The Music and Life of Fela as a Resource for Nigerian History Education

Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti’s songs are not simplistic renditions but lengthy compositions characterized by depth and grandiosity, designed for the patient and potential cultivator of the virtue. It is not for the seekers of instant gratification in this age of quick-fixes and touch-and-go gadgets. A listenership of his music is analogous to an engagement with serious business which cannot be treated with levity. It warrants time and attention because of its emergence from a place of authenticity, passion, sincerity, honesty and truth.

And the listener never leaves feeling disgruntled and dissatisfied due to an instinctive perception of the commitment and dedication infused into a typical Fela composition. His music is made with love and devotion to his listener.

Having inspired famous artistes like Beyoncé, Burna Boy, Drake, Missy Elliot, Lagbaja, Wiz Kid, Wyclef Jean, etc, the terms to qualify his music would oscillate between conscious, contagious, hypnotic, bewitching, addictive, compelling, pristine, high-vibrational and soothing. His body of work is a pleasurable and enlightening experience.

The music maverick and genius fondly called “Baba 70 and Abami Eda” in Nigeria and “Shakalao” in Columbia, began his career in 1961 and was the pioneer (some argue that Orlando Owoh also played a role) of the Afrobeat sound - an infusion of Highlife, West African rhythm and soul, Yoruba music, Funk and Jazz into one indivisible unit.

Endowed with a high musical intelligence, his songs are undergirded by soulful rhythms, impeccable arrangements, and embody a formulaic system which incorporates an instrumental prologue, the underground spiritual game segment which entails the call and response technique, powerfully compelling vocals with story-telling and philosophical composites, etc. This musical landmark had a strong support system signified by the band, Africa 70 (reminiscent of Prince and his New Power Generation Band).

The influencer, Fela, was also influenced by Jazz icons from the free jazz era of American music history with the likes of John Coltrane as an emblem. The dissonant chords of the horn and solo electrical piano in his compositions bear credence to this fact.         

John Coltrane was apolitical, however, his coinage of the term “free jazz” was simultaneously musical and social. He enabled within the realm of jazz, a freedom of expression achievable only through the conjunction of his works with the improvised sounds of a big band ensemble (Sullivan 35-36).

He, like some of his contemporaries such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, etc, attempted a departure from established codes to forge and reinvent new ways of jazz expression which was mostly unappreciated. Perhaps, due to its political inclination and representation of the sociopolitical reality of the 1960s.

Following a tour in Los Angeles with his band in 1969, Fela gained an awareness of this reality. His political consciousness would broaden through an exposure to the Alex Haley-written The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and acquaintance with the Black Power Movement and Black Panther Party principles.

As the son of the women’s rights activist and political agitator, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, he was apparently endowed with a measure of political awareness, but this contact would activate his warrior DNA-strands (a true son of his brave mother), reshape his political proclivity, intensify his ideological consciousness and potentiate a shift from generic music themes to avantgardist protest songs beginning in the early 1970s.

Fela was a man of the people whose music mirrored an intense desire for an egalitarian and libertarian society. Despite his eurocentric education, social exposure and elitist background, he disengaged from the colonially induced double-consciousness, a mental baggage which became a normalized state of being for Africans and diasporic Blacks during the colonial period and thereafter.

In his explication on double consciousness in the United States, W.E.B Dubois notes that “One ever feels his twoness — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,” (8). In her memoir, Unbreak My Heart (2014), singer, Toni Braxton recollects being told by the then President of Arista Records, Clive Davis, “You’re too black to be white and too white to be black. That’s why it’s so important that you straddle the fence.” (147).  

Straddling the fence connotes an in-betweeness which engenders assimilation and decimates authenticity. It potentiates an identity crisis and identity politics because of the impossibility of serving two masters (or identities) loyally at a given time. The burden of a double consciousness inevitably leads to the prioritization and representation of one consciousness above the other.

Within the African prism or Nigerian, which Fela musically explored, this meant that in the realm of religion, colonially imposed organized religion would displace spirituality and ancient beliefs. Within the educational context, parents and community would cease from being the primary educators of their children. In the realm of physical aesthetics, the fair skin would unseat the darker hued complexion, and bleaching or fade creams would flood the market. Consequently, beauty pageants and society of men, to a great extent, would uphold eurocentric beauty standards in their elevation of light-skinned women both organic and cream-assisted, above others.

The natural black hair would not only be displaced by denatured perms, jerry curls, weaves and wigs, it would be culturally demonized. The brainwashing ideology claiming black hair’s inability to grow would be widely disseminated.

Linguistically, indigenous languages would be relegated to the background. The colonial language would be elevated as a marker of worthiness, socioeconomic mobility, prestige and intelligence. Indigenous languages would epitomize unrefinement, unintelligence, poverty, retrogression, etc. Within the school system, ‘spree-spreeing’ (a term used to mock proficient speakers of English in Nigeria), would be institutionalized and speakers of the ‘vernacular’, severely punished for speech in an ‘uncouth’ code.

The consumption of local foods would be deemed a suicidal mission (just listen to Bright Chimezie’s “African Style”). And the foreign counterpart would receive overwhelming promotion with the full complicity of Africans.

Within the sociopolitical context, thieving politicians would embezzle and transfer the Nigerian commonwealth to foreign accounts, thereby aiding in the sustainability of foreign economic growth, to the detriment of their homeland. In conformity to colonialist thought, the indigenous deserved to perish. And they have been willing instruments towards the achievement of that goal.

Judging from his lyricism, these indices were crystal clear to Fela. Many have called him a prophet, but I disagree. The brainwashing machinery of colonization failed, woefully, in the dismantlement of his naturally-endowed intelligence and critical thinking skill. He knew that the world was dysfunctional and far from being ideal. Hence, I reckon that his acquired western education was a fulfillment of all righteousness, and a facility for an easy navigation of a stratified ecosystem. Nonetheless, he could consciously draw boundaries while straddling the fence. He enthroned his indigenous identity as the hero and victor in this psychological warfare.

Fela’s eulogy of water in “Water No Get Enemy” is a pointer to the universality of the element. Water is the common denominator that binds humanity. It is indispensable to blacks, whites, friends, enemies and ‘frienemies’, in-between. But at the front burner of Fela’s artistic preoccupation were sociopolitical themes of anti-colonization and PanAfricanism. He espoused upon issues affecting everyday Nigerians through message songs aimed at rekindling consciousness, and he identified with them through the usage of the Nigerian pidgin. Fela was neither discomfited nor ashamed of publicizing his authentic self and often appeared on stage in costumes ranging from men’s brief (during rehearsals), bare chest, face ornamentation and jump-suits from the hippie era.

With over 20 albums in his music repertoire, Fela, the warrior, was unapologetically subversive in his musical posture as he tackled headlong the social albatross engendered by colonization. He sang about assimilation, cultural and self-acceptance in “Yellow Fever”, “Colonial Mentality” and “Gentleman”. He viewed as contemptible, Africans conformity to Western beauty ideals, dress code (inappropriate for the tropical humid climate) and the negation of African cultural identity principles embodied in names and mannerisms.

He derided the religious psychosis propagated through the imposition of foreign belief systems which eroded the mental integrity of Africans in “Shuffering and Shmiling”. “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense” critiqued and exposed Western (mis)education’s devaluation of the African identity.

In “Overtake Don Overtake Overtake (O.D.O.O)” and “Confusion Break Bones (C.B.B)”, he antagonized the military junta through his exposure of militaristic complicity in the sociopolitical and economic stagnancy of Nigeria after independence, and the systemic corruption and rot within the Nigerian State. Fela was to the military government, what his mother, Funmilayo, was to the British colonial government - a thorn in the flesh and a pain in the neck. He would suffer persecution and imprisonment for his revolutionist stance against State oppression. His mother would meet her untimely demise at the hands of “Unknown Soldier” , I suppose, to serve as a deterrent. But Fela remained consistent and undeterred.

It was George Orwell, the author of iconic books like Animal Farm and 1984, who noted that “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it”. The truth is that the truth has been unfashionable and unpalatable for too long. We live in a reality that romanticizes, applauds and crowns falsehood. In this reality, good is evil and evil is good. Regardless of the truth’s unpopularity, Fela spoke it unambiguously and unrelentingly to power and was often resisted, demonized and intentionally misunderstood.

Apart from the military, the elite class detested his guts. You know, those Nigerians, who have a propensity for being more British than the British! The arrogant, inauthentic and self-suppressing “Mr (& Mrs) Follow Follow(s)” (emphasis is mine). You know, those ones, whose inferiority complex marks their constant strive to mimic the colonizer in all manner and fashion. Nonetheless, the social issues evinced in his work maintains currency and resonance in contemporary Nigeria, and have since deteriorated from bad to WORSE (emphasis).

Susan McClary (2012) has observed that music “…can tell us things about history that are not accessible through any other medium” (120). Music is a window for evaluating the degree of society’s evolution and the progression of history. Music enables a quick and effortless accessibility to history, in opposition to the extra intention and effort often required to read a book.(I am neither demeaning the reading culture, nor the value of books).

However, the Nigerian society lacks a sense of history. When a nation’s ruling class erases the study of history from its school curriculum, the result is a people plagued by an institutionalized historical amnesia among the middle-aged and elderly, and absolute ignorance among the youth.

The absence of history education accounts for the institution of a government in real time which wrecks, kills and impoverishes its citizens with reckless abandon. Had Nigerians recalled the state of the Nation between 1983 to 1985, history would not repeat itself. The current actors on the political stage are recycled and outdated players whose retrogression-causing voices are irrelevant and undesirable. These malevolent and archaic elements factor in Nigeria’s constant malfunction.

Corruption and personal aggrandizement among military or civilian politicians have been systemic since independence. Anomalies like brain drain, economic hardship, currency devaluation, chronic poverty, joblessness, crime, injustice, ritual killings, ASUU strikes, epileptic power supply, inequity and elitist oppression of the so-called “common man” (we are all equal, by the way) have been recurring decimals since the 1980s. But, Nigerians forgot!

In conclusion, I posit that in the absence of history lessons in schools and the media, Fela’s music offers enormous insights into the sociopolitical history of Nigeria. It explicitly names the malevolent characters and events, if you care to check it out.

If Nigerians are serious about the recovery of their collective power and voices in the current era, and the attainment of an egalitarian society which promises equity, fairness and justice for all. Then, I suggest that they rediscover the music and lyricism of Fela, consider his observations and prognosis, and be wise, henceforth!

REFERENCE:
Braxton, Toni. Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir. It Books, 2014.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The Souls of Black People. A. C. McClurg & Co, 1903.

McClary, Susan. “Introduction: A Material Girl in Bluebeard’s Castle”. Music and Identity Politics, edited by Ian Biddle. Ashgate, 2012, pp 93- 132.

Sullivan, Denise. Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip Hop. Lawrence Hill, 2011.