Felabration Celebrates The Icon At 77

Felabration, the annual celebratory festival to mark the Afro beat icon’s birthday on October 15, kicked off last Monday with a symposium themed “Human Rights As My Property, ”a conversation moderated by Honourable Sasore, former Attorney General of Lagos state. A legion of bands are lined up as usual – to perform in his honour both at the Shrine and Freedom Park – with a literary dimension to the mix at Jazz Hole, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi Lagos where some of the books written about him will be reviewed.

But more importantly, this year’s festival is significant and remarkable – especially for the icon himself who would have been 77 years if he were alive: he had an ideological attachment to the number ‘7’ about which he had a lot of interesting stories to tell – anecdotes that drew their inspiration from the spiritual realm. If he spoke so vociferously about number 7, you can imagine how passionate he would be about the ideological significance of his age today, double 7. Another striking coincidence is the fact that Fela is being celebrated in October 2015, the same day that he was born on October 15.

However, the two tangible legacies for which he is being remembered all over the world is his human rights stance which was perhaps encapsulated in his 1986 composition of Beasts Of No Nation, the significance of which was aptly captured by the theme of this year’s symposium. And no matter how highly rated his human rights efforts might be, the undeniable fact still remains that his music was the weapon for achieving his objective. Not only did he use it to confront the problems of Nigeria, he also used it to reach out to the whole of Africa and the entire world.

The icon is being celebrated for his human rights activism and primarily for his music whose impact was massively felt with Jeun Koku in 1971 – even though with a social commentary message; but the body of the music was electrifying, powerful and rhythmically propulsive. His ideological posture might have begun from Lady which many saw as a mere social commentary vocal delivery. But in essence, the music speaks volumes about blackism, painting the picture of an ideal African woman. However, the releases of Buy Africa and Black man’s cry in 1974 brought the icon’s pan- African ideology to the fore.

The period between 1974 and 1986 was characterized by the icon’s brutalization by successive military governments even as these brutalities triggered and heightened his human rights resolve, adding venom to his protest. He was imprisoned, yet not deterred. But perhaps the real human rights struggle began in 1986 with the composition of Beasts of no nation which changed the concept of his music both in instrumentation and message. Essentially driven by songs of protest, the music assumed the call- and- response pattern of African music, reducing its progression to the simplicity of African music even though harmonies still remained complex. And it is this simplification of Afro beat and its Africanness that have made it entirely accessible and commercial to the point of appealing to the new generation of musicians. It is the combination of his human rights stance, his pan African resolve and the power of his music – that have made him the icon that he is today:

Nineteen years after his death, Fela seems omnipresent. We speak of him in the present tense; his first name is used not so much to demonstrate personal familiarity as it is to acknowledge the pervasiveness of his influence.Today, his music is the inspirer of modern hip-hop in Nigeria and Africa. Afrobeat bands have been formed across Europe and America which are drawing inspiration from his enormous influence. Musicians and fans lapse into his vocal rasp to make a point. Fela has been celebrated on ‘Broadway’. The annual festival tagged ‘Felebration’ continues to wax stronger and bigger in dimension and activity- with every edition –as more awareness is being created. How best to appreciate his musical progression than to begin from the highlife days- when his music was really musical:

If you were an ardent listener to radio in the early sixties, you would have heard on the airwaves, songs like Bonfo, Fere, and Lobitos Special -legendary highlife music recorded on R.K label as singles – in the style of Victor Olaiya. If you were in Lagos in the mid-sixties as a young man, and you pub-crawled like most of us, you would have been treated to the plethora of progressive highlife, superimposed on jazz. These sessions later translated to recorded melodies such as Ololufe, Yese, Araba’s Delight, Oloruka, Ojo to su, Onidodo, Ajo, Abiara, Omuti, Oniwayo among others, most of which formed Fela’s over 33 records. If you followed his musical career in the seventies, you would have been exposed to the golden years of ‘Afro-beat’ which began with Jeun Ko Ku, but later featured such hits as Lady, Yellow Fever, Expensive Shit, Zombie, Authority Stealing among others. The eighties experienced a departure from this overtly commercial music – as exemplified by Beasts of no nation and other compositions – while the nineties mellowed him down to the complexities of Confusion break bone, Customs Check-Point, ODOO’ and the like, which he referred to as African music. Up till the time he died on August 2, 1997, the icon never stopped beating out sounds with unabashed gusto.

Despite this progressively adventurous development, a school of thought still believes that the most musical aspect of Fela’s career remains the jazz-oriented highlife period of the sixties. And they might be justified in their preference.

At the time he released his initial singles around 1961, even though it was in the style of Victor Olaiya, the music displayed evidence of progressiveness. It was more progressive than the highlife of Ghana’s Stargazers, Globe kings, and even the early Uhuru Dance Band led at the time by Nigeria’s Sammy Obot, a fine trumpet player who has since gone into musical oblivion. These were three of the bands which exhibited concrete potential in terms of modern orchestral structuring in those early days.

Fela’s career from Jeun Ko Ku upwards appears to be well known to most people. But the period between the departure from highlife and this Afro-beat beginning is very crucial to the transition of Fela’s music: the music that characterized this period has also been described by foreign musicians and critics as ‘highly musical.’ Some of them were composed in America in 1969 and were first recorded there during the period of his musical transition. Tenor saxophone player Houston Person, one of America’s greatest musicians with the passion for African music, teamed up with Fela’s ‘Africa ‘70 in America on such brilliant performances as Wayo, My Lady’s Frustrations, Miole Jobe, including Viva Africa, an Afro highlife rendition which reduced Fela’s lyrical message to a monologue – advising Nigerians to live together as brothers and sisters, saying that ‘war is not the answer.. The music came as a reconciliatory message in 1970 to mark the end of the civil war.

The main thrust of Fela’s music at this time was African rhythms whose various patterns were integrated into repetitive themes. He backed this up with riffs and orchestral harmonies against which solos ran profusely with the best of improvisations.

Without doubt, his Afrobeat career which spanned the 70s, 80s, and 90s has been very well documented. The interesting feature of this entire period is the way the music logically evolved – becoming more complex with time. This is one of the hallmarks that attests to his musicianship and the depth of his artistic creativity.