Legendary Dig out- Olufela Oludotun Olusegun Ransome-Kuti
Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti on 15 October 1938 in
Abeokuta, the modern-day capital of Ogun State in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, then a city in the British Colony of Nigeria into an
upper-middle-class family . His mother, Chief
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti , was a feminist activist in the anti-colonial movement; his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti , an
Anglican minister and school principal, was the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers . His brothers, Beko Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti , both medical doctors , are well known in Nigeria. Fela is a first cousin to the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka , the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Fela attended Abeokuta Grammar School . Later he was sent to London in 1958 to study medicine but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music , the trumpet being his preferred instrument. While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos, playing a fusion of jazz and highlife. In 1960, Fela married his first wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he would have three children ( Femi , Yeni, and Sola). In 1963, Fela moved back to the newly independent Federation of Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation . He played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All Stars.
In 1967, he went to Ghana to think up a new musical direction. That was when Kuti first called his music Afrobeat .In 1969, Fela took the band to the United States where they spent 10 months in Los Angeles. While there, Fela discovered the Black Power movement through Sandra Smith (now Sandra Izsadore), a partisan of the Black Panther Party. The experience would heavily influence his music and political views. He renamed the band Nigeria '70. Soon afterwards, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was tipped off by a promoter that Fela and his band were in the US without work permits. The band performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles that would later be released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions .
After Fela and his band returned to Nigeria, the group was renamed The Afrika '70, as lyrical themes changed from love to social issues. He formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune , a recording studio, and a home for the many people connected to the band that he later declared independent from the Nigerian state. According to Lindsay Barrett , the name "Kalakuta" derived from the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta dungeon in India.Fela set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel, first named the Afro-Spot and later the Afrika Shrine, where he both performed regularly and officiated at personalized Yoruba traditional ceremonies in honour of his nation's ancestral faith. He also changed his name to Anikulapo (meaning "He who carries death in his pouch", with the interpretation: "I will be the master of my own destiny and will decide when it is time for death to take me"). He stopped using the hyphenated surname "Ransome" because it was a slave name .
Fela's music was popular among the Nigerian public and Africans in general. In fact, he made the decision to sing in Pidgin English so that his music could be enjoyed by individuals all over Africa, where the local languages spoken are very diverse and numerous . As popular as Fela's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was also very unpopular with the ruling government, and raids on the Kalakuta Republic were frequent. During 1972,
Ginger Baker recorded Stratavarious with Fela appearing alongside Bobby Tench.Around this time, Kuti became even more involved in the Yoruba religion.
FEW FELA PHOTOS:
In 1977, Fela and the Afrika '70 released the album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the zombie metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military . The album was a smash hit and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother (whose house was located opposite the commune) was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries.The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos , General Olusegun Obasanjo's residence, and to write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier", referencing the official inquiry that claimed the commune had been destroyed by an unknown soldier.
Fela and his band took residence in Crossroads Hotel, as the Shrine had been destroyed along with his commune. In 1978, Fela married 27 women, many of whom were his dancers, composers, and singers. The marriage served not only to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic but also to protect Fela, and his wives, from false claims from authorities that Fela was kidnapping the women. Later, he was to adopt a rotation system of keeping 12 simultaneous wives. [16] The year was also marked by two notorious concerts, the first in Accra in which riots broke out during the song "Zombie", which led to Fela being banned from entering Ghana . The second was at the Berlin Jazz Festival after which most of Fela's musicians deserted him, due to rumours that Fela was planning to use the entire proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.
Despite the massive setbacks, Fela was determined to come back. He formed his own political party, which he called Movement of the People (MOP), in order to "clean up society like a mop". [6] Apart from being a mass political party, MOP preached " Nkrumahism" and " Africanism ."[17][18] In 1979, he put himself forward for President in Nigeria's first elections for more than a decade, but his candidature was refused. At this time, Fela created a new band called Egypt '80 reflecting the fact that Egyptian civilization, knowledge, philosophy, mathematics, and religious systems are African and must be claimed as such. As Fela states in an interview, "Stressing the point that I have to make Africans aware of the fact that Egyptian civilization belongs to the African. So that was the reason why I changed the name of my band to Egypt 80." [19] Fela continued to record albums and tour the country. He further infuriated the political establishment by dropping the names of ITT Corporation vice-president Moshood Abiola and then General Olusegun Obasanjo at the end of a hot-selling 25-minute political screed entitled "I.T.T.(International Thief -Thief).
MUSIC
The musical style of Fela is called Afrobeat , a style he largely created, which is a complex fusion of jazz , funk , Ghanaian/Nigerian highlife ,
psychedelic rock and traditional West African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native "tinker pan". [25] Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) was instrumental in the creation of Afrobeat. Fela once stated that "without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat".
Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. A riff-based "endless groove" is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes.
His songs were mostly sung in Nigerian pidgin English, although he also performed a few songs in the Yoruba language. Fela's main instruments were the saxophone and the
keyboards , but he also played the trumpet, electric guitar, and took the occasional drum solo. Fela refused to perform songs again after he had already recorded them, which also hindered his popularity outside Africa.
LIST OF HIS SONGS:
1. Lady
2. Shakara
3. Gentleman [Edit Version]
4. Water No Get Enemy [Edit Version]
5. Zombie
6. Sorrow Tears and Blood
7. No Agreement, Pt. 2
8.Roforofo Fight
9.Shuffering and Shmiling, Pt. 2
10.Coffin for Head of State, Pt. 2Tracks of Disc 1
11. Fear Not For Man
12. Palm Wine Sound (Instrumental)1. Everything Scatter
13. Expensive Shit
14. Underground System, Pt. 2
15. Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am
16. Monkey Banana
17. Sorrow Tears and Blood [Original Extended Version]
18. Black Man's Cry
19. Mr. Follow Follow
20. He Miss Road
21.Yellow Fever
DEATH
On 3 August 1997, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti , already a prominent AIDS activist and former
Minister of Health , announced his younger brother's death a day earlier from complications related to AIDS . However, there has been no definitive proof that Kuti died from complications related to HIV/AIDS, and much skepticism surrounds this alleged cause of death and the sources that have popularized this claim. [22][23] For example, it is widely claimed that Fela suffered and may have possibly died from Kaposi's Sarcoma , which is a symptom of HIV/AIDS infection. However, there are no known photos of Kuti with telltale lesions; moreover, Kuti was honored with a lying-in-state in which his remains were encased in a five-sided glass coffin for full public viewing. [24] More than one million people attended Fela's funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound. The New Afrika Shrine has opened since Fela's death in a different section of Lagos under the supervision of his son Femi.
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