FELA: LIFE AND TIMES

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was one of the brightest stars of the Nigerian and
international music scene in the 1970s and 1980s, controversial for his
love for women, marijuana,and dressing only in his underpants, Fela's
influence on contemporary music cannot be over-estimated. A true original,
no other artist has his precise combination of skills.

Fela had the groove sense of James Brown and Prince's poise as an arranger;
he was as articulate as Dylan, as charismatic as Bob Marley, and - for a
time - as popular as any of those artists at their peak.

Most of all, the man who called himself 'the chief priest' was one of the
music world's most skilled agitators.

His songs, which could stretch over an hour, were filled with passionate
chants about military corruption and social inequality. Singing and
shouting in pidgin English, a joint ever smouldering between his teeth, he
conveyed both righteous indignation and a radical message in such famous
rants as Teacher, Don't Teach Me No Nonsense, Black President, and Coffin
For Head of State.

Born in 1938 in Abeokuta, Fela learned to work the saxophoneas a teeneger
and, at the age of 21, went to London to study music and formed his first
band. He returned home in 1963 and formed the Koola Lobitos band, playing a
fusion of jazz and hi-life with little success.

He spent time in Ghana and the United States, where he developed a strong
interest in politics and civil rights.

His concept for the politically charged fusion of rock with African rhythms
into a blend known as Afro-beat came together in the late '60s, after he
heard the Sierra Leonean singer Geraldo Pino and encountered the ideas of
Malcolm X. On a trip to California in 1969, Fela met members of the radical
Black Panthers and Koola Lobitos metamorphosed into Nigeria '70 (later
called Africa '70 and finally Egypt '80) over a famous series of sessions
in Los Angeles. Between 1975 and 1977, Afrika '70 recorded 17 albums -
including the classic No Agreement - and these recordings spread their
unique blend of funk vamping, jazz improvisation and Nigerian high-life
around the world.

Fela eventually recorded some 133 albums and served as a godfather to other
African artists.

"He is a legend," Malian singer Salif Keita said. "All modern African
singers and musicians owe a lot to him." "For us, he was a monument, a
reference point," said singer Lokua Kanza of Congo. "To hear him was like a
blast of fresh air." Afro-beat was perfect for live performance and Fela
was a hypnotic performer.

A brief sermon - about, say, Nigeria's need for modernization - would be
followed by a forlorn blast from a horn section, or a high-intensity
call-and-response between Fela and his battalion of backing singers.

When he finished singing, he turned his attention to the keyboard or the
tenor saxophone, and crafted patient solos that took his large, interactive
band down unlikely avenues.

A typical Fela show was a marathon that could be appreciated on several
levels: as incessantly funky party music, as a mix of overt and subversive
political messages, and as a sophisticated improvisational excursion.

As his popularity grew, Fela utilized his platform for ever-more-public
anti-government agitation and became notorious for his promiscuity. A
famous lover who married 27 women at a ceremony in 1978, he lived in a
polygamous commune in the Lagos suburb of Ikeja, which he called 'Kalakuta
Republic' and opened a nightclub, The Shrine. A bastion of freedom in what
was becoming a military state, The Shrine was a place where the people
could go to hang out, smoke herb, get loose and say and do what they liked.

Fela delared that his club was "the abode of the gods of Africa. It has its
own powers. You cannot enter if you have a bad mind."

Those who were lucky enough to visit The Shrine in its heyday would find a
capacity crowd jammed between the corrugated-iron walls, wooden cages in
which Fela's dancers gyrated, and stalls where grass were on sale. When
Fela himself finally appeared, long after his band had taken to the stage,
he added to the haze as he lit an enormous joint (the first of many),
before launching into a searing set, demonstrating why he was so important
to African music.

In 1976, Fela topped the charts with Zombie, which describes government
soldiers as no more than machines following orders, and the following year
he got an official response when 1,000 zombies burned the Kalakuta compound
to the ground.

His mother was badly injured in the raid and died six months later.
Overnight, Fela became known as much for his politics as for his music.
After military rule ended in 1979, Fela Kuti established his own political
party, MOP (Movement of the People). With his entourage of wives and
girlfriends, Fela went to the ruling junta's headquarters and placed his
mother's coffin on the steps, saying he wanted to demonstrate that the
power of the state was impotent compared to the indomitable power of the
human spirit.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Nigeria's forcibly aborted
attempts by civilians to establish a democratic government, Fela never
shied away from stating his opposition to military rule. His blunt response
to the rise of conservative politicians such as Reagan and Thatcher was
Beasts of No Nation. In 1984, Fela was arrested at the airport as he was
preparing to leave for a US tour on what Amnesty International described as
'spurious' charges of illegally exporting foreign currency.

He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but released after eighteen months
when General Muhammed Buhari was overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida,
who freed Fela but did not escape his criticism.

Rumours about Fela's health began to circulate in 1995, and though he gave
infrequent and usually brief performances at The Shrine, he no longer
toured. In his final two years Fela made little effort to challenge the
next in Nigeria's succession of military dictators, General Sani Abacha.
Even when his brother - Beko Ransome-Kuti, an outspoken political dissident
- - was sentenced in 1996 to 15 years in prison for his involvement in an
alleged coup plot, Fela stayed at home and waited for death.

He refused treatment for his deteriorating health, rejecting both Western
and traditional Nigerian medical services, but continued using cannabis
despite the best efforts of General Bamayi, head of the NDLEA, who said he
hoped to reform Fela's character and wean him away from marijuana.

On 9 April, 1997, in a raid on The Shrine, Fela was arrested along with
about 100 others, including several of his wives.

The zombies had one last go at forcing him to publicly renounce the holy
herb, but eventually gave up and released him. "I have been smoking for 40
years," Fela said. "It helps my music. People know I smoke worldwide. It is
not drugs, it is grass."

To his amusement, local newspapers reported his death prematurely, but Fela
finally died on Saturday August 2, 1997. "The immediate cause of death was
heart failure, but there were many complications arising from the Acquired
Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome," announced Fela's late older brother, Olikoye
Ransome-Kuti.