Can Nigerian Music Transcend Fela?
One Fela Kuti picture routinely turns up on the Internet. Etched in monochrome and set in opposition to a backdrop of stage lights, saxophone suspenders run down a naked torso, clenched Fela fists tower over a painted face.
It's broadly emblazoned on T-shirts and graffiti walls, recognisable like photographs of Bob Marley, Che Guevara or 2 Pac, as I grew up. If you have been born in the early Nineties like me, it's doubtless the first Fela photograph you saw.
True to his name, Kuti, which roughly means ‘immortal’, 20 years after his loss of life, Fela stays a visual cultural icon and represents for tens of millions of young folks preternatural cool in fashion and charisma; also riot, social activism, and, in fact, musical genius. In downtown Lagos, Fela’s music performs on from loudspeakers to shuffling toes in small dark rooms where a lone fan screeches and beer is reasonable; there's a Broadway show in his name. Fela is having a second still. He's acclaimed internationally and commands an enormous cult following among everyday individuals in his residence country.
But in Ilesa, a detailed-knit city where I grew up in the later nineties, Fela’s Afrobeat was rarely heard in the streets, compared to more folk appears like Fuji, juju, highlife, and even gospel music.
However, I remember being quietly taken by the very black voice of a defiant man declaring an existential proper to talk on ‘J’enwi Temi’. He sang, however principally he chanted ‘o le p’anu mi de’—you can not gag me—and that song possessed a certain esoteric thriller, in a way similar to Angelique Kidjo’s ‘Wombo Lombo’ which equally loved common Skales audio rotation on radio at that time. 'J’enwi Temi' was rendered in a language I oknew however barely understood: the lyrical composition was in a well-known Yoruba; however sonically it was jazzy, groovy, infectious, and funky as hell.
I might not come face-to-face with Fela until after university, marking a passage into adulthood. He turned the gift that keeps on giving: at night, while music pulses via the speakers, I'd hum to the horns, and take my place in the call-and-response. Fela’s rituals had turn into mine.
Fela survives in Nigerian popular culture as an inexhaustible trove of inspiration and lyrical template. From Burna Boy to Wizkid, any common Nigerian artist, born in (or just before) the nineties, it seems, should nod to, or directly borrow from Fela. And there lies the Fela downside: he's scaffold and ceiling, patron and parameter.
Fela Kuti is the one everyone admires with out seriously aspiring to transcend. Certain modern Naija artists who cannot approximate Fela’s musical range or cultural influence, like Orezi in his latest 'Cooking Pot' video, choose to acceptable him.
Suppose this is why it grates to see Nigerian digital dance music sweepingly recognized as Afrobeats—Fela's creation with an 's'. Indeed, the music scene is haunted by the spirit of Fela Kuti, even when much of it ought to be more appropriately named for a more latest pioneer. It was Terry G who, in his hit tune, 'Free Madness', openly declared Nigerian pop music as a widely admitting freestyle session. Fela, then again, was an accomplished composer and multi-instrumentalist, having studied music professionally, and had stints performing as back-up vocalist with veteran highlife musician, Victor Olaiya; and likewise with the Koola Lobitos band. This already adds up to more rigour, profesionalism, and maybe privilege, than the emerging Nigerian artiste in the present day can afford.
It's broadly emblazoned on T-shirts and graffiti walls, recognisable like photographs of Bob Marley, Che Guevara or 2 Pac, as I grew up. If you have been born in the early Nineties like me, it's doubtless the first Fela photograph you saw.
True to his name, Kuti, which roughly means ‘immortal’, 20 years after his loss of life, Fela stays a visual cultural icon and represents for tens of millions of young folks preternatural cool in fashion and charisma; also riot, social activism, and, in fact, musical genius. In downtown Lagos, Fela’s music performs on from loudspeakers to shuffling toes in small dark rooms where a lone fan screeches and beer is reasonable; there's a Broadway show in his name. Fela is having a second still. He's acclaimed internationally and commands an enormous cult following among everyday individuals in his residence country.
But in Ilesa, a detailed-knit city where I grew up in the later nineties, Fela’s Afrobeat was rarely heard in the streets, compared to more folk appears like Fuji, juju, highlife, and even gospel music.
However, I remember being quietly taken by the very black voice of a defiant man declaring an existential proper to talk on ‘J’enwi Temi’. He sang, however principally he chanted ‘o le p’anu mi de’—you can not gag me—and that song possessed a certain esoteric thriller, in a way similar to Angelique Kidjo’s ‘Wombo Lombo’ which equally loved common Skales audio rotation on radio at that time. 'J’enwi Temi' was rendered in a language I oknew however barely understood: the lyrical composition was in a well-known Yoruba; however sonically it was jazzy, groovy, infectious, and funky as hell.
I might not come face-to-face with Fela until after university, marking a passage into adulthood. He turned the gift that keeps on giving: at night, while music pulses via the speakers, I'd hum to the horns, and take my place in the call-and-response. Fela’s rituals had turn into mine.
Fela survives in Nigerian popular culture as an inexhaustible trove of inspiration and lyrical template. From Burna Boy to Wizkid, any common Nigerian artist, born in (or just before) the nineties, it seems, should nod to, or directly borrow from Fela. And there lies the Fela downside: he's scaffold and ceiling, patron and parameter.
Fela Kuti is the one everyone admires with out seriously aspiring to transcend. Certain modern Naija artists who cannot approximate Fela’s musical range or cultural influence, like Orezi in his latest 'Cooking Pot' video, choose to acceptable him.
Suppose this is why it grates to see Nigerian digital dance music sweepingly recognized as Afrobeats—Fela's creation with an 's'. Indeed, the music scene is haunted by the spirit of Fela Kuti, even when much of it ought to be more appropriately named for a more latest pioneer. It was Terry G who, in his hit tune, 'Free Madness', openly declared Nigerian pop music as a widely admitting freestyle session. Fela, then again, was an accomplished composer and multi-instrumentalist, having studied music professionally, and had stints performing as back-up vocalist with veteran highlife musician, Victor Olaiya; and likewise with the Koola Lobitos band. This already adds up to more rigour, profesionalism, and maybe privilege, than the emerging Nigerian artiste in the present day can afford.