University of California San Diego Fela Kuti & Serena Williams Reading Discussion Please submit this week’s Discussion Questions Response on the following

University of California San Diego Fela Kuti & Serena Williams Reading Discussion Please submit this week’s Discussion Questions Response on the following readings:

W9D2 Williams Reading Please read Chapter 4, pp. 115-153.

W10D1 Fela Kuti Reading PAGES TO READ: Chapter 1 (Introduction: “Abimi Eda”), pp. 1-20 AND pp. 77-92 (Part of Chapter 4: Stop at subtitle/section “Modern Traditions”)

W9D2 reading called One the Line, just have one pdf document; and W10D1 called Fela and have two pdf documents, do not make it wrong.

From the section syllabus:

Each student should submit a short (1-page max) summary no later than 10 minutes before their assigned discussion section that answers the following questions about each of the week’s readings:

Who is the author?
If different from the author, who is the historical figure?
What is the overarching conflict in the biography?
Who do you think was the audience for the biography at the time it was written?
What is “the shelf-life” of the biography? (How long after the biography was published do you think people would still be buying/reading it?)

Responses will be graded out of 3 points, based on effort, accuracy (when applicable), and completion. Submissions are due 10 minutes before the start of your assigned section. Introduction:
“Abami Eda”
REPORTER: A Nigerian senator just told me: “If even only 5000 Nigerians
started imitating Fela, it would soon be very chaotic here!”
FELA: No, it would be a revolution!
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
Quoted in MOORE AND KAMARA
1981
The date: a humid weekend night in the early 1990s. The scene: outside the Afrika
Shrine nightclub in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria, home base of the legendary Nigerian
musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his thirty-piece orchestra, Egypt 80. Even
though the ubiquitous, machine gun-toting soldiers of the Nigerian army have a
well-deserved reputation for making the lives of ordinary civilians miserable, they
are decidedly peripheral to tonight’s scenario. The Shrine is understood to be Fela’s
autonomous zone, where his own anarchic, hedonistic law prevails.
The atmosphere is festive as the audience enters, a mixture of students,
activists, rebels, criminals, music lovers, and even politicians, policemen, and soldiers arriving incognito. They make their way through the sea of traders hawking
their goods by candlelight-snacks, drinks, cigarettes, and marijuana-as the sound
of the Egypt 80 spills from inside the open-air club. After purchaSing a ticket and
being frisked for weapons at the doorway, audience members enter the interior of
the Shrine, a semi-enclosed countercultural carnival of funky, political music, pot
smoking, mysticism, and provocative danCing. Four fishnet-draped go-go cages,
each containing a loosely clad female dancer grinding languorously, rise out of the
smoky haze. A neon light in the shape of the African continent casts its red glow
over the stage. In addition to more food, drink, and marijuana vendors, the rear of
the club houses an actual shrine-a large altar containing religiOUS objects and
photos of Fela’s Pan-Africanist political heroes, including Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sekou Toure, and his late mother, Mrs. Funmilayo
Anikulapo-Kuti.
1
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
2

Chapter 1
The Egypt 80 band has been playing since midnight, warming up the crowd
with classics from Fela’s older recorded repertoire, such as “Trouble Sleep” (1972),
“Why Blackman Dey Suffer” (1972), “Lady” (1972), “Water No Get Enemy” (1975),
“Opposite People” (1975), “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” (1977), “Dog Eat Dog” (1977),
“Beasts of No Nation” (1986), and bandleaderlbaritone saxophonist Lekan Animashaun’s “Serere (Do Right).” The band is awaiting Fela’s arrival, so these songs
are sung by various band members, including Animashaun (known around the
Shrine as “Baba Ani”), second baritone saxophonist Rilwan Fagbemi (known as
“Showboy”), Fe1a’s ten-year-old son Seun, and· artist/musician Dede Mabiaku,
whom Fela often referred to as his “adopted son.”
Fe1a, the “Chief Priest of Shrine,” finally arrives with his retinue around 2
A.M., to tumultuous applause. Dressed tonight in a tight purple jumpsuit stitched
with traditional Yoruba symbols and shapes, he makes his way through the crowd
to the stage and salutes his audience with the clenched-fist black power salute.
He steps up to the mike and pauses, surveying the crowd with mischievous eyes
while taking intermittent puffs from a flashlight-sized jOint in his hand. Finally he
speaks:
Everybody say ye-ye!
The crowd roars in response, and Fe1a segues directly into the profane, no-holdsbarred criticism of the country’s leaders he has offered his audiences for the past
two decades: .
Bro’s and sisters, if you want to know how corrupt this country is, that
word “corruption” has lost its meaning here!
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
Fela arches his eyebrows, thrusts his chest and stomach out, and marches
around the stage in imitation of the arrogant and obese ogas Qiterally “bosses”),
men of importance who parade their wealth around· Lagos in the midst of suffering:
“Yeah, I’m corrupt man!”
The crowd bursts into laughter, and Fe1a continues his monologue:
title in this country! In Germany,
they have President Kohl. In America, they have President Bush. In
England they have Prime Minister Major. Here in Nigeria, we have Corrupted Babangida!
In fact, corruption has even become a
At the mention of their preSident, the audience shouts in deafening unison “Ole!”
(Yoruba for “thief”). Fe1a switches into pidgin English and recounts an incident
in which the president was snubbed by French president Fran~ois Mitterandduring a recent state visit:
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
Introduction: “Abami Eda”
5
When Corrupted Babangida go for France, Mitterand no wan meet am.
He go dey send a cultural minister. He go say Nigeria be nation of
thieves. The man was disgraced. When he came back, the fucking army
was kicking ass allover Nigeria! Na how many students dem kill fo’ dat
one?
The crowd roars in laughter and approval, the Shrine now rocking like a revivalist
church:
You see, bro’s and sisters, I know dem. They are nothing but spirit
beings. They are the same motherfuckers who sold Africans into slavery hundreds of years ago. In fact, the same spirit who controls
Babangida controls Bush and Thatcher too. Everyone is here to play
their same role again, and I want you all to know that tOnight;
Babangida, Obasanjo, Abiola, they have all been here before. That’s why
I call this time the era of “second slavery.” They don’t have to come here
and take us by force-our leaders sell us up front. Everybody say ye-ye!
The audience shouts “ye-ye!” punctuated with cries of “yab dem!” (abuse them).
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
Bro’s and sisters, I’m gonna play for you now, a thing we call M.A.S.S.”Music Against Second Slavery.”
Fela spins around and sternly surveys the orchestra members, who stare at him
intently. Slowly, he begins to clap out the song’s tempo to the band, wiggling his
slender body to the rhythm. Though short in stature, he wields enormous authority onstage. A guitarist begins a serpentine single-note line, accompanied by a percussionist thumping out a thunderous rhythm atop an eight-foot traditional gbedu
drum laid on its side. The audience indicates its growing excitement by yelling Fe1a’s
various nicknames in response: “Omo Iya Aje!” (son of a powerful woman [literally
“witch”]), “Baba!” (father), “Abami Eda!” (strange one, or spirit being), “Chief Priest!”
“Black President!” Fela raises his hands above his head and waves the percussionists
and rhythm section in. Time itself seems to slowly shift along with the sticks and the
shekere rattle, whose steady chirping frames an intricate tapestry of spacy rhythm.
Stepping to his electric organ at center stage, Fela begins to improvise around the
rhythm with greater and greater density. At the height of his solo, he waves in the
ten-piece hom section, which enters dramatically, blaring the song’s theme. With
instrumental solos, featured dancers, and audience participation games, it will be
another thirty minutes before Fela even beginS to sing, but the audience is in delirious, swirling motion. Another night at the Afrika Shrine has begun.
Fe1a will perform from his arrival until dawn. This is partly in the tradition of
Lagos nightlife, but it also results from more pragmatic considerations-Lagos is
one of the world’s most dangerous cities and travel is extremely ill-advised after
dark. In keeping with his policy of only presenting unrecorded material in concert,
Fela is playing a repertoire familiar only to regular attendants of the Shrine tonight.
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
4
Chapter 1
“Chop and Clean Mouth Like Nothing Happened, Na New Name for Stealing”
details the Nigerian economy’s plundering by successive heads of state; “Country
of Pain” bemoans the hardships of life in post-oil boom Nigeria; “Big Blind Country” uses the English blonde wigs worn by Nigerian judges and the hair straightening practiced by some African women as metaphors for the “artificial niceness”
of the country’s politicians; “Government of Crooks” details the siphoning of the
country’s oil wealth by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and soldiers; “Music
Against Second Slavery” decries the impact ofIslam on contemporary Nigerian politics and power relations; “Akunakuna, Senior Brother of Perambulator” criticizes
government harassment of petty street traders and other participants in the country’s informal economy; and “Pansa Pansa” is a defiant battle cry composed in the
wake of the brutal 1977 army raid on Fe1a’s Lagos compound, the “Kalakuta
Republic.”l Like most of his music since 1979, these are all lengthy, complex compositions, often lasting forty minutes or more.
On stage, Fela combines the autocratic bandleading style and dancing agility
of James Brown, the mystical inclinations of Sun Ra, the polemicism of Malcolm X,
and the harsh, inSightful satire of Richard Pryor. Gliding gracefully around the
stage in white face paint, which he says facilitates communication with the spirit
world, he is not above interrupting the performance to harangue musicians, sound
technicians, or audiences. However, the Egypt 80 band is in top form tonight, executing Fela’s music with energy, clarity, and whiplash precision. On up-tempo
numbers like “Government of Crooks” or “Country of Pain,” Fe1a and the band play
with an intenSity that thoroughly possesses the Shrine audience. On slower, midtempo numbers like “Chop and Clean Mouth … ,” Fela’s highlife and funk roots
are evident in the easy rhythmic flow ofthe percussion section; the chopping, stuttering guitars; and the blaring, syncopated horns. Above it all, Fela alternately
jokes with the audience and spits out his political lyrics in angry, declamatory
phrases darting between the shrill voices of the six-memberfemale chorus and the
guttural, baritone punctuations of the hom section. On “Government of Crooks,”
he sings about the government’s complicity in the despoliation of southeastern
Ogoniland by foreign oil companies, a state of affairs that had recently culminated
in the state execution of Ogoni activist/playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa:
All of us know our country
Plenty-plenty oil-e dey
Plenty things dey for Africa
Petroleum is one of them
All di places that get di oil-o
Now oil pollution for di place
All the farms done soak with oil-o
All the villages don catch disease
Money done spoil di oil area
But some people inside government
All of us know our country
There is plenty oil
Plenty resources in Africa
Petroleum is one of them
All the places where oil lies
Are spoiled with pollution
The farms are soaked by oil leaks
The villages are rife with disease
Money has ruined the oil areas
But some people in government
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
Introduction: “Abami Eda”
Dem don become billionaires
Have become billionaires
Billionaires on top of oil-o
From oil wealth
and underhanded crookedness …
and underhanded crookedness …
5
On “Movement Against Second Slavery,” he takes his most insulting potshots at
the country’s military government while subtly reprising his famous song “Zombie,”
which precipitated a brutal military attack on his compound fifteen years earlier:
FELA: Now
come look our president
CHORUS: Zombie! (repeats after
every line)
FELA:
Na soldier, him be president
Now, look at our president
CHORUS: Zombie!
FELA: A
soldier is president
He say he want to travel
Travel on a state visit to France
He says he wants to travel
Travel on a state visit to France
Na so him go,
He go Paris-o
And so he went,
And when he reach there nko
He went to Paris
Na ordinary minister meet am
White man go dey tell-e dem:
“We don tire for soldier
And when he reached his
destination
He was met by an ordinary minister
The white man told him:
“We are tired of soldiers
Soldier cannot be president
It just be like robbery”
A soldier cannot be president
It’s just like armed robbery”
Like armed robber come meet you
for house
Like an armed robber coming to
your house
The armed robber will take over
your house-
The armed robber come take over
your houseCopyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
FELA:
Chop all your food
Fuck all your wives
Take all your money
Hen! Na so soldier government
be-o …
Eat all your food
Fuck all your wives
Take all your money
Hmm! This is what a military
government means …
Reflecting Fela’s feeling that his music was as much for education as it was
for dancing and entertainment, the Shrine audience enjoyed the music in various
ways. Tuesday night audiences tended toward reflection; while some danced
Singly or in pairs, most enjoyed the music from their seats, listening intently to
Fela’s lyrics and freely offering responses or rebuttals to his comments. On these
nights, the smell of Indian hemp mixed with the pulse of the hypnotiC afrobeat in
the thick tropical air, and the Shrine took on the ambience of a psychedelic town
meeting held in a dance hall. Friday was mainly a dance night, with the house
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
6
Chapter 1
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
packed and people on their feet from the time Egypt 80 took the stage until dawnlaughing, cheering, and singing along with Fela’s every line. Saturday-when Fela
presented his “Comprehensive Show” complete with the Egypt 80 dancers and an
enormous, ritual conical “cigar” presumably filled with marijuana and various
native herbs-was also mainly a dance night, with the most diverse audience of the
week; listeners traveled from allover Lagos and beyond to enjoy the music. For
some attendees, a visit to the Shrine, with its marijuana smoking, go-go dancers,
and antigovernment lyrics, was an act of social rebellion in itself. Others came to
engage, examine, or debate Fela’s political philosophy. Still other visitors were content merely to enjoy the music, irrespective of its political sentiments. Each show
concluded at dawn with Fela pausing before the shrine in the rear of the building.
With intense flames leaping into the air, the “Chief Priest of Shrine” pausedflanked by two young male attendants-to salute his ancestors and Pan-Africanist
heroes, before returning home as the rest of Lagos awakened with the dawn.
This book represents the fruition of more than ten years of critical and recreational
listening, musical performance, academic research, traveling, and collecting. My
interest in Fela dates to 1983, when I was introduced to his music by a fellow musician while a jazz composition and arranging student at the Berklee College of Music
in Boston. Having grown up in an environment in which I was surrounded by various genres of African-American music, I was immediately struck by Fe1a’s music
because it seemed to recontextualize and extend musical ideas which were meaningful to me. In Fe1a’s music, I recognized unmistakable echoes of diasporic African
musical innovators and styles: James Brown, John Coltrane, modal jazz, big-band jazz,
funk, rhythm-and-blues, and salsa. At the same time, I recognized an overall spirit
and use of many musical devices I associated with West African music: tightly woven
rhythm patterns, vocal chants, call-and-response choruses, and an overall percussive
approach to articulation, among others. Compositionally, I admired Fela’s ability to
compose a seemingly endless series of complex, catchy groove patterns, chorus lines,
and hom riffs. Compositions rarely clocked in at less than fifteen minutes, with sections allotted for scored ensemble passages, jazz-styled solo improvisations, choral
singing, and the vocal song proper, which itself comprised a number of movements.
In his fashiOning of a long-form highlife-funk-jazz fusion called “afrobeat,” he had
countered the commercialism dictating that songs be restricted to three-minute formats that were, in cultural context, insufficient for satisfying dancing or reflective listening. More generally, I was inspired by the way Fela had refashioned many
conventions of recent African-American music within a West African cultural context, and by the awareness of Pan-African identity and musical practice that implicitly underlay this process.
Of course, no introduction to the world of Fela would be complete without
the mythology that inevitably accompanies the music: the musician who created
his own countercultural enclave in the heart of Lagos, married twenty-seven
women in one day, made a career of criticizing his country’s leaders in song, survived numerous attacks by the Nigerian authorities (and whose mother died as a
result of one such attack), publicly smoked marijuana in a country where people
are sentenced to lengthy prison terms for the most minor of such infractions, and
Veal, Michael. Fela : Life and Times of an African, Temple University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4434939.
Created from ucsd on 2020-05-31 23:47:28.
Copyright © 2000. Temple University Press. All rights reserved.
Introduction: “Abami Eda”
7
was regarded by his fellow Nigerians as both a singularly courageous hero and
Public Menace No. 1.
My continuing study of Fe1a’s music eventually led to an opportunity to participate in his music. I met Fela in New York City in the autumn of 1986, during
his first major American tour, following his much-publicized eighteen-month
imprisonment in Nigeria on currency smuggling charges. During his next three
American tours, in the summers of 1989, 1990, and 1991, I played out with his
group as a guest soloist on saxophone whenever they visited the New York area.
Finally, during the spring of 1992, I made a trip to Lagos. In what amounted to an
intensive “master class,” I made several visits to Fe1a’s three-story residence located
in the Ikeja section of the city. During these visits, Fela gave me further insight
into his compositional method by playing me recordings of his unreleased music
and showing me his scores. I also played as a saxophonist with Fela and his Egypt
80 band at the Afrika Shrine, located on Pepple Street a block away from the Ikeja
bus roundabout.
While the sound of afrobeat was clearly distinguishable from other popular
Nigerian genres, it required a visit to Lagos to fully understand the subcultural distance at which Fela operated from the dominant culture surrounding him. On the
streets of densely populated Lagos, the distinctive culture of urban West Africa is
immediately evident in the flowing, colorful traditional attire, bustling outdoor markets, ubiquitous music, and endless stream of street traders and merchants haggling
in melodious local tongues. With the beat of Nigerian music pouring from every
other storefront, the relentless beating sun, and the aggreSSively melodious patter,
the intensity of Lagos gives one the impression that everything is vibrating to an
underlying rhythm, a kaleidoscopic, spontaneously orchestrated urban African sensory overl…
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