Fela was also influenced by the recorded music (and occasional trips to Nigeria) by Ghanaian highlife dance bands such as the Tempos, who in the early sixties became closely associated with the great Pan-African thinker Kwame Nkrumah. Furthermore, from the late 1960s onward, Fela made numerous trips to Ghana where he was particularly impressed by the music of the Uhuru big band, sometimes stayed at their premises in Accra—and at one point in his early career even thought of relocating to Ghana.
Ghana was the first West African country to become independent, it was home to Kwame Nkrumah, and it was the birthplace of highlife—it’s easy to see how Fela became such a Ghanaphile. When Fela later became politically conscious he became an Nkrumahist. Indeed, he constructed a Pan-African shrine in the early 1970s at his Africa Shrine Club that was centered on images of Nkrumah.
My Encounters with Fela
It was around 1970 or ’71 that I first heard Fela’s songs “Mister Who Are You?” and “Jeun K’oku” (also called “Chop and Quench”) from singles friends brought back from Nigeria to Ghana. However, it was only in 1972 that I first saw him play when I was a student at the University of Ghana at Legon and he and his Africa 70 band played at the university cafeteria, with Fela on keyboards and tenor saxophone.
Then in November 1974 I played for a week in Lagos with the Ghanaian Bunzus Band at Fela’s Africa Shrine Club and Victor Olaiya’s Papingo Nightclub. During this time, the police raided the old Kalakuta Republic. After his acquittal Fela assisted us in the recordings that we and our sister band Basa-Basa and our manager Faisal Helwani were making at the at the EMI studio in Lagos.
In December 1975 I again met Fela in Lagos when I was on my way to Benin City to work with and write about the highlife musician Victor Uwaifo. I interviewed Fela on this occasion. This was probably around the time that Fela began discussing with the Ghanaian poet and screenwriter Alex Oduro the possibility of making a film of Fela’s life.
Early in 1976 I met Fela several times in Ghana when he came to Accra to play at Helwani’s Napoleon Club jazz jam-session nights. On these trips Fela did his “yabbis” for the university students, telling them how the Western world had deliberately hidden the long history of Africa. He called these sessions “Who No Know Go Know” after his 1975 album of that name.
In June 1976 Fela returned to Ghana to plan “The Black President” film, in which I played a British colonial education inspector. It was in December 1976 that Fela arrived in Ghana to begin the actual shooting of the film, and it was on this occasion that I introduced him to the famous Ghanaian guitar-band highlife musician E. K. Nyame, whose songs had been popular in Nigeria when Fela was young.
Basa-Basa guys and bus in between Accra and Lagos. The Basa-Basa band went with the Bunzus band to Nigeria to play and record.
Poster for a Fela show at the Napoleon Club jazz night, 1976.
I spent the month of January 1977 in Nigeria acting in “The Black President,” and during this trip I met Fela’s wife, Remi, his mother, Funmilayo, his sister, Dolu, his brother Beko, and his three children: Yeni, Femi, and Sola. Later that year and also in 1978, I met Fela several times when he was going back and forth between Accra and Lagos doing the overdubs of the destroyed sound track of “The Black President” film at the Ghana Film Studio in Accra.
In 1981 I met Fela and his Egypt 80 band in Holland at the Amsterdam Woods summer festival and later took a group of Dutch journalists to meet him at his hotel. He had just released his album International Thief Thief (ITT).
A Note on Sources
In addition to my own reminiscences, diaries, journalistic works, and interviews, this book also draws on Ghanaian and Nigerian newspapers. I conducted an interview with Fela in 1975. The two interviews with Faisal Helwani were shortly after Fela’s death. I also enjoyed long conversations with two eminent Ghanaian musicians, Stan Plange and Joe Mensah, both of whom knew Fela intimately in his early days. I spoke to George Gardner, Fela’s Ghanaian lawyer during the late 1970s. Fela employed several Ghanaian musicians in his band, and I have included an important interview with his 1970s conga player, “J. B.” Koranteng, as well as Fela’s 1980s’ percussionists Frank Siisi-Yoyo and Obiba Sly Collins. Nigerians I talked to include Fela’s lifelong friend J. K. Braimah; the musicologist Meki Nzewi; the Afro-fusion artist Tee Mac Omatshola; Smart Binete, who organized Fela’s last Ghanaian tour; and the percussionist Bayo Martins, who at one point in the early 1960s played with Fela. I interviewed the Ghanaian musicians Mac Tontoh of the Uhuru highlife dance band (later the Osibisa Afro-rock band), and Nana Danso, whose Pan-African Orchestra includes instrumental versions of some of Fela’s songs—as well communicating with Johnny Opoku Akyeampong (Jon C. G. N. Goldy) and Alfred “Kari” Bannerman, who worked alongside Fela in the late 1960s. I also interviewed the late Professor Willie Anku of the University of Ghana, who has transcribed several of Fela’s songs.
For additional context I have included some comments by the Ghanaian drummer Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren), who as early as the 1950s and ’60s was producing his own distinct style of Afro-jazz, and the Nigerian keyboard player Segun Bucknor, who created a form of Afro-soul in the late 1960s.
PART ONE EARLY DAYS
1
THE BIRTH OF AFROBEAT
Fela in London
In 1958 Fela’s mother encouraged him to go to England to study medicine or law. He went to study at Trinity College in London, but against her and the rest of his family’s wishes he switched to music. At Trinity, he got his training in formal music and trumpet and also fell in love with jazz and with the highlife of the London-based Nigerian musician Ambrose Campbell and his West African Swing Stars (or Rhythm Brothers). In 1961, Fela formed a jazz quintet and then in 1962 the Highlife Rakers. Later he formed the Koola Lobitos, with his close friend “Alhaji” J. K. Braimah on guitar and Bayo Martins on drums. According to Martins, Fela was “a cool and clean non-smoking, non-alcohol-drinking teetotaler.” In a 1982 interview with Carlos Moore, Braimah makes a similar observation, stating that although Fela was a ruffian he “looked like a nice, clean boy … a perfect square.”1
Fela and his cousin, Wole Soyinka, shared a flat in the White City area of West London. It was in London that Fela met his wife Remi, who had Nigerian, British, and Native American ancestry. Even though she says Fela was a rascal and teddy boy (a sort of early English juvenile-delinquent rocker), she fell in love with him. They got married in 1961 and had three children. Yeni and her brother Femi were born in London in 1960 and 1962, respectively. Their younger sister, Sola, was born in 1963 in Lagos.
Twenty-one-year-old Fela as a student at Trinity College in London in 1958.
Returning Home
When he went home to Lagos in 1963 he continued to experiment with jazz. I will let the music journalist Benson Idonije explain this story.2
When Fela came from London in 1963 he came to Nigeria as a jazz musician, even though he had played highlife in London. He abandoned highlife and played strict jazz after he met in London the West Indian saxophonist Joe Harriott who used to play Charlie Parker–style bebop, and the West Indian trumpeter Shake Keane who played like Miles Davis. Though Fela was good enough to play with them, he disgraced himself as he couldn’t cope with the improvisation. But that encouraged him to practice to play jazz and he went on to redeem himself. Before he left London he joined some West Indians to make a strict jazz album, which he brought to Nigeria.
So when he came back to Nigeria he didn’t like highlife at all, and he met me as I was presenting a jazz program on radio called NBC Jazz Club. He came to meet me in the studio and