Welcome to Friday Fela, a new series exploring the music and life of Fela Kuti. Each week this summer, we’ll dig a different song of the Afrobeat master.
Fela Kuti was born in 1938 in Southern Nigeria. His mother was Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, an educator and women’s rights activist, and his father Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, president of Nigeria Union of Teachers.
Despite this upbringing, Fela was a “dunce” at school, continually retaking classes, according to his eldest son Femi Kuti (Finding Fela, 2014). Aged 19, Fela moved from Lagos, Nigeria to London, telling his parents he would study medicine. Instead, he studied music at Trinity College School of Music. Femi tells a story of everybody laughing at Fela after an early trumpet performance, with one person saying, “There’s that lousy trumpet player.” Having picked up the trumpet in high school and only taking music seriously at 19 years old, what were the odds that he would become a renowned musician?
Fela listened to a wide range of music, including highlife from Ghana and Nigeria, Afro-Cuban music, and American jazz, such as Miles Davis, whose playing inspired Fela's commitment to the trumpet. Though Fela and James Brown both disputed that they influenced by each other, most observers agree they did. But Fela was introducing something new to the world. In ’71, Fela’s London Scene was released. This was the start of Afrobeat.
By 1971, Fela had formed the band Koola Lobitos and twice renamed it – first to Nigeria 70, then Africa 70. He hadn’t yet abandoned his slave name, Ransome.
In the mid-’60s, Fela switched to saxophone. Here he plays baritone sax, along with Lekan Animashaun, often known as Babi Ani, one of Fela’s longtime band members. Tony Allen and Tunde Williams, two more prime collaborators, play drums and trumpet.
During his 1969 trip to USA, Fela’s love interest and Black-rights activist, Sandra Izsadore, told him:
“Music should be used to educate. You have a platform. Use this music to educate, elevate, and lift one’s mind.” (Finding Fela)
In ‘Egbe Mi O’, Fela sings in Yoruba about the power of dance. He wasn’t yet using every song to rally against corrupt governments and military regimes, but he was making people dance. This is music that elevates. It’ll lift your butt, if not your mind.
From the first second, the Brown influence appears to be clear, with the punchy horns and the emphasis on the One.
Throughout much of the song there’s Jimmy Nolen-esque “chicken scratch” guitar. But the guitar’s emphasis is mostly on the four (the last beat in each bar). The brief bursts of horns are on the three. Then in the bridge (1:10), they play sustained chords on the One.
Allen’s drums are more contained than in later songs, particularly his kick, but there’s a hint of the headspinning polyrhythms that would come. Allen said in Finding Fela that Fela would listen to him playing different patterns, then say, “This one!”
The claves and congas played by other band members add extra polyrhythms – it’s the claves’ and guitar’s syncopation that makes the song feel so fidgety, even when Fela’s vocals are comparatively sleepy (such as when he sings “E mi o riri o” at 7:44).
10 minutes in, Fela starts a call-and-response, with backing singers repeating, “Laaaaa, la la la la, la la la la, la la laaa”. Call-and-responses (sometimes with vocals, sometimes with vocals and Fela’s horn) would become a recurrent theme in his work through the next two decades.
To close the song, the horn motif returns with Fela’s voice near cracking as he repeats the titular lyric. He’s put all his energy into the song, lasting 13 minutes – a track length that would come to look paltry.
Fela’s London Scene was a collection of tunes that had already been released in Nigeria, then rerecorded in London. Fela would soon revolutionise both music and politics, at home and across the world. In the coming parts of this Friday Fela series, we’ll trace his vast discography and explore 12 more of his highlights.
Top image from Discogs.