FELA: STYLE OF THE LEGEND - a preamble

He was a bold man who dared to step where others could not, and he died the way he had lived - in a blaze of controversy and mystery! On the second day of August 1997, the world woke to the news that the originator of the musical genre known as Afrobeat had passed on due to complications arising from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the self-styled Afrobeat king with an image and reputation that was larger than life itself, certainly lived life to the hilt. The man had a style and the manifest definition of that style was Afrobeat music. What is Afrobeat and who is Fela Anikulapo Kuti? Was he merely a corrupting influence on impressionable youth with his public consumption of marijuana or was he indeed a musical purist of the highest order? Could he have been the quasi-messiah who arose to liberate the African mind - long hampered, first by centuries of dehumanizing slavery and then by confusing shackles of colonialism? These questions, and more, we aim to answer in this book as we proceed to comprehensively explore the legacies of this human icon. Furthermore, they are questions that acquire amplified significance when we consider the sociological imperatives that gave rise to Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Fela rose to prominence at a critical era of transition in Africa: the transition from colonialism to political independence. It was a seminal period - perhaps the single most important period in the history of the continent. The emergence of a force like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at such a juncture can therefore not be wished away as mere coincidence - because it was not! He was a product of the exigencies of his generation, a generation that needed to ask the questions that would be answered for all times. The urgency of that quest is what we can distil from his music. However history may ultimately judge him, one fact will always be patent: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti influenced and fathered a whole new breed of African musicians and he was at the forefront of pan-African thought in his time. It is no longer news that he was a musical prodigy in a class of his own. Indeed, he created the class that he alone would occupy throughout his lifetime. As an explorer of rhythmic themes, he created a musical textures that would be copied by thousands of musicians around Africa. He was a master of the musical game. Not for him the terse commercialism, he was always quick to point out that his music was spiritual. Fela favoured the slow build-up, the intricate rhythmic arrangements, drawing the listener more and more into his vision of the song, unleashing first instrumental orchestrations, before going into the main vocal passages. Listening to Fela’s music, you get the feeling that you have finally arrived in Africa - the real Africa; you are overpowered by the overwhelming Africanness of his orchestral voices. It happens to me every time. Yet, deep inside, I know that this is simple music - African music. And that is as music should be: simple, pure and African. Inevitably though, his music became a tool in his hands for persuading the world of the superiority of the African experience, and it eventually became a weapon for attacking authority, both civilian and military, whenever and wherever he perceived such as being insensitive, corrupt or inept. The man certainly influenced the music as much as the music influenced the man, but honestly, which was more important: man or music? In order to preserve a proper sense of intellectual honesty in our discourse on the Afrobeat genre, we must ask ourselves the following questions and faithfully seek answers to them. Was it the man’s persona that dictated the public reaction to his music? In other words, was he a con artiste deliberately courting public attention with his wanton exhibitionism? Were defects inherent in his music artfully smoothed over by an aggressive mien and the potent mystique it suggested? Indeed, was it this public perception of a musical mysticism flowing directly from Fela’s personal magnetism that helped to plant Afrobeat in the public’s consciousness as a potential tool for their empowerment? If the answer to the last question is yes, this may well account for the ecstatic, sometimes violent, response that more often than not attended his music. Was it stage-managed, a well-oiled con game to enhance the projection of the Afrobeat image or was there really something of an inscrutable power to it all? An observer once described Afrobeat as a ‘weapon for the future.’ Well, the creator of the sword certainly forged it to perfection, leaving one in no doubt that in the right hands it could have a devastatingly effective action. The common man is the target, the underlying and overriding subject and the supreme enjoyer of every Afrobeat song. Afrobeat is about Africa and its masses: the impoverishment of its masses, the resistance and resilience of its masses and the triumphs and ultimate salvation of its masses. It is the common man therefore that will directly benefit from any effort to position Afrobeat as a proud tool for his own evolution. As his country careered through the political challenges and economic muddle of the 1970s through 90s, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Afrobeat consistently sounded the alarm bells that woke Nigerians to the reality of the day, even offering practical suggestions – served of course with a patina of wit and biting satire - on ways to overcome. Consequently, Afrobeat has become a barometer for social awareness in Nigeria. Its bustling urgency and the earthiness of its rhythms assures the people of its unchallengeable position as a natural national career of news and views, so that nothing of national significance would go by without passing through its creative mill for due testing and analysis. That is the essence of Afrobeat.

PIDGIN MAKES ITS BIG COMEBACK IN NIGERIAN MUSIC

PIDGIN MAKES ITS BIG COMEBACK IN NIGERIAN MUSIC “...Nigerian Pidgin is a uniquely Nigerian brand that has catalysed the renaissance of Nigerian popular music,” writes Celestine Chukwu.
Nigerian music artistes are smiling more, complaining less and enjoying the positive effects of improved cash flow. There are more Nigerian hits on the radio now than at any other time in history; Naija Hip-hop rules the nightclubs in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. It’s a renaissance of sorts, and a certain word seems to be behind this renaissance: Pidgin. Fela Anikulapo Kuti exemplified the movement that popularized the use of Pidgin in Nigerian popular music, a trend going all the way back to the early Highlife artistes. However, it took a while for even Fela to arrive at his ‘Pidgin epiphany,’ as he had earlier in his career written and sung in either straight English or Yoruba, his native tongue. Eventually though, the songs that came to define his career, Lady, Suffering and Smiling, Zombie, Water No get Enemy, Shakara, ITT etc., were all rendered in Pidgin. One suspects that artistes in Fela’s generation consciously shied away from embracing Pidgin as their primary mode of expression and must have found it more acceptable to be regarded as singers in English or indigenous tongues. The reasons? To begin with, there was the notion that singing in Pidgin limited one’s audience to the uneducated, thereby immediately compromising such an artiste’s commercial appeal. This was a wrong notion - though forgivable, since Nigerians were, and still are, educated in English. The second reason for the apparent ‘Pidgin reticence’ of that generation’s artistes was the fear of being dubbed underachievers for deigning to communicate to a mass audience in an informal medium - a hangover of the British colonial experience the country had just emerged from. As if in collective tribute to the Afrobeat legend, the post-Fela generation resoundingly demonstrated that the above-stated reservations were unfounded, as Pidgin has now risen to become the most commercially viable medium of expression in Nigerian popular music. Fela’s son Femi Kuti has been successful in staying true to his father’s Pidgin credo, and artistes like Tuface, Faze, Eedris Abdul Kareem, D’Banj, P Square and Ruggedman amongst others have established stellar careers on the back of singing or rapping in Pidgin. Singers like the bespectacled guitarist Asa and the honey-voiced 9ice have espoused a rich blend of Pidgin and Yoruba idioms interlaced with English to produce an interesting musical style that is uniquely theirs. As this author wrote in the first ever compilation of Nigerian colloquialisms, A Dictionary of Nigerian Pidgin & Slang, Pidgin is “to all intents and purposes our colloquial lingua franca” and “...it is a ‘broadstream’ medium boasting a catchment area anywhere from the loftiest mansion to the meanest hut.” As the only linguistic medium that cuts across all ethnic and socioeconomic divides in Nigeria, Pidgin’s use in social intercourse is widespread and it is immensely popular for conducting informal business. With such a huge and ready audience, is it any wonder the Pidgin platform is the most rewarding out there today? Every African country with a colonial past, Anglophone or otherwise, has its own Pidgin, which may bear some similarity to the Pidgin of other countries, thereby creating an avenue for cross-linkages between the popular music markets of Nigeria and Ghana, for example, and making it possible for a Tuface or a P Square to perform to sell-out crowds in South Africa and for Ghanaian Hip-hop ambassadors V.I.P. to do the same in Nigeria. Such market cross-linkages have expanded the possibilities of Nigerian artistes, some of whom go out to make their careers in other African countries. On a cautionary note, Pidgin was never, and will never be, a safe haven for artistes of questionable talent, nor is it a fail-safe medium for lazy expression. Artistes are required to put in as much hard work, if not more, to communicate effectively in the medium. The creative process of a musician depends as much on character as it does on the cultural environment that nurtures it. Nigerian artistes have learnt that to be successful, they need to be assiduous and true to the natural rhythms of their environment - as embodied in Nigerian Pidgin - and the market itself has proven to be hugely receptive to such creative sincerity. In conclusion, Nigerian Pidgin is a uniquely Nigerian brand that has catalysed the renaissance of Nigerian popular music. Creatively blending Pidgin and indigenous language idioms is at present the sure-fire recipe for market-savvy expression in Nigerian popular music. It is a recipe that has been market-tested and found to be to the market’s liking - a recipe that Nigerian artistes are not likely to abandon anytime soon! Celestine Chukwu is the author of the first ever dictionary of Nigerian colloquialism, A Dictionary of Nigerian Pidgin & Slang [published by Poets of Africa Resource (tel: 0806-350-1793)].

                                                        THE HIGHLIFE OF PIDGIN

The Highlife music tradition was the first in Nigerian popular music to embrace Pidgin as a vehicle. Noted for its irresistible dance floor pull, Highlife continues to be a highly enjoyed music form in Nigeria. However, its glory days were in the decades before and just after Nigeria’s independence from Britain, whose colonizing influence anchored the development of Nigerian Pidgin, or ‘Broken,’ as it is more popularly known. Due to its roots in jazz and military marching bands, highlife compositions were usually very well structured, being lent that extra, unique, defining flavour by Nigerian artistes to make the music all their own. Whether as the big band or the smaller ‘guitar band’ combo variety, the legacy of highlife was to produce a generation of virtuosos whose professionalism and instrumental and vocal virtuosity has probably not been equalled since then. Captured on recordings, this generation gave us the classic evergreen songs of Highlife greats like Rex Lawson, Victor Olaiya and Eddie Okonta, which constitute the target of endless cover versions, remixes and sampling by present-day artistes. Pidgin songs like Lawson’s Sawa Sawa and Baby Pancake remain bonafide ‘earworms’ that are ever in loop in our collective musical subconscious. Realizing that people are wont to arrive at a much quicker appreciation of a new language when they are exposed to its songs, record labels should make it standard prctice to translate artistes' songs into Standard English on CD liner notes and websites as a promotional tool for their audiences, to introduce them to Nigerian Pidgin. No gainsaying as long as Pidgin lives, Highlife lives on. Celestine Chukwu is the author of the first ever dictionary of Nigerian colloquialism, A Dictionary of Nigerian Pidgin & Slang [published by Poets of Africa Resource (0806-350-1793)] Email: celestinechukwu@yahoo.com