[Today: Fela Kuti fights the good fight...]
Nigerian-born Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the inventor of AfroBeat and a political agitator of some repute. Kuti’s music features extended jams filled with jabbing horns, percolating percussion, call-and-response chanting with backup singers, and lyrics focusing on governmental corruption. He combined the uncompromising political stance of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers with the international charisma of Bob Marley, while wailing on his saxophone and guiding his band, Afrika ‘70, like a musical shaman.
An outspoken critic of African dictators and state policies, Kuti was a frequent target of shakedowns by the Nigerian government. But rather than back down, Kuti intensified his attacks, culminating with his 1977 album Zombie. The title track, which takes up all of side one, compares the Nigerian military to a pack of mindless zombies. “Zombie no go think, unless you tell ‘im to think” Kuti sings, before closing the song with fake marching orders (”Fall In/Fall Out/Fall Down”) that openly mock military conventions.
The Nigerian government was not amused, and struck back with force. Kuti’s personal compound was raided by more than 1,000 soldiers, who beat every man, woman and child on the premises. Soldiers threw Kuti’s mother to her death from a second story window, and beat Kuti himself within an inch of his life. But still the great musician would not back down. He had his mother’s coffin delivered to Nigerian military headquarters, and based his next album, Coffin For Head Of State, on those events.
It’s no coincidence that Kuti was known as ‘The Black President’ – he was a beloved figure in Africa and rebel of the highest order. He married 27 women in a single ceremony, smoked copious amounts of marijuana on stage and in public, and often performed clad in nothing but his underwear, but Fela Kuti will always be remembered for his outspoken struggles on behalf of equality and justice. It’s a tribute to the power of his music that those odd footnotes don’t even come close to overshadowing a dynamic musical and political legacy.
Listen: Zombie
8 April 2008 at 8:24 pm |
Forget Barry White, this is audio Viagra.
9 April 2008 at 1:26 am |
And speaking of hardwood, Mr Furr, congrats to your Kansas Jayhawks for winning an epic championship game on Monday night.