Seun, indeed, now fronts his father's old band, Egypt Afrobeat was essentially a synthesis of Ghana's jazzy highlife with Yoruban polyrhythms and James Brown funk. Brown, enormously popular in west Africa in the s and s, provided Fela with a model for a stage show that included dancers, extended instrumental workouts and lengthy call-and-response vocals. The influence may have been mutual; when Brown toured Nigeria in he and his band visited the Shrine. Yet Fela's musical roots are more tangled than might appear.
When he came to London as a year-old he had been sent to study medicine. Instead, he enrolled at Trinity College of Music and studied piano and composition. Asked, in , which musician he most respected, Fela declared it was George Frideric Handel and said that he particularly admired Dixit Dominus and was making "African classical music".
Music ran in the Kuti family; Fela's Anglican father was a gifted pianist, while his grandfather had recorded hymns in Yoruba for a forerunner of EMI back in one of which is used in Fela! Fela first called his music "Afrobeat" in , but it was a visit to Los Angeles with his group in that completed Afrobeat's alchemy. Fela met black power activist Sandra Smith, who introduced him to the politics of black militancy, to the rhetoric of Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael and LeRoi Jones, to the sight of dashikis on the pavement, to the "black and proud" mood of soul music.
While Smith tried to learn what being "African" meant, Fela suddenly perceived the process of neocolonial control that reigned in his homeland. They called it 'vernacular', as if only English was the real tongue. On his return to Nigeria, Fela renamed his band Africa 70 and started writing the strident, satirical numbers that would make him both hero and renegade, always using pidgin English to cast his message wide. Musically, the early 70s was Fela's golden era; the peerless Tony Allen left following the Kalakuta raid — "I'm a musician, I didn't sign up to be a fighter," he told me, and other musicians disliked the "hengers on" that proliferated at court.
Fela changed his name to Anikulapo Kuti at this point, rejecting Ransome as a "slave name"; his new title meant "One who holds death in a pouch".
His advocacy of African tradition extended to religion, running contrary to his father's Christianity, though it's tempting to see Fela's "Shrine" as a version of his father's pulpit. His denunciation of corruption and support for the underclass tied in with his mother's crusading, though her championship of women's rights must have been affronted by her son's sexual politics.
On "Lady" Fela castigated modern womanhood for thinking itself equal to men, while his infamous marriage to 27 "wives" — mostly his singers and dancers — has often been brandished against him. For his part Fela declared polygamy an African tradition and claimed that by marrying them he was protecting his wives against charges that they were prostitutes.
His father was a pastor and talented pianist; his mother was active in the anti-colonial, anti-military Nigerian home rule movement. So, at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music.
Tired of studying European composers, he formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in , and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene.
He returned to Nigeria in and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown -style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional highlife and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.
In , he brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months, using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70 ; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide.
After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela 's career.
Afro-beat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela 's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars -- all wrapped up in a smoldering groove in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen that could last nearly an hour -- was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough. Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine.
The collaboration gave Fela a wider audience not only in the UK, but also the rest of the world. Fela Kuti first came to London in , apparently to study medicine, but ended up attending Trinity College of Music. It is interesting that at this exact time, Nigeria was gaining its independence from Britain.
It could be argued that this was part of his inspiration to return to Nigeria and keep his music rooted in African rhythms and his lyrics focused on African social issues. Fela travelled to America in at the tail-end of the Civil Rights Movement. Upon his return, Fela was once again confronted by a new political landscape. It will go on for two and a half years and leave 1 million dead among the ruins.
As wars go, this one is particularly absurd. The division of Africa among the Colonialist powers, failed to consider ethnic frontiers. By all accounts Afrika Shrine was a smokey, colourful and vibrant space where every night, Fela and friends would come to play, speak and worship in front of a packed house.
He would raise issues of the time and lampoon specific individuals in government. Around this time was also the peak of this exchange between African and English musicians, as Fela came back to London to record at Abbey Road Studios. Bobby Seale is an African American political activist and co-founder and national chairman of the Black Panther Party. Paul Robeson was an acclaimed 20th-century performer known for productions like 'The Emperor Jones' and 'Othello. William S.
Burroughs was a Beat Generation writer known for his startling, nontraditional accounts of drug culture, most famously in the book 'Naked Lunch. Amiri Baraka is an African American poet, activist and scholar. He was an influential Black nationalist and later became a Marxist. Huey P. Musician and activist Fela Kuti pioneered Afrobeat music and was repeatedly arrested and beaten for writing lyrics that questioned the Nigerian government.
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