Fela

by Moore, Carlos

  Since June ’81, when my mother revealed to me that she had been poisoned, I’ve been thinking about that. She didn’t ask for revenge. What for? She didn’t need to. It was revealed. That’s all. Now it’s up to me to do my own thing as a human being. And if I didn’t know before, I know now. So I do what I can do about it. If I didn’t do something about somebody who killed my mother, then I must be a bastard. I must get justice. . . .

  Sadness. Since a child, up till now, I’ve always been both happy and sad. What makes me sad today is to see people pushed around in life by other human beings. Selfishness by human beings also makes me sad. And the work that has to be done in Africa for Africans to progress. . . . To think of all this makes me sad. To think of how many Africans are so unaware, how they suffer in oblivion. That makes me sad. What makes me happy? When I play music. When I stay with my women. When I sit down with my people, discussing, chatting, laughing. . . . But my state of mind and feeling is shared between happiness and sadness. I want peace. Happiness. Not only for myself. For everybody. If I get it for myself I can’t have peace. When everybody has peace then I will have peace. Because if just me has peace and police don’t have peace, they will come and fuck my thing up. So I want peace for them too.

  Despite my sadness I create joyful rhythms. Yeah, I am sad. I am an artist. I have my reasons for being sad. I want to change sadness. I want people to be happy. And I can do it by playing happy music. And through happy music I tell them about the sadness of others. So that they will come to realize that, “Oh, we can be happy!” With my music I create a change. I see it. So really I am using my music as a weapon. I play music as a weapon. The music is not coming from me as a subconscious thing. It’s conscious. I’m consciously doing what I am doing. What I mean is that whatever I want to do is in my mind. Man can have complete control of his mind. That’s what knowledge is about. To be able to control one’s mind.

  Creativity. How to define that? You see, when you’re sitting down as a musician, you have different sounds coming into your head, man. You hear so many things! Then you have to pick what is best from your own mind. That’s your own decision. So to decide which sounds are the best, that’s a development of the mind. ’Cause your mind can also pick what is not good, what will not appeal to the people. So the mind is in control all the time. Yeah, spontaneity exists ’cause different sounds come to you like that. But then you must know in your mind which of those sounds to pick, which are best to use. So there’s no mystery in creation, man. The only mystery in creation is being gifted. That’s the only mystery. If you’re gifted, you just have to know how to use your gift the best way. Nature has given it to you. If you are not gifted and you want to play music you will fail. As I said, everybody has a purpose in life. You have to know your purpose. And if you don’t know it, then you have to find it out by yourself.

  Fela on saxophone

  Photo: Raymond Sardaby

  Fela on piano

  Photo: Chico

  Education today doesn’t allow people to know their purpose. It is meant to stifle that purpose. That’s why I am against the education the white man has brought to Africa. In Africa they make the child want to be doctor, lawyer, or engineer by force, you know. People are just not allowed to choose and go their own way. The white man’s way stifles creativity, man. See what I mean?

  My favourite instruments? I love all instruments, man. I wish I could play all of them. But I’m still finding out the horn, man. I haven’t got that horn together yet. People say, “Oh, yeah, Fela plays horn,” but I don’t got it yet, man. When I get that horn together you will know, man. You will fucking well know! The piano? OK, fair enough. I play the piano. I’m using it right now for solo work. So you can only judge my piano as solo work; to do free line to the arrangements of rhythms. How do I define my music? People continue to call it Afro-beat. I call it African music. . . . But African music is so extensive. . . . Let’s call it African music by Fela, then. Finish!

  Time. What’s that? Nine o’clock? … Ten o’clock? … That kind of thing? No, man. I don’t deal with that. Time is moment. Not hour. Let me give you my experience. Everytime I go and play or give a lecture some place, people say: “You’re always late.” One day I told them:

  “How can you say I’m late? Just because of the watch you’re wearing on your wrist?”

  Then I explained. “For instance, let’s say you’re expecting me at 5 o’clock and I’m coming from Abeokuta to Ibadan for this lecture. At 5 o’clock you don’t see me. At 6 o’clock you don’t see me. You’re annoyed. You say, ’Fela is late.’ The next morning you hear I’m dead in an accident. Now, how about that annoyance you felt about my being late? How do you forgive yourself?” So don’t get annoyed when I’m late. Time is not the wristwatch, man. Time is the importance of an event, a moment. Say you’re expecting someone to come. He must be important enough for you not to get annoyed if he keeps you waiting. You must feel the importance of the guy. Time is understanding of what is important. Time is not a mind-disturbing matter. Happiness is the essence of this world.

  When we see our children growing up, we see ourselves getting old. That’s not time. That’s experience. Man must grow old to prove that this is not a world of spirits. If you look back again to your youth, it will be like yesterday. It’s not far. The mind dictates time really. The mind makes you feel what time is about.

  Fela reflective

  Photo: Donald Cox

  Dreams. Before, I never knew what dreams were about. But now I believe dreams are the soul in the body that travels. If you can co-ordinate and control the dream, then you can go astral travelling. This is what I experienced one day. I dreamt I was on top of a tower. A tall tower. I was surrounded by soldiers, police and people who wanted to harm me. They had guns, every sort of instruments. I was at the peak of this tower and they were around the edge, surrounding me. There was no means of escape. I realized in the dream that I was dreaming. And I said to myself: “It’s a dream anyway. I can jump. Nothing will happen.” So I jumped, man. And I started waking up in bed as if I was dropping from a height into my body. And I dropped into my body and I woke up. I felt fine, rested. I felt a beautiful sensation after that. And I’ve tried getting that control since, but I’ve not been able to.

  If one can remember a dream, I think you can start controlling it from there. Dreams are uncontrolled travels of the soul. We go to places. We can see the future in our dreams. We can go backwards and forwards. For instance, I dream many dreams. I found out that many dreams I dream are opposites of the future. If I dream about something successful, it’s a failure; and if I dream about failure, I’m always successful. Any time I remember a dream, it always comes to pass. I always forget my dreams, but any dream I remember always comes to pass. Dream is an experience the body cannot feel, only the soul. The body cannot pass through a wall. In a dream it can. In a dream you are given the opportunity to see, to feel the future. What you will be.

  What is life? Osiris said it. Amenhotep solved it too. “Life is eat, drink and enjoy yourself because tomorrow you may die.” That is life. What is death? A transition into spirits. Death is a beautiful thing. Don’t fear it. You become a spirit. You leave this material body. This body’s a cell. It keeps you. It doesn’t let you go. It’s a jail. But man must not seek release as such from his existence. Release will come. All men must die whether they’re worth the release or not. That’s a point. But not all men go to the same place when they die. Why must man die? Because he cannot really exist in this body. The ultimate is the spirit, I think. I guess. I’m not sure myself. I think the essence of life is: “Eat, drink and enjoy yourself for tomorrow you may die.” That is what one must do first. But before you can eat, drink and enjoy yourself, you must be happy. And before you are a happy man, you must make other people happy. You see, I don’t believe those people who say ’cause they have money they’re happy. That’s not happiness, man!

  Happiness. That’s the essence of true life. The min
d is the source of happiness. Good health, a clear mind. Finish. To be happy is not easy. Loneliness. Yeah, that makes people unhappy. But it is man who makes himself lonely. Take Africa. Africans always had what Europeans call the extended family. You stay in the compound together: sisters, brothers, uncles. . . . Everybody lives all together in the family house. Loneliness is absent in that culture. But in a culture where you live with your wife and children alone, loneliness will crop up inevitably. Loneliness is inevitable in European culture. So human beings brought on loneliness for themselves by making the wrong cultures. That’s why I think Africa is the pacesetter for culture.

  My future? Ooooooooh! That’s a big one, man. You see, man is here against his will. Where do we come from? What was before us? I was born twice, so let me tell you what I think. Sometimes when I think to myself, I say: “I don’t want to be part of this world.” I sit down and meditate and I say: “I don’t want any part of this world. I don’t want any part of this shit, man!” When I see a policeman beating up somebody, a government man committing wrongdoings and shit like that which I can’t stop. . . . Ohhhhhhh, I feel so bad! I really don’t want to be a part of this world. What I mean is … I do not want to exist. Not wanting to exist means I’m not here. I don’t feel. I don’t see. I don’t know. I’m just nothing. I just don’t BE, don’t BE! But here I am. I’m existing. I say to myself: “How can I cancel my existence?” ’Cause I don’t want to be any more. You understand? I think about that one a lot. I want to cancel my existence. . . . Commit suicide … kill myself … take poison … do something. Then I think about all I’ve learnt in books, that when you think you die, you’re not dead. It’s a transition. So I don’t really cancel my existence. I still see. I still feel. I still be. So man cannot cancel his existence after all. That’s why I say men are here against their will. This world is not just a world of accident. We’re not just born. Everything has to be done properly, naturally, as it’s supposed to be. That’s what I think about life. Human beings have a purpose in this world. And if you do not do what you’re supposed to do, you will die young and come back again.

  The Black President and Chief Priest of Shrine: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (“The One Who Emanates Greatness, Who Carries Death in His Quiver and Who Cannot Be Killed by Human Entity”)

  Photo: Raymond Sardaby

  Death? Death doesn’t worry me, man! When my mother died it was because she’d finished her time on earth. I know that when I die I’ll see her again. So how could I fear death? But I don’t want to die too fast. . . . Let me stop now because my mind is not working like I want it to. . . . I don’t know why. . . . You see, I don’t want to exist. . . . I want to put a stop to my life. . . . But I cannot take my life. . . . You see, when my mother and father wanted a baby, they didn’t want me. . . . They wanted a baby, any fuckin’ baby, man! Well, here I am now. I came. So what is this motherfuckin’ world about? … I believe there is a plan. . . . I believe there is no accident in our lives. . . . What I am experiencing today completely vindicates the African religions. . . . I will do my part. . . . Then I’ll just go, man. . . . Just go!

  Epilogue: Rebel with a Cause

  Carlos Moore

  The Turning Point

  In 1982, when Fela, Fela: This Bitch of a Life originally appeared, Fela Kuti was at a political crossroads and in the midst of an existential crisis. Twelve years of relentless, single-handed confrontation with Nigeria’s political and civilian establishments were chronicled in the scars he bore all over his body, testimony to the brutal price he had paid for championing the cause of society’s underdogs. But the Nigerian masses—in whose name he had suffered broken legs and arms, a fractured skull, repeated imprisonment, and unabated harassment—gave no sign of being ready to defy their oppressors head-on. Much to the contrary, they voted en masse in 1979 to elect as president Alhaji Shehu Shagari, a man Fela had described as a “weak and dangerous” politician.

  Fela therefore faced an awful dilemma.

  Disappointed and distressed in his personal life, too, Fela was mired in confusion, at times bordering on chaos, as he inconsolably mourned his mother’s death. There were moments when he seemed to be suffering from depression and would express his wish to “cancel my existence”; increasingly he gave signs of paranoid delusions. But the end of his agonies was not yet in sight. For another fifteen years he would be flung from one jail to another, enduring a string of horrors likely to have broken any other human. Yet, remaining remarkably true to himself, Africa’s premier rebel clung to his political beliefs and lifestyle until felled in 1997 by an apolitical enemy whose existence he had steadfastly refused to acknowledge—AIDS.

  The tumultuous final itinerary of one of the twentieth century’s most inspired and flamboyant artists may not be captured in a few pages. But to approximate an understanding of the crucial events that marked Fela’s last fifteen years of life, one has to backtrack to that watershed period in the early 1980s when he underwent his second epiphany, a transformation that threatened his artistic career, reshaped his music, and nearly claimed his sanity.

  The Spiritual Saga

  Until his last breath, Fela was a proud thorn in the flesh of every military or civilian despot that occupied the revolving presidential chair in Nigeria, a distinction that made his position nearly untenable. How did he manage to stay alive during that fifteen-year stretch? Some believe that he found salvation through conversion, in 1981, to a bewildering esoteric mysticism that he called his “spiritual saga.” If so, that flight into the world of spirits proved costly, for it gradually eroded the political coherence of the movement he had fought so hard to build. Ultimately, it sowed chaos among those around him.

  Convinced that he was a marked man, the rebel musician desperately sought spiritual protection and began to explore ways to “seal his body”; more than ever, he resorted to traditional herbs and potions to ward off “bad spirits” and consulted traditional soothsayers to help him plan his life and actions. Thus, in the early 1980s, the Afrobeat king was fully engrossed a process of spiritual transformation designed to make himself invulnerable to death. This implied a return to ancestral worship systems, which Fela’s creative mind laced with his own ad hoc rituals.

  It would appear that the more the Nigerian military establishment came after him with its trademark ferocity, the more the rebel retreated into a metaphysical quest that would help him to deal with his powerful adversaries. The truth is that the extreme mysticism Fela began to exhibit in the early 1980s had been building for years; it was part of his own idiosyncrasy. Like most people, he strongly believed in life after death and resurrection. Like most Africans, he practiced ancestor worship. And like many, he upheld the existence of UFOs, besides being someone very superstitious.

  I recall that in 1977, I accompanied the Senegalese historian and Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop to Nigeria, which was then under the rule of a nationalist and populist regime headed by Murtala Ramat Muhammad, whose politics, for once, coincided with Fela’s own Pan-Africanism. Knowing of Fela’s admiration for Diop, I scheduled an encounter between them in our hotel.

  Uncharacteristically, Fela showed up on the dot of the appointed hour, with a retinue of some thirty persons, including several of his wives. After a half hour of listening intently to the professor, Fela began an assault of inquiries.

  “Professor, how did the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids?”

  Diop responded that the technology used to build those massive structures still baffled modern engineers and scientists.

  “Sir, I have the answer,” Fela said. He went on to tell Diop that the ancient pyramids were built through mental telepathy and levitation!

  “Professor, sir, dat be why nobody can say wey dey build the pyramids,” Fela said.

  He further informed Diop that the ancient Egyptians had spacecraft that traveled to other galaxies and returned with extraterrestrial scientific knowledge. Instead of conventional fuel, these spacecrafts were propelled by mental energy.
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  Diop fell silent.

  The Quest to Conquer Death

  Fela’s die-hard belief in what he termed “black magic” and his quest for ways to deflect death set the stage for the arrival of a character who would trigger one of the weirdest chapters in his already troubled life. A Ghanaian and a mystic by trade, Kwaku Addai—popularly known as Professor Hindu—claimed powers that allowed him to communicate directly with the spirit world and resurrect the dead. Addai conflated traditional African beliefs, the Hindu idea of reincarnation, and the Christian faith in resurrection, professing thereby to be at the forefront of a new “science.”

  At one stage, informed that in a certain village a medicine man was reputed to have created bulletproof spiritual vests that could stop the most powerful projectiles, Fela paid handsomely for one. On discovering it was a hoax, he broke down in tears. Therefore, when rumors reached him that there was a magician in nearby Ghana who truly had supernatural powers, he was ecstatic; his enthusiasm being fueled, additionally, by Hindu’s reputation for curing sterility. His collective marriage in 1978 had so far sired only one child—Kunle—and Fela was self-admittedly sterile.