Fela

by Moore, Carlos

  The government probe by a two-man administrative panel established that there was a burning of the residence of 14-A Agege Motor Road, but ended saying that the house was burnt by “unknown soldiers”. So that’s why the next two albums I released after the sack of Kalakuta were named Sorrow, Tears and Blood and Unknown Soldier. They were dedicated to the memory of those who were beaten, raped, tortured or injured during that attack.

  16

  Shuffering and Shmiling

  “ITT”, “Authority Stealing”*

  Whaaaaaaaaam! Here I was, in one blow, out in the streets with all my people: about eighty of us! My case in court? It was thrown out, man. They didn’t even hear it. They withdrew all of the bullshit charges against me. Eventually the courts also threw out my multi-million naira compensation claim. Oh, the corruption of those courts! Those people are such bastards, man. Where to seek justice?

  Jobless. Homeless. Still in a cast, my body all bandaged. So I told everybody, “OK, motherfuckers, we must all get back to work!” We had to try to get the Shrine moving again ’cause we didn’t have shit. All of my equipment, my belongings, they’d all gone up in flames with the house. Not a fuckin’ thing was left. Me, my girls, and the rest of my people slept in my brother Beko’s garage for a while. We still kept our dignity, though, man. We started the Shrine back. I began playing again, with one arm and a leg in a cast. That’s when I composed “Sorrow, Tears and Blood”. We were penniless, man. Then I thought to myself: “Don’t I have money coming to me from Decca or EMI?” We’re now in June-July. . . .

  Now, what was this whole thing with Decca? It’s a long story, man. You see, Decca is a motherfucker, man. Wow! Decca signed with me when I was popular. When they burned my house, Chief Abiola of ITT took over Decca and drove out Mr Booth, the white man who was managing Decca. The white man wanted me, so they drove him away to London. Then Decca started giving me horrors. First I must tell you that, before my house was burnt down, Mr Booth had told me I was popular and that Decca wanted to sign me. But that he was afraid ’cause people were saying I was a hooligan and things like that. They were telling him that I wouldn’t deliver. So he was afraid. When he talked to me though he said he liked me and that he wasn’t afraid of me. But really underneath he was afraid. So in the contract he put a clause that whoever – Decca, me, or anyone – fucked the contract up, they would have to pay 250,000 naira. That was what he put in the contract. You see what I mean?

  Penniless as I was, I decided to go to Decca. That first day I took along all my women and our mattresses to the Director’s office. I didn’t take over Decca office right away. Remember, I didn’t have a house ’cause they’d burnt my house down, right, so I don’t have a place to stay. So we went prepared. Now Abiola had just put this guy there as Director of Decca. His name is Mr Ogeus, a Dutchman, from Holland. So I meet this Mr Ogeus to tell him to give me my 250,000 naira for breach of contract, man!

  “Mr Ogeus,” I said, “if you don’t pay me I will stay here with you until you do. We don’t have a place to stay, so I brought my mattresses. I’m not going to court. Just give me my money.”

  Ogeus went to the police. You see that! I come peacefully and he goes to get the police! The police came. They asked him:

  “You want to force them out?”

  “No,” he said. “But I think I should discuss things with Fela.”

  “OK,” I said. “I agree, we should discuss it.”

  So we agreed to meet at the police office the following morning. I said, “I agree.” So I left with my wives and mattresses. We met at the police station the next day and we discussed. The police agreed that their lawyer investigate the contract, and that they would give their opinion after the investigation. You understand? The police kept the contract for two weeks and the lawyer gave his opinion: breach of contract. So the police promised to bring Abiola to the police station to discuss it. The first time, he didn’t come. Second time, he came. That was the first day I ever met Abiola. I didn’t even know the man existed. So he comes to the police station and swears on his mother’s life that he never did anything to me wrongly and that he promises to settle the matter. So we left. One week … two weeks … one month … nothing! OK. Good. So me and my women, we took our mattresses and went to Decca again, for a second time.

  “Now, where is my money?” I asked Ogeus.

  “OK, if that is what you want, I’m leaving the office for you,” he answered.

  Now, he had a very big sitting-room and thick carpets everywhere, so we laid our mattresses down. Ogeus, the white man, left the office and went to the police station. When he got to the police though, they wouldn’t move ’cause they’d already been to investigate the matter. So I was there in Decca office with my women for seven weeks. It was the Inspector-General of Police himself who got me out. You know how Yusufu got me out?

  Here I am one night, sleeping at Decca, when police come. Not to arrest me-o! But to take me to see the Inspector General. Yusufu had sent for me in the middle of the night to go to his house, man. When I got there, he said:

  “Fela, you have to leave now.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Sir, they have to pay me-o. Or else you send your police to batter me if you like.”

  “Fela, you know I can’t do that.”

  “Fine. Then, they’ll have to pay.”

  That’s when he said to me: “Fela, you know they’ve taken me to court now.” I understood then what was happening.

  You see, while I was living at Decca office, those motherfuckers had taken me to court. The lawyers, they lie. And the magistrate issues a bench order on me for … “illegal occupation”. Of course, the court didn’t hear my side of the case at all. But the police who knew my side of the story and everything about the matter refused to execute the bench warrant. In court, they said that every time they would go to the premises of Decca to get me out, they couldn’t find me! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! So Decca sued the police in court for not executing the bench warrant.

  That’s why M.D. Yusufu said to me: “If I go to court, they’ll embarrass me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know that.” After a moment of silence, I said:

  “OK. Fine. Give me one more week. Let me enjoy one more week, Sir, ’cause you know I don’t have house any more. At Decca they have big sitting-room and offices with carpet everywhere.” Yusufu shook his head, with a bit of a smile in his eyes.

  “OK, stay there one more week.”

  That’s how I finally left Decca, you know. But people don’t know that Fela done his underground work legally and everything. They think I’m a hooligan who just went into Decca and sat down. But, man, I was the winner, you see. Let me tell you the reason why I always get victorious over people. People think I’m mad, but I don’t do things rashly. People think I do things rashly because at the point when I’m gonna do action, those who do not know what’s been happening will think I am being rash. At the time of my action I will really go full out and die there if I have to. What people don’t know though is that when I go into action I have already done many underground things before. That’s why I won out with Decca.

  Even my own lawyer, Tunji Braithwaite, started messing me up over this Decca matter. He wanted me to go to court with EMI instead. I told him I didn’t want to go to court with EMI ’cause I knew that EMI could settle. It was Decca I was after. They were the ones who were messing with me, the motherfuckers. That brought a clash between me and Braithwaite. So I closed him off completely. I said to myself: “I don’t want no lawyer again. What for? Fuck!”

  If M.D. Yusufu hadn’t asked me to leave Decca, man, I would have stayed in that place till Abiola changed colour. We’d gone there in June or July and we left in August. We’d stayed there seven weeks anyhow. And in comfort, man. Just after that I left into exile, man. In October. Yeaaaah, into exile, you know. In Ghana. We all went together. But then Ghana depor. . . . No! Ghana didn’t deport me. It was the fucking corrupt military government there that did it. Why?
Well, that’s another long story. Want to hear it? I’ll make it short. . . .

  Original album cover of Zombie

  Design: Gharlokwu Lemi

  17

  Why I Was Deported from Ghana

  “Zombie”, “Mr Follow Follow”,

  “Fear Not for Man”, “V.I.P.”

  Here I was again, back in Ghana. Right off, I started playing at the Apollo Theatre. My latest album, Zombie, had gone over big in Ghana-o. Ghanaian students were singing it just to mock their own military government ’cause the words describe soldiers as zombies. Military! Ghana, home of Pan-Afrikanism, was under their boots then, man, just like in Nigeria. Ghana was the home of Kwame Nkrumah. So I started preaching Nkrumahism and soon ran into trouble with the military régime at that time, led by General Ignatius Acheampong.*

  My first trouble came with an incident that occurred right in front of the hotel where I was putting up. You see, there was a Lebanese shop-owner just across the way from the hotel. This Lebanese had objected to Ghanaian women selling fruits in front of his shop. One day, he personally came out of his shop to pour cold water on the women to make them go away. One of my boys came to my room to tell me. I said, “Whaaaaaaaat?” I went out into the street and challenged that motherfucker. I told him that this was Africa and that he had no right to attack defenceless African women. I left, after warning him not to repeat such action again, man. Shit! The following day that bastard did the same thing. He drove the women away, even hitting some, and told them never to return again. If they did, he threatened to call the police. Man, when I heard that I took to the street again and confronted that Lebanese. I didn’t hit him, but I was gonna give him horrors, man. There was a scuffle and the Ghanaian police was called. They came and took me, then locked me up in a cell. At Police Headquarters there was a big confrontation between me and a Ghana Inspector of Police who justified the action of the Arab man.

  Durotimi Ikujenyo (“Duro”) Egypt 80 pianist and historical researcher

  Photo: André Bernabé

  Mabinuori Kayode Idowu (“I.D.”) Writer and Egypt 80 administrator

  Photo: André Bernabé

  Lekan Animashaun Egypt 80 Band leader and baritone saxaphonist, with Fela since 1965

  Photo: Raymond Sardaby

  “This trader has the right to clear the front of his store. Those women are squatters.”

  That’s what that fuckin’ policeman said. Shiiiiiit! Later I was taken down to the Accra Central Police Station and charged in a Federal Court for action “liable to bring about a breach of the peace”. But I was released on bail and allowed to continue playing.

  At the time, you see, students were seriously agitating against their corrupt government. It was the same struggle as in Nigeria. So I began meeting with the student leaders. They would even come to see me at hotel, man. The things they told me, man! Acheampong was a real motherfucker! The students told me that the police were beating … whipping left and right … and raping women at Winneba University. . . . So I called a meeting with leaders of four universities: Legon, Winneba, Kumasi, Cape Coast. Twelve of them came to my hotel. Man, I gave them a lecture for three hours. I told them why they should stop studying that nonsense there called law, ’cause colonial education was no good for them. “If you keep it up, your education is going to be useless.” I advised these boys to do what they wanted to do. After that they made a public declaration. So everybody knew I’d met with them. Because of this and because I had a case in court over the shit with this Lebanese man, and also because of my album Zombie, the Ghanaian authorities deported me in ’78. But I was so popular with the people! And, of course, with the students, man!

  I dug those students, man. They were courageous. So I spoke to them openly. I told them Africa could not be non-aligned because Africa was the centre of the world. Not its south. Nor its north. Nor its east. Nor its west. But the centre! I told them things were so wrong. So very wrong! Imagine that, the fate of the entire world completely dependent on the whims of two fuckin’ old men! Four billion people in the hands of two little motherfuckers over sixty who give themselves pompous titles, like “General”, “Admiral”, “President”. . . . My motherfuckin’ life, man, and yours, and everybody’s in the hands of a bunch of motherfuckers whose only problem is that they can’t … fuck! As ridiculous as that, man.

  Who are these “world leaders”? Destroyers, man. Not builders. Not creators. But destroyers. You see, I can’t accept that my fate be in the hands of such fucked-up people. Does that seem normal to you? Do you accept the idea that your fate, your last hour on this earth, might depend on some motherfucker sitting up in the White House in Washington or up in the Kremlin in Moscow? Should the fate of the whole world depend on whether or not one of those bastards’ pricks couldn’t get hard one night? Is that normal? Not to me, man!

  You see what I’m getting at? A handful of unnatural, unbalanced people are ruling this world. That’s why when I hear that the non-aligned bloc is trying to be a third solution, I can only shake my head. ’Cause those people who call themselves non-aligned are un-balanced. Do you know what something which is non-aligned means? It means something which ain’t straight, man. Something crooked, unbalanced, an out-of-line people, you know!

  I also told them that Africans have to start by feeling that we belong to any part of the continent. We should not limit our area of belonging to that small enclave cut out for us at the Berlin Conference of 1884–5. Africa has to open her doors to every Black man in the world. Until Africa sees it that way, she won’t have made it yet, man. White people, wherever they are, have a sense of belonging. They have even gone as far as electing a European Parliament to take care of their interests. White people are doing it for themselves. But instead of Africans doing it for ourselves, we go about copying foreign values, cultural concepts which permanently endear us to the whole world at large as certified slaves.

  Industrialization? We don’t need it unless it’s industrialization the African way. That’s what I told them. Technology, industrialization, the machine, they’ve all brought about a progressive loss of respect for life, for nature, for the environment we live in, man. And Africans worship nature and life. Technology’s killing the spiritual things. Now, how can that be called modernization? No, man. That’s regression. The white man is leading us astray. The right way is the one of our ancestors: traditional technology, or naturalology. That’s the only viable way. Yeah, that’s what I believe. You know what viable means? It means life, man. Life!

  Why are Africans becoming technologists? I told the students: “I’ve rarely met any African doing the thing he really wanted to do.” Most Africans do things ’cause that is what will bring them status, or make them important or give them bread. You see, man, some people think power is money. When you are rich; when you have many cars; when you have beautiful houses; when you have many women to show off. . . . But that’s not power. Power is knowledge. Somebody who has knowledge cannot misuse power. Knowledge is not technology. Knowledge is power in the cosmic sense; it’s rhythm, you know. Once you start to have rhythm you start having knowledge.

  I said to those students that technology, industrialization will cause the downfall of white nations. That’s what I think. I see the day when America will come to a standstill. I see a day when American people in America cannot stay there any more. Their environment will be too polluted. I think the Americans themselves see that day coming. The government sees it but not the people as yet. That’s why America wants to keep Australia and Africa by all means. ’Cause the future of this world is based on nature, not the machine. Science will be completely wiped out. It’ll be wiped out by those who live and swear by it today. Natural forces will wipe out science. Science means complications. Look at pollution!

  Science is making the world get more and more expensive. When science brings out a new gadget it costs more than the others. People have to earn more to buy it. So science is making the world more difficult, more complex
. It makes people run more. What we need is to rest more, talk more, walk more, fuck more and enjoy things in life more. There’s a limit to what Europeans call technological and industrial development. When that limit is achieved society just crumbles. That’s why I see the day Europe, America and Russia will come to a standstill.

  At one point the students started asking me about Russia, communism and the liberation struggles in Southern Africa. I told them what I felt then, but now I could add two other experiences I had that same year, ’78. You see, in ’78, exactly ten years after my first visit to East Berlin, I went back to Berlin to play. It was for the West Berlin Jazz Festival. They paid me $100,000 for one concert. But, you see, I had to pay for the tickets for all my group and for hotel accommodation. So it was a lot less than $100,000 ’cause, remember, there were seventy of us. The Berlin organizers should really have taken care of our accommodations and plane tickets. So what they paid me wasn’t a real fee. You know what I mean? But since I had to buy the plane tickets myself I took the cheapest flight: Interflug, the East German Airlines. So it was in East Berlin that we landed. But we had to go to West Berlin to play for the Festival.

  We did the concert. Then after that we went touring a bit of West Berlin before crossing back to East Berlin to leave back to Nigeria. Meanwhile, practically all our money was spent. We had about $4,000 or so left. So we go back to East Berlin. When we get there, they said I should come and pay for visas. I said: