MFM Presents “Music Is Essential,” a Zoom Roundtable Discussion on the Legacy and Impact of Fela Kuti’s Music and Activism on the African Continent. With Special Guests who knew or worked with the “Godfather of Afrobeat”

“Music is the weapon of the future.” – Fela

Review by Heidi Johanna Vierthaler

This April 19^th, 2024 Roundtable Discussion was produced by MFM President Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi aka SoSaLa and was moderated by Banning Eyre (Senior Producer for the Peabody Award-winning National Public Radio (NPR) series Afropop Worldwide, he is also a Musician and MFM Member).

(Watch the ZOOM event video here.)

The special guests who knew or worked with the godfather of Afrobeat were:

Rikki Stein (London): artist and tour manager, producer, label owner, author; and Fela’s friend and manager for some fifteen years until Fela’s sad demise. Oversees the release of Fela’s 50 album catalog.

Chris May (London): first journalist to interview Fela in Lagos in the aftermath of the Nigerian army’s 1977 military coup of Kalakuta Republic. Chris May’s Google Arts & Culture’s interactive state-of-the-art Fela website is expected to go online later in 2024. In 2017, Seun Kuti, Fela’s younger son, appointed him Guardian of Afrobeat.

Sandra Izsadore (Los Angeles): singer-songwriter, composer, author, activist; and advocate who met Fela in LA in 1969 and engaged him in the international struggle for Black civil rights. Izsadore’s revolutionizing relationship with Fela is dramatized in the Tony Award-winning Broadway Musical Fela!

Michael Veal (New York): professor of Music at Yale University, Doctorate of Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and Bachelors in Jazz Composition and Arrangement at Berklee College of Music. He is the author of Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (2000), a guest saxophonist playing in Fela’s band, Egypt 80, and the bass player in his band Michael Veal & Aqua Ife.

Duke Amayo (Atlanta): Nigerian musician, singer, and composer who grew up in Fela’s Lagos neighborhood and former frontman of the Brooklyn Afrobeat band Antibalas for 23 years. He composed and performed on the GRAMMY nominated Antibalas Fu Chronicles album for Best Global Music Album of the Year 2021.

Leon “Kaleta” Ligan-Majekodunmi (New York): from Benin. Guitarist in Fela’s Egypt 80 band through the 1980s and into the ‘90s. Played on two Fela albums: O.D.O.O. (1989) and Underground System (1992). He is the leader of the renowned Super Yamba Band, and Keleta has collaborated with Lauren Hill, Angelique Kidjo, Shina Peters, and both of Fela’s bandleading sons Femi and Seun.

Stuart Leigh (Kingston/New York): produced Folkways album Music of Sierra Leone: Kono-Mende Farmers’ Songs. Covered the Organization of African Unity Summit in Sierra Leone in 1980, and went on to interview Palm wine guitar legend Koo Nimo in Ghana. He continued to Lagos where he interviewed Fela about pan-Africanism and attended Fela’s rehearsal at the Shrine in Lagos. He produced an NPR profile on Fela, when he toured the U.S. in 1986.)

Noel Smith (Kingston/New York): musician and audio engineer. He spent 1972-1973 working in Lagos, Nigeria, assembling and running a multitrack studio owned by Cream Drummer Ginger Baker. Smith worked with top musicians, mostly Fela Kuti and his Africa 70 band; and recorded some iconic songs in that era, including “Lady” and “Shakara (Oloje).”

Ghariokwu Lemi (Lagos): Nigerian painter, illustrator and designer who is most renowned for providing many of the original Cover Images for the recordings of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.

Dr. Tee Mac Omatshola Iseli (Lagos): Nigerian flutist, band Leader, composer, educator; club owner, investor: and co-founder of the Classical Music Society (CMS) of Nigeria and of the Performing Musician Association of Nigeria (PMAN). He toured the world extensively with his Pop band Silver Convention and his Afropop Tee Mac Collection. Reformed in the year 2000 his latest band Tee Mac’s Gold Convention. Since 1970 till Fela’s death Tee Mac has jammed with Fela’s band countless times with his flute. Tee Mac and Fela’s band shared the same stage many times during concerts and Festivals, especially at the Lekky Sun Splash every Easter and Christmas; Tee Mac was Fela’s Co-Adviser on six of his albums, especially during the mixing stage. He was also a good friend of Fela’s family, especially with Fela’s son Seun whom he adopted from age 13 to 18, and joins them for birthdays, Felabration, and special shows at the Shrine.

Author’s Preface Note

I was so excited when I first heard of MFM Presents “Music Is Essential” ZOOM Roundtable Discussion on the Legacy and Impact of Fela Kuti’s Music and Activism on the African Continent between Fela Kuti‘s Friends, because I was eager to learn more about our friend Ghariokwu Lemi, Fela Kuti’s Album Cover Artist whom I met at the Maine African Film Festival in Portland, in 2011, and I wanted thus to learn more about his friend Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì; and I wanted to do justice by him, Musicians For Musicians (MFM), his nation, and Our Nigerian Friends:

• University of Washington Ethnomusicology talking drum player Professor Bisi Adeleke and his Friend, whom he wrote a note introducing me to:
• King Sunny Ade,

whom I was blessed to have met both in Seattle, circa 1988. I decade or two later I saw Ade in Boston, and had a wonderful conversation with him.

I hope that this review does justice for all whom loved Fela and his legacy.

Review

Fela Kuti was a Force of Nature born in Nigeria Africa in 1938, vital to its modern culture, because he drew from its history. After 50 records, and hundreds of global concert performances, including in the US, especially the Conspiracy of Hope Concert that Amnesty International produced at the Giant Stadium, accompanied by global media coverage throughout his career; until he died in 1997, a legend ahead of his time.

The Musicians For Musicians (MFM) organization (1) welcomes you to explore with us the rich gift of radical raw Afropop Music, the life and music of the revolutionary who invented the genre, and the social leadership of Fela Kuti. This rousing roundtable discussion is like opening colorful wrapping tissue paper to discover the creative genius that was Fela Kuti: a legendary composer rooted in Nigerian rhythms, and social consciousness born from his spiritual awakening. Since his Spiritual Transcendence (death), this Zoom Roundtable Discussion is a rare historic opportunity to learn from those who were blessed to have had the opportunity to work with Fela, along with the words from the creative genius himself – many who have come together for the first time over Zoom, from so many points on our planet.

We get to join Fela’s Friends on an amazing adventure into Fela’s music, career, and his legacy as an influential musical innovator and groundbreaking Visionary who saw how African music could exist in modern times. It was exciting to hear from Fela’s friends the background of their experiences, especially from Sandra Iszadore’s social and spiritual awakening to the truth of the racism in the United States, and how that related to how Fela learned about America, and then in turn, how that American Colonialism / Capitalism perspective helped Fela to form his view of his own African, and more specifically Nigerian, culture and how that, in turn, helped to fire up his musical genius.

Witness just a part of this majesty in the Broadway Musical Fela: see its Tony Awards showcase featuring the book by Jim Lewis and renowned Choreographer and Director Bill T. Jones, who conceived this production which highlighted the Music of Fela, supported by Aaron Johnson, and the Production Team including Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and the renowned Knitting Factory Entertainment:

For a good synopsis and more information, see the Playbill:

https://playbill.com/production/fela-eugene-oneill-theatre-vault-0000004685

[Getting back to our MFM Zoom Roundtable I enjoyed how Banning Eyre ran the discussion, coming up with culturally astute and intelligent questions and comments; allowing all of Fela’s friends to take their turns to speak, which wasn’t an easy task.]

Along the way we hear in Fela’s own words and music, and from his friends’ wisdom so that our comprehension deepens of Fela’s:

Music

• It is a combination of West African High Life with a strong influence of funk as articulated by James Brown with the chicken scratch rhythm guitar and the modal Jazz harmonies of people like Coltrane, and powerful echoes of the kinds of traditional music you hear in West Africa, especially stretching from Cameroon up to Ghana or maybe the lvory Coast, especially with the singing styles. (Michael Veal)
• Stuart Leight presented Fela with interview snippets and music (“Colonial Mentality” and “V.I.P.” (“Vagabond in Power”).

• How people like Bobby Benson, Miles Davis, and all of that vibrant traditional music across West Africa especially the Yoruba spiritual music, the Salsa music, and that beautiful coral singing from the Benin Republic and going up through Togo and into Ghana. (Michael Veal)
• How he used his music to bring to people’s attention, to wake up to see what’s happening…[to] smell the coffee so at the end of the day [people are awakened!] (Rikki Stein)
• How much of a taskmaster he was about his rehearsals, that you had to be meticulous in your part of his music, or else… and how respected drummer and Fela’s music director Tony Allen who (2) assisted in this action of discipline. (Noel Smith)
• Is rooted in the Nigerian spiritual Orisha Tradition. (Duke Amayo)
• You will hear how many who watched him build a song, had no clue what the song is. How he intertwined Latin Rhythms, and how Noel Smith said: “This band was the most electric thing I had heard. …[and was] absolutely…”floored by the music [and that in the recording studio, there was never any overdubbing, ever, in any of the songs that that I did with him none. … [that it was] straight down some of the most powerful music, I’ve ever had the experience of.”
• You will learn from Lemi “How in 1970 when Fela returned from Nigeria everything changed, his song performed with Afrika 70 “Jeun Ko Ku Chop ‘N’ Quench (1971)” became a bit of a national anthem [played at] …every party, …people… dance and sing to it, and the lyrics were… in unfamiliar territory, the Iyrical style, was different from everybody else and the music too was fresh.

• How windshield wipers inspired his music. (Sandra Izsadore)
• How loyal his musicians were to him throughout his time of political imprisonment, that they would leave King Sunny Ade, to return to Fela every time. (Leon “Kaleta” L-M)
• How he elevated the sound of his music through African counterpoint. (Michael Veal)

Life / Career / Message

• How his family’s, (famously renowned in Nigeria), background contributed to his understanding of the Orisha Tradition and how this spirituality influenced his music.
• We hear from Lemi, about how Fela became the President of a diaspora organization…[of] people who studied abroad and came back, the organization was called the Nigerian Association of Patriotic Writers and Artists pronounced NAPA with King Sunny Ade, and other Nigerian musicians.
• We hear from Tee Mac how he cared for professional Nigerian musicians, including Fela and his Sons getting paid royalties. As a founding member of the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN), MCSN collects royalties with worldwide agreements for its members. And as the President and co-founder (with King Sunny Ade) of the first, biggest; and most powerful Black Musicians’ Union in the world called The Performing Musicians Employers’ Association Of Nigeria (PMAN) he fought for musicians’ social justice through legislation, as opposed to X fighting the government.
• Lemi also recalled that “I knew about Miriam Makeba (1) when she went into exile… in 1969 I saw her interview and all that, so I had this [emotion] in me already, I read about the Black Panther Movement in 1972 when Joe Jackson was killed in San Quentin Prison in Los Angeles, I read about it in a drum magazine and I made a near perfect drawing of him [in his honor] and I cried and I said, “Oh my race of people, are going through a lot”. I can’t help but feel that this interest was something that was shared by Fela.
• In 1974 Lemi’s mutual voracious appetite for studying especially about spirituality, how he delved into the 19 books by Tibetan Buddhist Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, and how he and Fela learned breath control and Astral traveling which influenced Fela’s music.
• Fela was a herald for his fellow Nigerians because the schools didn’t ever teach us anything about who we were [as Nigerians and Africans].
• How Lemi’s meeting Fela was a predestination because of the synergies of their philosophies, and how his creative process in using symbolic imagery in his album cover art. Lemi also spoke about some of the technology that he used.
• The process of the detail behind making the album art.
• That his role was to “use my art to amplify…the message and the ideal that he [Fela] was trying to pass across to Africans [with the] mission …to help towards [the] mental liberation of African people.”
• How he gave back politically and socially to his community, one way he did this was by employing his people, and several hundred depended on Fela for their living.
• Lemi also recounted that “I took away from him his workaholism, [and that Fela] was always on top of his game.”
• How he set up a youth political Wing in Kalakuta.
• The brazen approach to life in his encounters with machine gun-armed law enforcement personnel, especially at state border checkpoints, left his friends feeling safe in dangerous territories.
• You will hear his friends use the terms courage, and bravery of the man that “despite everything the Nigerian State threw at him, the countless times he was beaten up, …he refused to buckle under.”
• In his own words, you will learn in terms of his consciountisizing the public through music, how his first visit to America in 1969 changed his music by his exposure “to black power, to Malcolm X, [and how he] was introduced to African history which they never taught us in school at home, as Colonial students. …I decided to write political music.” We also learn why, his seeing people’s problems as problems of progress, caused fear in the Nigerian Government, and why they arrested him so many times.

As a social and environmental justice advocate and singer-songwriter I so resonate with what Sandra says here, and I in my heart feel, that it gets to the core of what Fela would want us to advocate:

“On the spiritual level, you have a job as a musician and that gift that has been given to you by our Spiritual Creator is to uplift and educate a society. … It’s not… used to destroy a nation but to build this whole Afro Beat Journey [which] began here in Los Angeles. He was bringing to his attention the importance of using music to educate and in doing so Fela coined the phrase “Let the music be your weapon”  [and I would add: Let the music be your non-violent weapon of negotiation and peace.] and in letting music be his weapon I [Sandra] noticed that the industry in America, they heard him loud and clear because it was during that period when we first met that the music was bringing about awareness and empowerment.  … and Fela continued to do that through his music, and I [Sandra] am continuing to educate. I think now John Q Public” is waking up, because I think people are tired of hearing this music that creates violence [not Fela’s], it’s degrading, and nobody needs to hear that. We need to tap into our higher selves and our higher being, because multitudes listen to music.”

You will also hear about how seriously Sandra takes her role as a mentor, by way of edutainment.

As a global community; we all owe a debt of gratitude to all of the Producers, especially Rikki Stein and Chris May who created Google Arts & Culture’s interactive state-of-the-art Fela website which is expected to go online later in 2024; and Participants in this historic virtual Roundtable Discussion, especially those who have contributed by collecting all of his music, etc., and for facilitating the Broadway Musical, and to artists like Thomas Mapfumo, and Pussy Riot in Russia, for taking forward Fela’s message and his courage, in terms of standing up to authority. These achievements are just some of Fela’s enduring living legacies. 

Through this rich exploration we all have been blessed with the gift of knowing what a treasure of Nigeria and Africa, Fela is, to not just Africa, but the entire world.

Observations

It is such a shame that so many friends of Fela are just learning about this information through his sons, including Femi and Seun, and their mutual friends, now that he is gone. We need to do more of these kinds of discussions while our artists are still alive so that we all can benefit from their wisdom first-hand.

To this end, MFM is planning another Roundtable Discussion about Fela Kuti to cover new ground, so please stay tuned for the next rousing discussion installment!!!! 

FOOTNOTES

1: About MFM

“MFM seeks to bring together musicians from all disciplines, styles, traditions, and localities in the cause of their mutual self-betterment. Whether through education, networking, or political action. MFM’s ultimate goal is to elevate the work of all musicians to the level of a true profession.”

2: John Coltrane: I was blessed to have met his son Ravi Coltrane at his show at Berklee College of Music in Boston, circa 1999-2002, and outside The Blue Note in New York City circa 2004-2005.

3: Tony Allen: I was blessed to have met him backstage with a friend’s band at Bunratty’s in Boston circa 1988.

4: Miriam Makeba: I grew up with her second record as a young child, from Athens and Atlanta, Georgia in the late ’60s, to Seattle in the ’70s, to Upstate New York, and several places in Down East Maine, and I still have it today. So I was so blessed to have met her and Hugh Masekela, along with fellow Berklee College of Music in Boston Alumni Rico Tyler RIP, and Emmanuel “Chulo” Gatewood (who both remembered me from Berklee!), when I reviewed their concert at Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle in 1988. I then saw them all, in several places from New York City and Boston, in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

5: Last but not least, I was also honored to have met Fela’s youngest Son, Seun Kuti, after seeing him perform with Egypt 80, at the Portland House of Music here in Maine on June 9^th. And he is a great torchbearer of his father’s living legacy.

PostScript, after I wrote the previous writing.

I was also honored to have met Leon “Kaleta” LM, at the soundcheck for his show here at the SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, with Portland’s own global band Bondeko opening, on September 5th. See my Facebook Post about this gig, with videos of the show:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/uZoLBrtx4iEKEFNU/?mibextid=oFDknk

to get just a taste of the legacy that Fela Kuti has given to our world.

Don’t forget to keep abreast of the next MFM Roundtable Discussion on Fela Kuti, and for more exciting Roundtable Discussions to come, here, and without any further adieu, please watch our ZOOM Roundtable Discussion video here.