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Overview
Fela: Kalakuta Notes is an evocative account of Fela Kuti—the Afrobeat superstar who took African music into the arena of direct action. With his antiestablishment songs, he dedicated himself to Pan-Africanism and the down-trodden Nigerian masses, or “sufferheads.” In the 1970s, the British/Ghanaian musician and author John Collins met and worked with Fela in Ghana and Nigeria. Kalakuta Notes includes a diary that Collins kept in 1977 when he acted in Fela’s autobiographical film, Black President. The book offers revealing interviews with Fela by the author, as well as with band members, friends, and colleagues.
For this second edition, Collins has expanded the original introduction by providing needed context for popular music in Africa in the 1960s and the influences on the artist’s music and politics. In a new concluding chapter, Collins reflects on the legacy of Fela: the spread of Afrobeat, Fela’s musical children, Fela’s Shrine and Kalakuta House, and the annual Felabration. As the dust settles over Fela’s fiery, creative, and controversial career, his Afrobeat groove and political message live on in Kalakuta Notes. A new foreword by Banning Eyre, an up-to-date discography by Ronnie Graham, a timeline, historical photographs, and snapshots by the author are also featured.
“As multilayered and significant a document as the singer’s musical contributions. It is a crucial testament about one of the world’s most outspoken and radical artists, and gives deep insight into his life, music and struggles against oppression and mediocrity.” —Journal of World Popular Music
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819575401 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/21/2022 |
| Series: | Music / Interview |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 514 |
| File size: | 30 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTH OF AFROBEAT
Fela in London
In 1958 Fela's mother encouraged him to go to England to study medicine or law. He went to study at Trinity College in London, but against her and the rest of his family's wishes he switched to music. At Trinity, he got his training in formal music and trumpet and also fell in love with jazz and with the highlife of the London-based Nigerian musician Ambrose Campbell and his West African Swing Stars (or Rhythm Brothers). In 1961, Fela formed a jazz quintet and then in 1962 the Highlife Rakers. Later he formed the Koola Lobitos, with his close friend "Alhaji" J. K. Braimah on guitar and Bayo Martins on drums. According to Martins, Fela was "a cool and clean non-smoking, non-alcohol-drinking teetotaler." In a 1982 interview with Carlos Moore, Braimah makes a similar observation, stating that although Fela was a ruffian he "looked like a nice, clean boy ... a perfect square."
Fela and his cousin, Wole Soyinka, shared a flat in the White City area of West London. It was in London that Fela met his wife Remi, who had Nigerian, British, and Native American ancestry. Even though she says Fela was a rascal and teddy boy (a sort of early English juvenile-delinquent rocker), she fell in love with him. They got married in 1961 and had three children. Yeni and her brother Femi were born in London in 1960 and 1962, respectively. Their younger sister, Sola, was born in 1963 in Lagos.
Returning Home
When he went home to Lagos in 1963 he continued to experiment with jazz. I will let the music journalist Benson Idonije explain this story.
When Fela came from London in 1963 he came to Nigeria as a jazz musician, even though he had played highlife in London. He abandoned highlife and played strict jazz after he met in London the West Indian saxophonist Joe Harriott who used to play Charlie Parker–style bebop, and the West Indian trumpeter Shake Keane who played like Miles Davis. Though Fela was good enough to play with them, he disgraced himself as he couldn't cope with the improvisation. But that encouraged him to practice to play jazz and he went on to redeem himself. Before he left London he joined some West Indians to make a strict jazz album, which he brought to Nigeria.
So when he came back to Nigeria he didn't like highlife at all, and he met me as I was presenting a jazz program on radio calledNBC Jazz Club. He came to meet me in the studio and introduced himself and so I interviewed him on the program and we became friends. Then he started coming to my house and in 1963 we formed the Fela Ransome-Kuti Quintet [with Benson as its manager]. This Quintet had a base at the Victor Olaiya's Cool Cats Inn where we were playing every Monday night. In the group Fela was playing trumpet and piano. On bass was Emmanuel Ngomalio, on drums was a guy called John Bull, on guitar Don Amechi, a fantastic guitarist, and we also had this organist Sid Moss. In later years we had the saxist Igo Chiko and other musicians were coming as guests; like Zeal Onyia on trumpet and Art Alade and Wole Bucknor on piano, Bayo Martins on drums — then later Steve Rhodes [piano].
The Koola Lobitos
With J. K. Braimah and some others in his jazz quintet, Fela re-formed the Koola Lobitos dance band, and he called his music "highlife-jazz." Fela played trumpet and keyboards, and the group was based at the Kakadu Club. They played alongside King of Twist Chubby Checker and the young Jamaican ska artist Millie Small, who both toured Nigeria in the mid-1960s.
At the same time, Fela was working as a music producer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), a job he considered dull and deadening — and was sacked after a few years. Dr. Meki Nswewi (a musicologist at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and now South Africa) was Fela's colleague then. As he recalled:
Nothing was very radical about Fela in those days [1965]. He was running his Koola Lobitos group at the Kakadu Club at a hotel he had taken over on Macaulay Street. Fela had a very good Yoruba sax player called Igo Chiko whom I later recruited for some university drama productions. In Studio A of NBC there was a grand piano and Fela would go in there and experiment with his compositions during office time. He was concerned with trying to find a sound, as he wasn't happy with his jazz-highlife.
The NBC also had a good record library, which the British had set up [and which Fela used]. Fela was also having problems with theNBC. The organist, Mr. Ola-Deyi, was in charge of the Music Department, and, as he was a fairly old man, he didn't like Fela whom he thought didn't take things seriously — coming late for work, etc. ... Also, in those days no one was getting paid music royalties, and Fela was agitating for royalties to be paid for his music. So his records were not played. Another reason for this banning was that he was beginning to use a language they called "not to be broadcast."
It was after leaving his job at the NBC in 1965 that Fela again reorganized the Koola Lobitos and this time brought in the drummer Tony Allen. One of the first Koola Lobitos hits of the time (1967) was the jazzy highlife "Yeshe Yeshe." But although Fela was to become popular in Nigeria in the 1970s he was then relatively unknown. And it was in Ghana — the birthplace of dance band highlife — that his music first really caught on. Koola Lobitos made many trips to Ghana from 1967, the first being with Nigerian trumpeter Zeal Onyia.
Ghanaphilia
Fela came to like Ghana so much that when he was in Lagos he had to have a constant supply of Ghanaian tea bread and Okususeku's gin sent to him. He also fell in love with Ghanaian women and the country's legacy of Nkrumaism. It was Fela's friend Faisal Helwani and his F Promotions Company that organized these early tours. As Helwani recalls:
The Nigerian promoter Chris Okoli came to Ghana in 1964–65 with Fela's manager or agent, Steve Rhodes. I went to Nigeria with them, as I wanted to bring some Nigerian musicians to Ghana. Ghana was like Hollywood for Nigeria at that time. So Chris Okoli introduced me to Fela at the Kakadu Club and we became friends straightaway and he became like a brother to me.
I visited him a few times in Lagos before promoting him here in Ghana. At the beginning Fela had a lot of sense of humor. As for the womanizing — it was there, but he was married and was living with his wife. He was jovial and liked to have a good time. At that time Fela was not into politics.
Then I started promoting him here in 1967 and the Ghanaian tours made him popular in his own country. He liked to work for me, as I never cheated him. If I'm on tour I pay him in advance, rain or shine. On one of these tours that I brought him to Ghana for, out of fourteen days it rained heavily for thirteen. There was only one day left for the tour to end and my hope was on that day, which was in Kumasi. I went down to Kumasi with Fela and another band called the Shambros (the resident highlife band of the Lido nightclub in Accra) in two busloads. The weather seemedOK and we said thank God. But as we reached the outskirts of Kumasi it started to piss down.
We set up our equipment to play but the rain wouldn't stop. By 9:30 p.m. only two people had bought tickets. Now, how to pay accommodation? No money. So I decided to drive back to Accra as we had a hotel booked there. I paid the two people their ticket money and dashed them taxi money to go home. Now, driving back to Accra from Kumasi and when we were almost at the doorstep of Nkawkaw more than halfway back, we saw this huge tree that had fallen across the road, completely blocking it. Now we had to drive back to Kumasi and take the Obuasi road to Accra through Cape Coast. While I'm going through all this agony Fela was sitting next to me in the Benz bus with half a bottle of Okukuseku gin. He said: "Ha-ha-ha promoter, rain beat you, me I've got my money." The next day I still had a balance to collect for Fela, so I sold one of my taxis to pay him. Fela always respects me for that.
El Sombreros, the Koola Lobitos, and the Latin Touch
El Sombreros, a youthful pop band that played mainly rock music and soul, were put together and promoted by Faisal Helwani to support a Ghanaian tour of Fela's Koola Lobitos in late summer of 1968. This is what one of its members, Johnny Opoku-Akyeampong (Jon Goldy), told me about the group:
The line-up of El Sombreros was Bray on drums, Kojo Simpson on bass, Turkson on rhythm guitar, Alfred Bannerman on lead guitar,me on vocals, and a female singer called Annshirley Amihere who was a shit-hot soul singer. Our signature tune was "Take Five" an old jazz tune. We also played other jazz-influenced tunes like Jimmy Smith's version of "Got My Mojo Working." Faisal and his F Promotions organized the tour, which consisted of three gigs only. The first one was at the Lido nightclub, then Kumasi City Hotel and The Star Hotel, respectively. There was an MC in tow who traveled with us known as Big J and even a journalist known as Jackie. The Koola Lobitos stayed at the Grand Hotel during the tour.
This is what Johnny told me of Fela's character at the time:
I think Fela had a sense of his own destiny even back then, and no one could mess with him. I found him and his musicians to be quite high-spirited, at times irreverent and a lot of slapstick humor. But on stage they were a tightly disciplined band. Fela was already sporting his tight-fitting James Brown–like costumes back then. The music was basically the Nigerian style highlife with a jazzy feel to it. Even back then you could tell he was a superb arranger. His approach then was a typical Western-style format similar to the Sammy Obot–Uhuru [big band] style, but less swing big-band style and certainly not like the guitar-band style typical of other Nigerian artists. Also at that juncture the African shamanic feel was not yet in evidence in the mix. Fela was a shit-hot trumpeter who always strained to push the limits of the music within the conventional highlife structure. As for the political stance I saw nothing like that during '68 during the tour.
This is what Alfred "Kari" Bannerman told me:
I remember Fela would sometimes start the band off on a tune, go to the bar and down a full glass of transparent liquid, and then to my surprise go back on stage to play blistering solos on his trumpet! Many years on Dele Sosimi pointed out to me what I thought was gin was actually a glass of water, as Fela didn't drink — but smoked all right. At the time having left the GBC[Ghana Broadcasting Corporation Band] where long chord progressions were the order of the day, I was taken in by the two-chord modal nature of Fela's compositions. But things were tough as this was before the onslaught of Afrobeat and they [i.e., the shows] were sparsely attended. The guitar the Koola Lobitos used had a nail sticking out, holding neck to body!
The reason Helwani chose the name El Sombreros for the pop group was that at the time Latin- and Spanish-sounding names were a vogue with some pop bands in Ghana and in fact the country's leading soul band was called El Pollos. Likewise the Sierra Leonian leader of the soulish Heartbeats band, Gerald Pine, called himself Geraldo Pino. Furthermore, Fela's band was called the Koola Lobitos. So Faisal Helwani insisted that the name of the Fela's youthful support band (originally called the Beavers) should likewise have a Spanish-sounding name and that the El Sombreros should wear Latin-style costumes. Here are Bannerman's views on this:
I really didn't like the shiny, frilly multicolored costume, plus [sombrerotype] hat. We were playing "Jumping Jack Flash," the Rolling Stones, etc. But it wasn't something that jelled with my soul, and who would like to be part of a band named like they were Mexicans? On the other hand, Fela I found intriguing and very smart as he had his signature designed shirts, which were almost collarless.
Despite the fact that the Koola Lobitos did not sport Latin costumes they were in fact influenced by Latin music to some degree — as in the late 1960s Fela was not only drawing on jazz, soul, and R & B, but also on Latin salsa music: as in the songs "Oritshe/Orise" and "We Dele." "We Dele" is in a minor-key bluesy-jazz style, and "Orise" is more highlifish, but both use Latin-style horns to accompany and/or respond to the vocals.
This Latin touch in Fela's music may have come from several sources. Fela was an avid listener of modern jazz, and the Cuban mambo had made a big impact on jazz from the late forties, such as with the "Cubop" associated with Dizzy Gillespie, the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, and Stan Kenton's Afro-Cubists band. Then came the "pachanga" dance craze of the 1960s that swept across the globe, including Africa, followed in the late sixties by the salsa (hot sauce) music that was created in New York with its large Latino population. Salsa went on to influence American soul and R & B when Cuban congas were added to rock and funk bands, and there was a new Latin "bugalu" dance craze among the youth that went international.
The Latin tinge is reflected in a number of the Afrobeat songs Fela composed after 1970. One is "Jeun Ko'ku," which opens with a Latin horn fanfare and utilizes a Caribbean clave rhythm. Other Latin and Latin-jazz-influenced songs are the mid-1970s "Water No Get Enemy," "I No Get Eye For Back," "Who No Know Go Know," and "Na Poi."
Despite the Spanish tinge in Fela's music, his main musical direction in 1968 was highlife-jazz and soul.
This is what Johnny Opoku-Ayeampong has to say on the matter:
In 1968 he seemed to be looking for a new sound and had split the repertoire into the jazz highlife which we already knew, and something more soulish. So it was of two types, something called Afro-highlife and the other genre was dubbed Afro-soul. For me the Afro-highlife was only slightly different from the Afro-soul, which I preferred because it was less jazzy, less highlifish, and perhaps a bit more danceable — though not quite as funky as the American soul which by then had literally taking over most of our mixed repertoire at the time. It could have been deliberate as throughout all his music, one could detect that he wanted to be different, but it was quite subtle in those days. Also I think the Afro-soul was mostly sung in English or pidgin and the Afro-highlife mostly in Yoruba. Musically I did not immediately warm up to him because for most of us teenage musicians horns and highlife were not exciting and challenging enough. Also we had no horn players in our midst and other horn players around were older, too formal in their approach and would only play in B?, C#, etc. — which was a pain for the average guitarist. We were then doing all the horn parts on the guitars until we progressed to the organ, mainly due to the advent of the Heartbeats influence [resident in Ghana 1964–68]. However at the gig at the Lido Fela played alone on the piano — a jazzy bluesy piece which suddenly gained my utmost respect and admiration.
Opoku-Akyeampong did not see Fela play again until early 1971 when Fela came to Ghana again and did one of his shows at the Labadi Pleasure Beach in Accra. By this time the Fela's band was called the Africa 70, the soul and funk influence was more pronounced, and Afrobeat had crystallized. According to Opoku-Akyeampong Fela had by then become so popular that there were huge crowds at the event, and here he describes the music.
One thing which struck me after absorbing the early music was the undeniable influence of James Brown, like his danceable 1967 "Cold Sweat" single and albums which I loved that he released in 1968–69. That's where Fela got his rhythm section, [where] the bass, drums, and guitars came from. Perhaps Fela "Africanized" it the more with the percussion, but the rest was all his own creation. Of course none of this detracts from this great man's musical genius. If anything it is a true testament to his creativity, and I wish he had acknowledged it as such. ... Again Fela accidentally coinvented jazz-funk. No one but James Brown had attempted anything quite like that before '71. And I don't recall J. B. doing anymore of those instrumentals. But I must be careful here to say that Booker T. and the M.G.'s also did some inspiring dance instrumentals even before 1971, but they were not jazz oriented as such. But the rest of jazz-funk proliferated with Grover Washington and the others throughout the 1970s.
Soul, Funk, and Crossover Sounds
In the late 1960s new outside musical influences began to affect Fela's music. Soul music, and the associated Afro fashion, was introduced to Nigeria in 1966 by the Heartbeats band of Sierra Leone led by Geraldo Pino (Gerald Pine). A period of experimentation took place between 1967 and 1969, with Lagos artists such as Fela, Segun Bucknor, and Orlando Julius creating various blends of Afro-soul. Orlando changed the name of his highlife band to the Afro Sounders in 1967, while Segun changed his band's name from Soul Assembly to Revolution in 1969. Fela was experimenting with soulish songs like "My Baby Don't Love Me," "Everyday I Got My Blues," and also "Home Cooking" in which he actually uses the word "Afrobeat."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fela"
by .
Copyright © 2015 John Collins.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Banning Eyre
Introduction
PART 1: EARLY DAYS
The Birth of Afrobeat
Joe Mensah Remembers
Fela in Ghana
Stan Plange Remembers
PART 2: CONFRONTATION
The Kalakuta Is Born
"J. B." Talks about Fela
The Kalakuta Republic
The Black President
Amsterdam and After
PART 3: RETROSPECT
Mac Tontoh on Fela
Frank Talk about Fela
Obiba Plays It Again
Smart Binete Sorts It Out
Anku Checks Out the Beat
Nana Danso Orchestrates
Some Early Afro-Fusion Pioneers
Interview with Fela
Afterthoughts and Updates
Felabrations at Home and Abroad
Chronology
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Discography
Appendix A: "Shuffering and Shmiling" Score
Index
What People are Saying About This
“John Collins has given us a vibrant and multifaceted portrait of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, told by Collins himself along with many others who knew and worked with Fela. This is a wonderful addition to the literature on Fela that reveals the complexity of the man and his role as a giant of modern African music, told by someone who was on the scene with Fela in the 1970s and who knew just the right angles to pursue.”
"John Collins has given us a vibrant and multifaceted portrait of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, told by Collins himself along with many others who knew and worked with Fela. This is a wonderful addition to the literature on Fela that reveals the complexity of the man and his role as a giant of modern African music, told by someone who was on the scene with Fela in the 1970s and who knew just the right angles to pursue."—Michael E. Veal, author of Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon
"John Collins has given us a vibrant and multifaceted portrait of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, told by Collins himself along with many others who knew and worked with Fela. This is a wonderful addition to the literature on Fela that reveals the complexity of the man and his role as a giant of modern African music, told by someone who was on the scene with Fela in the 1970s and who knew just the right angles to pursue."—Michael E. Veal, author of Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon