By 1976’s Up Side Down (since spelled Upside Down on digital versions), Fela had changed his double-barrelled surname of Ransome Kuti to Anikulapo Kuti. Anikulapo is a Yoruba word translated as “he who carries death in his pouch”. In other words, Fela would choose when he would die. Writer John Howe, who knew Fela, said the “un-African sound” of Ransome had been “irritating [Fela] for years.”
Fela Anikulapo Kuti recruited his American girlfriend Sandra Smith, also known as Sandra Izsadore, to sing lead on the title track. ‘Up Side Down’ is a rare Fela song where he doesn’t sing.
For the first 4 minutes the band mostly play on a D minor chord, before the horns take over and introduce more melody. Between bursts of rhythmic horn playing, Fela solos on tenor sax, teetering on the edge of his instrument’s higher register.
Despite the emphasis on rhythm for those first few minutes, ‘Up Side Down’ isn’t the most danceable Fela track. The horns seem to be on a metre of their own. The backing riff, during the saxophone solos, starts on the second beat of every other bar. There’s not the emphasis on the One that Fela became more fond of in later works. Nor is there much space between scratchy guitar chords and Tony Allen’s four-limbed fidgetiness to dig your teeth into the beats that are emphasised. The song is quicker than a track like ‘Gentleman’, where the listener can more easily make sense of the groove.
It’s a song to wriggle to; to switch your attention from one polyrhythm to another – or to ditch consciousness and wriggle unthinkingly. One dances differently to this than to James Brown’ more straightforward emphasis of the One – and thanks to Brown, much of the most danceable Western music of the last 60 years.
Smith sings in a Nigerian accent, and compares the disorganisation in Africa to the organised “communication”, “agriculture”, and “electric” elsewhere in the world. The backing singers contribute with a brilliantly energetic refrain (“Patapata”, meaning “completely” or “totally”). That word, like most of the instruments’ emphasis, is placed on an offbeat, but because it’s repeated so many times it becomes one of the most graspable rhythms.
It was Smith who inspired Fela to give his music a message in the first place. Having met Fela during Fela’s trip to USA, she gave him a copy of Malcolm X’s book and he learned of the Black Power movement. Smith had seen Fela perform a song about soup with his early band Koola Lobitos. A member of the Black Panther Party, Smith told Fela that he should use his platform to “elevate, educate, and lift one’s mind.”
Fela’s youngest son, Seun and his band Egypt 80 (which he inherited from Fela), along with Funmilayo Afrobeat Orquestra, covered ‘Upside Down’. Seun’s wife, Yetunde Anikulapo Kuti, delivers a similarly vibrant vocal and almost the whole band join in on the “Patapata” call-and-response.
Top image from Bandcamp.