In 1976, Fela Kuti’s family saw the record sleeve for his new album. Femi, his eldest son, knew immediately that it was inviting trouble, and told Fela so. Fela smiled and said, “I know.”

‘Zombie’ was Fela’s most scathing attack on Nigerian authorities yet, comparing soldiers to mindless zombies. Fela sings that soldiers don’t think “unless you tell am to think”; neither do they “go”, “stop”, or “turn” without instruction.

As if the lyrics didn’t make it clear enough, the record sleeve that Femi was so disturbed by featured a photo of Fela superimposed in front of a group of soldiers.

The song may be the most concise example of Fela’s Akrika 70 sound and his political attitude. (12 minutes was concise for Fela, as we’ve seen.) ‘Zombie’ opens with five bars of dual guitars; then there’s percussion and bass. Those guitars stay consistent through the vast majority of the song, in keeping with the by-now established modus operandi. Tony Allen’s drums, meanwhile, are constantly shifting – if you listen to only them, it becomes clear how much he’s heightening the sense of movement and unpredictability. Allen had a simple explanation for his shifting patterns: when he got bored of one, he’d create another.  

Fela’s horn, too, is freer than the guitars and bass. As was becoming customary, he solos on tenor sax in the first few minutes. Compared to a song like ‘Confusion’ from two years earlier, there’s a greater sense of urgency. The other horn players play with a similar punch and the motif is perhaps the most energetic of Fela’s career up to this point.

At 5:19, the first verse starts, with the backing singers involved almost as soon as Fela’s started singing. Their “Zombie, oh zombie” response was picked up by the Lagos public and chanted at soldiers on the street, which didn’t help the authorities’ enraged response to the song.

The next call-and-response—the backing singers repeating “Joro, jaro, joro”—means “Left, right, left” in Fela’s native Yoruba. The topic of soldiers becomes unmistakable in the first thrilling chorus: “Attention! Quick march!”, which Fela follows with a shout of “Orrrderrr!”

Throughout all this, Okalue Ojeah’s rhythm guitar is relentlessly chicken-scratching and palm-muting percussive chords; Oghene Kologbo’s tenor guitar is sticking stubbornly to its riff. (They’re just two of a band that could stretch to 30 on the road.) At 9:51, after a keyboard-led bridge, the backing singers’ repetitions of “Zombie” arrive on the One . If not for ‘Yellow Fever’ of the same year, it’d be almost unquestionably the most James Brown influenced (or coincedentally Brown-sounding) song of Fela’s discography.

Top image from Discogs.

For Femi’s story about seeing the album artwork, check out Finding Fela (2014), a fantastic documentary about the man and his music.