Goya MusicMan Presents Fela's Rare Beats

Here, the Africa-based writer Lindsay Barrett maps the extraordinary trajectory of Fela's life, detailing the emergence of his patented brand of Afrobeat, his anarchic lifestyle, and the ongoing battles with the Nigerian authorities. This feature was originally published in The Wire 169 (March 1998). No one who knew him well was surprised when Nigeria's greatest musician Fela Ransome-Kuti changed the first part of his double-barrelled surname to Anikulapo in the mid-1970s. He was just being consistent. Throughout his career, up to that point, Fela had constantly changed his mode of living and transformed the nature of his music. Eventually this process of change was to become the force that motivated his entire life. The renaming was instructive. Anikulapo means 'I have death in my pocket', which is to say, as he often did, 'I will be the master of my own destiny and will decide when it is time for death to take me'. When he died in August of last year at the age of 58, Fela appeared to fulfil the prophecy implicit in that earlier name change; and the manner of his dying was as dramatic and unruly as the manner of his living. In the weeks leading up to his death, Fela's condition deteriorated while he refused to accept treatment from Western-trained doctors, in spite of the fact that many of his family were illustrious medicos (Koye, the eldest, and former Minister of Health; Beko the younger, who was once President of the Nigerian Medical Association, detained incognito by the Nigerian government for his outspoken protests against what he believed to be the anti-democratic activities of the military; and his elder sister, a former matron in Nigeria's health services). To the end Fela was a conscious rebel. The themes of his rebellion never changed, and the anarchy which often seemed to surround his life and music was always tempered by the fundamental truths which he sought to elucidate with regard to both African society and the ongoing exploitation of people in African nations. Fela's family wanted him to become a lawyer, and in 1958 he left Nigeria for the UK, ostensibly to study law. But many of his close friends maintain that he never intended to follow that line, and that he had made his decision to be a musician from his schooldays. Once in the UK Fela enrolled In the Trinity School of Music. The trumpet was his preferred instrument, as most of Nigeria's leading highlife band leaders were trumpeters and at least two of them, Rex Jim Lawson and Victor Olaiya, were early heroes of Fela's. Although his father, the Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, encouraged him to play the piano, he had begun to practise the trumpet on his own before leaving secondary school, and sat in with many of the popular groups of the day. Bandleaders such as Roy Chicago, Bobby Benson, Eddie Okonta and the late anarchic genius Billy Friday all encouraged him and spoke highly of his youthful talent. However, Fela once told me that it was the discovery of Miles Davis's early recordings with Charlie Parker that strengthened his commitment to the instrument when he began studying in London. During his stay in London, Fela also listened to Afro-Cuban music, and began performing in venues frequented by African students and workers with a group of dedicated Nigerian musicians which included the pianist Wole Bucknor, who became the Musical Director of the Nigerian Navy Band, and the fine jazz drummer Bayo Martins. In fact Martins was a seminal influence on Fela's listening habits, and was largely responsible for steering him in the direction he was eventually to take in building a close link between jazz and highlife music. Fela returned to Nigeria in the mid-60s, and was employed by Nigeria's National Broadcasting Corporation, but he seemed to have little interest in working there. He formed his first professional group, The Koala Lobitos, and in their earliest performances the musical influences which had exercised Fela's imagi