His impersonation offers a flash of Fela's seductive power, and that charisma is the reason why Fela! In retrospect, Fela's life has all the necessary ingredients — a great soundtrack, extraordinary showmanship and dancing, plus a story that involves heroism and martyrdom — but to stage it still required a leap of faith.
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. Ever the contrarian, in , he divorced them all, saying that no man should own a woman's body.
His daughter Yeni has ambiguous feelings about this. For me, as a kid, it was fun having so many stepmothers, though now, at 49, I wonder how my mother Remi, who was born and raised in England, really felt. The paradoxical character of Fela was there even at his death. Laugh because this journey is what dreams are made of.
Most of all, be proud that you are forever a part of the fabric of possibility. With these words, I stand before you and bow deeply, with great reverence. Wishing I could see you all take your final bow, and dance out the last horn riff of Gentleman as I always did, disregarding most of my notes by curtain call because your open hearts carry the coffin and that means everything.
In you I see a thousand moons, I see ten thousand people whose efforts lent themselves to this production in some way throughout the years, and I see millions of people moved. Letter congratulating Michelle Williams — from Beyonce. Find Us On. As a result, Afrobeat has come to be associated with making political, social and cultural statements about greed and corruption.
One of Kuti's songs, "Zombie," questions Nigerian soldiers' blind obedience to carrying out orders. Another, "V. Vagabonds in Power ," seeks to empower the disenfranchised masses to rise up against the government. The album cover portrays world leaders Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan among others as cartoon vampires baring bloody fangs.
Rebelling against oppressive regimes through his music came at a heavy cost to Kuti, who was arrested by the Nigerian government times, and was subject to numerous beatings that left him with lifelong scars.
Rather than abandon his cause, however, Kuti used these experiences as inspiration to write more lyrics. He produced roughly 50 albums over the course of his musical career, including songs for Les Negresses under the pseudonym Sodi in Kuti was a polygamist. A woman named Remi was the first of Kuti's wives.
In , Kuti married 27 more women in a single wedding ceremony. He would eventually divorce them all. Kuti's children with Remi included a son, Femi, and daughters Yeni and Sola. Sola died of cancer not long after her father's death in All three offspring were members of the Positive Force, a band they founded in the s. Roughly 1 million people attended his funeral procession, which began at Tafawa Balewa Square and ended at Kuti's home, Kalakuta, in Ikeja, Nigeria, where he was laid to rest in the front yard.
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