So Broadway brought Fela to Lagos

I never saw Fela Anikulapo Kuti perform live anywhere, not at the Shrine, his spiritual and musical enclave where fans, followers, protégés and wannabes congregated for what could be referred to as a convocation of the faithful, not at the countless places he performed before his demise.

I was cultured to be contented with his philosophy that blared from my father’s Grundig vinyl player and speakers that was amplified by a Kenwood amplifier. His words and ideas, which I came to know as Felasophy, his sound, big, loud, elaborate and delightfully long-winded made from a fusion of jazz, highlife and the big band combined to create what is now known all over the world as Afrobeat, was part of what I had to listen to every weekend when my father played DJ and was trying to impress us that he had an eclectic taste in music. He would also play Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Gustav Mahler amongst other classical greats.

I took to Fela quite easily probably because I could relate to the language and the issues that he sang about rather than for his musicianship; I was completely smitten by the latter after I started studying music and understanding the role of musical instruments and their arrangements in ensemble. Fela was a genius. He brilliantly brought the colour, energy and character of the musical instruments to life in one lively orchestra that lives in your head after the music’s last cadence.

That was what Fela in Lagos did.

Afrobeat may be about Fela, his idiosyncrasies and wild life of women, weed and war waged on him by the establishment and the ones that he also instituted against numerous oppressive military and civilian governments, the Broadway re-enactment made it all beautiful, classy and sassy. I guess it had to be to appeal to the politically correct taste of some people who were too scared, too prude and too fly to visit the shrine when the chief priest was alive and doing his crude non-conformist thing.

Sahr Ngaujah, the primo oumo, may not look like Fela; he however made up for it with the energy he brought to the stage and the good understanding of the character he was playing. Playing an energetic, iconic and revered character on stage or in a movie could be the most difficult venture any actor can ever embark upon, Sahr rose up to the occasion squarely just like Morgan Freeman ‘killed’ the Madiba role in ***Invictus***. If Sahr had any flaw it will be that he ate his words sometimes at end of some sentences betraying his true accent.

The trinity of Fela’s deity (I am not one of those who believe in that deity) were present on the night; I speak of the sound, the word and the energy. As with the Trinity of the Creator, the three are inseparable.

The whole movement was backed by Antibalas, the Brooklyn-based Afrobeat band modelled after Fela’s African 70 band. Fela’s music was replicated note for note, nuance for nuance, bringing you to a place of complete adoration and pride that something from Africa, nay Nigeria has crossed borders and influenced cultures. The intensity and stamina from the stage was reinforced by the dance routines, the multimedia application and the synergy between them.

The conversation has arisen on why it had to take America to bring Fela to Nigeria, to the world. The simple truth is that, as with almost everything in this country, a project dies at conception because of vested interest, lack of structure and unprofessionalism. I doubt if we would have been able to pull it off. Now, do not get me wrong, we have the personnel to do it; after all, Fela’s children and family are still alive to provide some perspective to his being, most members of the Egypt 80 band are also still very much around to help re-enact some of the sounds that they helped Fela to create, we also have some of the best trained theatre artistes around who can recreate the Fela story from the eyes of a Nigerian in a language that we can understand. The whole entertainment industry in Nigeria has a question to answer.

In Nigeria, we love imported things. Fela had a word for it, ‘colo mentality’.

In spite of his shortcomings, Fela’s image will always loom larger than the lives of the unknown soldiers and those who ordered them to rape defenceless women, maim and kill people who were only armed with music during that infamous Kalakuta raid. Not that I think that music is powerless, it is just that I shake my head in pity at the stupidity of those who think that they can kill a message by killing the messenger. No messenger is bigger than the message; Fela was certainly not bigger than the message, he took the message seriously at the risk of losing his life.

So Broadway may think that they brought Fela to Lagos; they only gave us the show, the razzmatazz and showed us how to celebrate legends, but the real experience belongs to us. I guess Broadway can only celebrate him, it is our turn to immortalise him.