Fela Kuti
Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì was a Nigerian musician and political activist. He is regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers". AllMusic described him as "a musical and sociopolitical voice" of international significance.
Kuti was the son of Nigerian women's rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. After early experiences abroad, he and his band Africa '70 shot to stardom in Nigeria during the 1970s, during which Kuti was an outspoken critic and target of Nigeria's military juntas. In 1970, he founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, which declared itself independent from military rule. The commune was destroyed in a 1978 army raid that injured Kuti and his mother, the latter fatally. He was jailed by the government of Muhammadu Buhari in 1984, but released after 20 months. Kuti continued to record and perform through the 1980s and 1990s. Since his death in 1997, reissues and compilations of his music have been overseen by his son, Femi Kuti.
Life and career
Early life
Kuti was born into the Ransome-Kuti family, an upper-middle-class family, on 15 October 1938, in Abeokuta, Colonial Nigeria. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was an anti-colonial feminist, and his father, Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti was an Anglican minister, school principal, and the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. Kuti's parents both played active roles in the anti-colonial movement in Nigeria, most notably the Abeokuta Women's Riots which were led by his mother in 1946. His brothers Beko Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, both medical doctors, were well known nationally. Kuti is a cousin to the writer and fellow activist Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner. They are both descendants of Josiah Ransome-Kuti, an Anglican clergyman and musical pioneer, who is Kuti's paternal grandfather and Soyinka's maternal great-grandfather.Kuti attended Abeokuta Grammar School. In 1958, he was invited to London by his younger brother Beko, to study music at the Trinity College of Music, with the trumpet being his preferred instrument. While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos and played a fusion of jazz and highlife. The ensemble would include as members Bayo Martins on drums and Wole Bucknor on piano. In 1960, Kuti married his first wife, Remilekun Taylor with whom he had three children. In 1963, Kuti moved back to the newly independent Federation of Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos, and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All-Stars.
He called his style Afrobeat, a combination of Apala, funk, jazz, highlife, salsa, calypso and traditional Yoruba music. In 1969, Kuti took the band to the United States and spent ten months in Los Angeles. While there, he discovered the Black Power movement through Sandra Smith, a partisan of the Black Panther Party. This experience heavily influenced his music and political views. He renamed the band Nigeria 70. Soon after, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was tipped off by a promoter that Kuti and his band were in the US without work permits. The band performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles that would later be released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions.
1970s
After Kuti and his band returned to Nigeria, the group was renamed Africa '70 as lyrical themes changed from love to social issues. He formed the Kalakuta Republic—a commune, recording studio, and home for many people connected to the band—which he later declared independent from the Nigerian state.Kuti set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel. First named the Afro-Spot and later the Afrika Shrine, this was where he performed regularly and officiated at personalised Yoruba traditional ceremonies in honor of his native ancestral faith. He also changed his name to Anikulapo. He stopped using the hyphenated surname "Ransome" because he considered it to be a slave name.
Kuti's music was popular among the Nigerian public and Africans in general. He decided to sing in Pidgin English so that individuals all over Africa could enjoy his music, where the local languages they speak are diverse and numerous. As popular as Kuti's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was unpopular with the government, and raids on the Kalakuta Republic were frequent. During 1972, Ginger Baker recorded Stratavarious, with Kuti appearing alongside vocalist and guitarist Bobby Tench. Around this time, Kuti became even more involved with the Yoruba traditional religion.
In 1977, Kuti and Africa 70 released the album Zombie, which heavily criticized Nigerian soldiers, and used the zombie metaphor to describe the Nigerian military's methods. The album was a massive success and infuriated the government, who raided the Kalakuta Republic with 1,000 soldiers. During the raid, Kuti was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was fatally injured after being thrown from a window. The commune was burnt down, and Kuti's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Kuti claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for a commanding officer's intervention as he was being beaten. Kuti's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo's official residence, and to write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier," referencing the official inquiry that claimed an unknown soldier had destroyed the commune.
Kuti and his band took up residence in Crossroads Hotel after the Shrine had been destroyed along with the commune. In 1978, he married 27 women, many of whom were dancers, composers, and singers with whom he worked. The marriages served not only to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic but also to protect Kuti and his wives from the authorities' false claims that Kuti was kidnapping women. Later, he adopted a rotation system of maintaining 12 simultaneous wives. There were also two concerts in the year: the first was in Accra, in which rioting broke out during the song "Zombie", which caused Kuti to be banned from entering Ghana; the second was after the Berlin Jazz Festival, when most of Kuti's musicians deserted him due to rumours that he planned to use all of the proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.
Other reports suggested that, being disappointed by their fees, band leader Tony Allen and almost all of the musicians resigned. Baryton player Lekan Animashaun became band leader following this, and Fela created a new group named Egypt 80. In 1979, Kuti formed his political party, which he called Movement of the People, to "clean up society like a mop", but it quickly became inactive due to his confrontations with the government of the day. MOP preached Nkrumahism and Africanism.
1980s and beyond
In 1980, Kuti signed an exclusive management deal with French producer Martin Meissonnier, who secured a record deal with Arista Records London through A&R Tarquin Gotch. The first album came out in February 1981 under the title of Black President, with the track "ITT" and on the B-Side "Colonial Mentality" and an edited version of "Sorrow, Tears and Blood".Following the release, Kuti performed his first European tour with a suite of 70 people. The tour, starting in Paris on 15 March 1981, had a huge crowd estimated at 10,000 people attending, then Brussels, Wien and Strasbourg. Black President was followed by another album that was recorded in Paris in July 1981: Original Sufferhead, with "Power Show" on the B-side. Kuti also recorded the track "Perambulator" in Paris.
Arista gave his masters to Fela at the end of 1981.
French Filmmaker Jean Jacques Flori came to Lagos in early 1982 to direct the now classic film "Music is a Weapon". The film was broadcast first on Antenne 2. The film producer Stephane Tchalgaldjieff didn't like the resulting film, and decided to re-edit it for an international release. "V.I.P. " and "Authority Stealing" were released in 1980, with the former being a live performance done in Berlin, West Germany.
In 1983, Kuti nominated himself for president in Nigeria's first elections in decades, but his candidature was refused. At this time, Kuti recreated his band, Egypt 80, which reflected the view that Egyptian civilization, knowledge, philosophy, mathematics, and religious systems are African and must be claimed as such. Kuti stated in an interview: "Stressing the point that I have to make Africans aware of the fact that Egyptian civilization belongs to the African. So that was the reason why I changed the name of my band to Egypt 80." Kuti continued to record albums and tour the country. He further infuriated the political establishment by implicating ITT Corporation's vice-president, Moshood Abiola, and Obasanjo in the popular 25-minute political screed entitled "I.T.T. ".
In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari's government, of which Kuti was a vocal opponent, jailed him on a charge of currency smuggling. Amnesty International and others denounced the charges as politically motivated. Amnesty designated him a prisoner of conscience, and other human rights groups also took up his case. After 20 months, General Ibrahim Babangida released him from prison. On his release, Kuti divorced his 12 remaining wives, citing "marriage brings jealousy and selfishness" since his wives would regularly compete for superiority.
Kuti continued to release albums with Egypt 80 and toured in the United States and Europe while continuing to be politically active. In 1986, he performed in Giants Stadium in New Jersey as part of Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope concert along with Bono, Carlos Santana, and the Neville Brothers. In 1989, Kuti and Egypt 80 released the anti-apartheid album Beasts of No Nation that depicted U.S. President Ronald Reagan, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and South African State President Pieter Willem Botha on its cover. The title of the composition evolved out of a statement by Botha: "This uprising will bring out the beast in us."
Kuti's album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually, he ceased releasing albums altogether. On 21 January 1993, he and four members of Egypt 80 were arrested and were later charged on 25 January for the murder of an electrician. Rumours also circulated that he was suffering from an illness for which he was refusing treatment. However, there had been no confirmed statement from Kuti about this speculation.