
his 12 remaining wives, saying that "marriage brings jealousy and
selfishness".
Once again, Fela continued to
release albums with Egypt '80, made a number of successful tours of the United
States and Europe and also continued to be politically active. In 1986, Fela
performed in Giants Stadium in New Jersey as part of the Amnesty International,
A Conspiracy of Hope concert, sharing the bill with Bono, Carlos Santana, and
The Neville Brothers. In 1989, Fela and Egypt '80 released the anti-apartheid
Beasts of No Nation that depicts on its cover U.S. President Ronald Reagan, UK
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and South African State President Pieter
Willem Botha, that title of the composition, as Barrett notes, having evolved
out of a statement by Botha: "This uprising [against the apartheid system]
will bring out the beast in us."
Fela's album output slowed in
the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. In 1993, he
and four members of the Afrika '70 organization were arrested for murder. The
battle against military corruption in Nigeria was taking its toll, especially
during the rise of dictator Sani Abacha. Rumours were also spreading that he
was suffering from an illness for which he was refusing treatment.
DEATH
On 3 August 1997, Olikoye
Ransome-Kuti, already a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health,
stunned the nation by announcing his younger brother's death a day earlier from
Kaposi's sarcoma which was brought on by AIDS. More than a million people
attended Fela's funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound. A new Africa
Shrine has opened since Fela's death in a different section of Lagos under the
supervision of his son Femi Kuti.
MUSIC
Main article: Afrobeat
The musical style of Felá is
called afrobeat, a style he largely created, which is a complex fusion of Jazz,
Funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian High-life, psychedelic rock, and traditional West
African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native
"tinker pan" African-style percussion that Kuti acquired while
studying in Ghana with Hugh Masekela, under the uncanny Hedzoleh Soundz. The
importance of the input of Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) in the
creation of Afrobeat cannot be overstated. Fela once famously stated that
"without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat".
Afrobeat is characterized by
a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals, and a musical structure
featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. A riff-based "endless groove"
is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style
guitar, and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song.
Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one,
building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer. The horn section then
becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes.
Fela's band was notable for
featuring two baritone saxophones, whereas most groups were using only one of
this instrument. This is a common technique in African and African-influenced
musical styles, and can be seen in Funk and Hip hop. Fela's bands at times even
performed with two bassists at the same time both playing interlocking melodies
and rhythms. There were always two or more guitarists. The electric West
African style guitar in Afrobeat bands are paramount, but are used to give
basic structure, playing a repeating chordal/melodic statement, riff, or
groove.
Some elements often present
in Fela's music are the call-and-response within the chorus and figurative but
simple lyrics. Fela's songs were also very long, at least 10–15 minutes in length, and
many reaching the 20 or even 30 minutes, while some unreleased tracks would
last up to 45 minutes when performed live. This was one of many reasons that
his music never reached a substantial degree of popularity outside Africa. His
LP records frequently had one 30-minute track per side. Typically there is an
instrumental "introduction" jam part of the song, perhaps 10–15 minutes long, before
Fela starts singing the "main" part of the song, featuring his lyrics
and singing, in which the song continues for another 10–15 minutes. Therefore, on
some recordings one may see his songs divided into two parts, Part 1
(instrumental) followed by the rest, Part 2.
His songs were mostly sung in
Nigerian pidgin English, although he also performed a few songs in the Yoruba
language. Fela's main instruments were the saxophone and the keyboards, but he
also played the trumpet, electric guitar, and took the occasional drum solo.
Fela refused to perform songs again after he had already recorded them, which
also hindered his popularity outside Africa.
Fela was known for his
showmanship, and his concerts were often quite outlandish and wild. He referred
to his stage act as the "Underground" Spiritual Game. Fela attempted
making a movie but lost all the materials to the fire that was set to his house
by the military government in power. Kuti thought that art, and thus his own
music, should have political meaning.
It is of note that as Fela's
musical career developed, so too did his political influence, not only in his
home country of Nigeria, not just throughout Africa, but throughout the world.
As his political influence grew, the religious aspect of his musical approach
grew. Fela was a part of an Afro-Centric consciousness movement that was
founded on and delivered through his music. Fela, in an interview found in Hank
Bordowitz's "Noise of the World", states, "Music is supposed to
have an effect. If you're playing music and people don't feel something, you're
not doing shit. That's what African music is about. When you hear something,
you must move. I want to move people to dance, but also to think. Music wants
to dictate a better life, against a bad life. When you're listening to
something that depicts having a better life, and you're not having a better
life, it must have an effect on you."
West Africa has been a
cultural crossroad for musical development. The most widespread and influential
music was guitar-based genres including "palmwine" music, which swept
the region during the 1920s and 1930s. Palmwine was most often heard at
informal gatherings among the urban lower classes. The musicians would accompany
themselves with guitars, beer bottles for percussion or kersosene cans. The
singers were often fairly political and touched on contemporary issues. The
other popular genre was "highlife," which was more associated with
the upper classes and social elite. Performed at important events such as
weddings, funerals, and holidays, highlife ensembles combined European band
instruments and harmonic structures with distinctly African practices such as
praise singing. Highlife’s
appeal was broadened by its origins in Ghana, the first African nation to gain
independence in 1957. Under the leadership of the prime minister, Kwame
Nkrumah, Ghana’s
political and cultural influence was strong throughout the region during the
postcolonial period.
With a population of 150
million people, Nigeria was the most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa,
gaining its independence in 1960. Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, while dominated by the Yoruba,
is in many ways a postmodern collage of different ethnicities, nationalities,
and cultures. The city’s
origins lie in the illicit slave trade. Built on a sandy island, its many
creeks afforded hiding places for slave traders after the French (1791) and
British (1807) outlawed the slave trade. Lagos became an important incubator
for urban popular musics as the Kru mariners, as well as Ghanaians, Cameroo-
nians, and others brought palm wine and highlife, which blended with Yoruba
traditions, especially jújù.
As in highlife, jújù groups
typically play for important social functions, often hired by the social and
economic elite. Here they are expected to perform the traditional role of
offering praises to their hosts both vocally and articulated by the sonically
prominent talking drum or dundun. The social status of musi- cians as beggars
is reinforced by the practice of "spraying" in which the hosts and
their guests reward the musicians by pressing money to their foreheads. In the
1930s, as the "rhumba" craze (actually Cuban son montuno)1 swept much
of the United States and Europe, highlife, palmwine, and jújù began to
assimilate Caribbean rhythms, percussion instruments, and harmonic and formal
struc- tures. Calypso and other genres from English-speaking islands also
became part of the mix. Latin and Caribbean influence in West Africa came not
only through the African colonies’ and Caribbean colonies’ common tether to the European powers (particularly
London), but through the important communities of repa- triated former slaves
and their descendants.
Lagos’s importance as a center
for music grew as Decca, EMI, and other record companies established recording
studios in the city as they expanded their operations in Africa (Veal, 2000,
79). In the years after World War II the modern sound of jújù featuring
electric instruments, especially guitars, was popularized by such artists as
Tunde Nightengale, I. K. Dairo, Ebenzer Obey, and King Sunny Adé. The 1960s
brought an influx of American soul music such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett,
James Brown, and others. The postcolonial market was ripe for a new broadly
popular music, one that appealed to different ethnicities and social classes
that internally was emblematic of Africaness but presented a modern face to the
world. As an ambitious young musician, Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti was
determined to create a genre to satisfy this demand. But his route to this
innovation first led him to two important international black Atlantic
destinations: London and the United States.
POLITICAL VIEWS
"Imagine Che Guevara and
Bob Marley rolled into one person and you get a sense of Nigerian musician and
activist Fela Kuti."
—Herald
Sun, February 2011
Kuti thought the most important way for Africans to fight European cultural imperialism was to support traditional African religions and lifestyles. The American Black Power movement also influenced Fela's political views; he was a supporter of Pan-Africanism and socialism, and called for a united, democratic African republic. He was a candid supporter of human rights, and many of his songs are direct attacks against dictatorships, specifically the militaristic governments of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also a social commentator, and he criticized his fellow Africans (especially the upper class) for betraying traditional African culture. The African culture he believed in also included having many wives (polygyny) and the Kalakuta Republic was formed in part as a polygamist colony. He defended his stance on polygyny with the words: "A man goes for many women in the first place. Like in Europe, when a man is married, when the wife is sleeping, he goes out and f***s around. He should bring the women in the house, man, to live with him, and stop running around the streets!" His views towards women are characterized by some as misogynist, with songs like "Mattress" typically cited as evidence In a more complex example, he mocks the aspiration of African women to European standards of ladyhood while extolling the values of the market woman in his song "Lady"[citation needed].
In the 1970s, Kuti began
buying advertising space in daily and weekly newspapers such as The Daily Times
and The Punch in order to run outspoken political columns, bypassing editorial
censorship in Nigeria's predominantly state controlled media. Published
throughout the 1970s and early 1980s under the title "Chief Priest
Say", these columns were essentially extensions of Kuti's famous Yabi
Sessions—consciousness-raising
word-sound rituals, with himself as chief priest, conducted at his Lagos
nightclub. Organized around a militantly Afrocentric rendering of history and
the essence of black beauty, "Chief Priest Say" focused on the role
of cultural hegemony in the continuing subjugation of Africans. Kuti addressed
a number of topics, from explosive denunciations of the Nigerian Government's
criminal behaviour; Islam and Christianity's exploitative nature, and evil
multinational corporations; to deconstructions of Western medicine, Black
Muslims, sex, pollution, and poverty. "Chief Priest Say" was
cancelled, first by Daily Times then by Punch, ostensibly due to non-payment,
but many commentators[who?] have speculated that the paper's respective editors
were placed under increasingly violent pressure to stop publication.
THE FELA REVIVAL
Since the 1990s, there has
been a revitalization of Fela's influence on music and popular culture,
culminating in another re-release of his catalog controlled by Universal Music,
Broadway and off-Broadway biographically based shows, and new bands, such as
Antibalas, who carry the Afrobeat banner to a new generation of listeners.
In 1999, Universal Music
France, under the aegis of Francis Kertekian, remastered the 45 albums that it
controlled and released them on 26 compact discs. These titles were licensed to
other territories of the world with the exception of Nigeria and Japan, where
Fela's music was controlled by other companies. In 2005, Universal Music USA
licensed all of its world-music titles to the UK-based label Wrasse Records,
which repackaged the same 26 CDs for distribution in the USA (replacing the
MCA-issued titles there) and the UK. In 2009, Universal created a new deal for
the USA with Knitting Factory Records and for Europe with PIAS, which included
the release of the Fela! Broadway cast album. In 2013, FKO Ltd, the entity that
owned the rights of all of Fela's compositions, was acquired by BMG Rights
Management.
Thomas McCarthy's 2008 film
The Visitor depicted a disconnected professor (Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins)
who wanted to play the djembe. He learns from a young Syrian (Haaz Sleiman) who
tells the professor he will never truly understand African music unless he
listens to Fela. The film features clips of Fela's "Open and Close"
and "Je'nwi Temi (Don't Gag Me)".
In 2008, an off-Broadway
production of Fela Kuti's life entitled Fela!, inspired by Carlos Moore's 1982
book Fela, Fela! This Bitch of a Life, began with a collaborative workshop
between the Afrobeat band Antibalas and Tony award-winner Bill T. Jones. The
show was a massive success, selling out shows during its run, and garnering
much critical acclaim. On 22 November 2009, Fela! began a run on Broadway at
the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Jim Lewis helped co-write the play (along with Bill
T. Jones), and obtained producer backing from Jay-Z and Will Smith, among
others. On 4 May 2010, Fela! was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including Best
Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical for Bill T. Jones,
Best Leading Actor in a Musical for Sahr Ngaujah, and Best Featured Actress in
a Musical for Lillias White. On 11 June 2012, it was announced that FELA! would
return to Broadway for 32 performances.
On 18 August 2009,
award-winning DJ J.Period released a free mixtape to the general public via his
website that was a collaboration with Somali-born hip-hop artist K'naan paying
tribute to Fela, Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, entitled The Messengers.
In October 2009, Knitting
Factory Records began the process of re-releasing the 45 titles that Universal
Music controls, starting with yet another re-release of the compilation The
Best of the Black President in the USA. The rest were expected to be released
in 2010.
The full-length documentary
film Finding Fela, directed by Alex Gibney, received its premiere at the 2014
Sundance Film Festival.
In addition, a movie by Focus
Features, directed by Steve McQueen and written by Biyi Bandele about the life
of Fela Kuti was rumoured to be in production 2010, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in
the lead role, but has not eventuated.
DISCOGRAPHY
Main article: Fela Kuti
discography
Why Black Man Dey Suffer
(1971)
Live! (1971)
Shakara (1972)
Afrodisiac (1973)
Gentleman (1973)
Confusion (1975)
Expensive Shit (1975)
He Miss Road (1975)
Zombie (1977)
Stalemate (1977)
Sorrow Tears and Blood (1977)
Shuffering and Shmiling
(1978)
Black President (1981)
Original Sufferhead (1981)
Unknown Soldier (1981)
"Teacher Don't Teach Me
Nonsense"(1987)
Beasts of No Nation (1989)
Confusion Break Bones (1990)
The Best Best of Fela Kuti
(1999)
The '69 Los Angeles Sessions
(1969/2010)
FILMOGRAPHY
Finding Fela, 2014 Alex
Gibney and Jack Gulick Jigsaw Productions
Fela in Concert, 1981 (VIEW)
Music is the Weapon, 1982,
Stéphane Tchal-Gadjieff and Jean Jacques Flori (Universal Music)
Fela Live! Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti and the Egypt '80 Band, 1984, recorded live at Glastonbury,
England (Yazoo)
Fela Kuti: Teacher Don't
Teach Me Nonsense & Berliner Jazztage '78 (Double Feature), 1984 (Lorber
Films)
Femi Kuti — Live at the Shrine, 2005,
recorded live in Lagos, Nigeria (Palm Pictures)
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