Preview: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com. Hey, TalkHouse Network listeners, I'm Jad Abumrad. You may know me from Radiolab or Dolly Parton's America. I'm here to tell you about my new show, Higher Ground's latest music podcast called Fela Kuti Fear No Man.

0:37Fela is basically, you could think of him as the Nigerian James Brown, but with some Muhammad Ali thrown in and some Nelson Mandela. I think he's one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. And in the 1960s and 70s, he created an entirely new genre of music called Afrobeat. And then he turned that music into a weapon against the state. Like, if you have ever wondered, what is the point of art? Like, what can art do in this crazy moment we're living in? His life is a case study. I've been working on this project for three years, talked to so many interesting people, fellas, family, Made, Shayun, Femi Kuti, Yeni Kuti, historians, activists, luminaries like Ayo Adebari, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Santigold, and yes, President Barack Obama.

1:22All right, so I would love to share an episode with you right now. It's all about Fela, how he became the musician he is, created Afrobeat, this musical language of resistance. I hope you like it. And if you do, you can find the rest of the episodes on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for checking it out. Audible Originals and a Higher Ground Audio present Fela Kuti, Fear No Man, written and hosted by Jad Abumrad. In a world that is on fire, what do we do with art? Like, what can music do?

2:01Can it actually change things? Like, really change the world? Let's find out.

2:19In this series, we're going to look at the life and the music of Fela Kuti. Fela Anikulapo Kuti Fela Anikulapo Kuti Anikulapo... I always get that. My tongue always strips over that. Anikulapo Kuti The father of Afrobeat The black president The chief priest

2:55I'm going to argue that Fela is one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. From one of the most important countries that we in the West rarely think about, but should, Nigeria, he created an entirely new form of music that not only mixes jazz and funk and all these things, but also layers in resistance, bakes it in. Fela answers those questions about music and art in ways that are beautiful and troubling and profound. And I'm not the only one who thinks this. Here's a quick list. Ayo Adeburi, actor, writer, someone I really respect. She's in The Bear, great show. On some red carpet somewhere, she was asked, this question.

3:37A musician I have a cult-like fascination with. Her answer. Fela Kuti, who's a Nigerian legend. Bear is a very complicated man. Fela has to be the epicenter. And Questlove, one of the great musical minds of our time. I mean, Fela is the one figure whose story resonates with modern American hip-hop culture. The passion, the pain. Jay-Z. The strength, the need to get the message out there. Beyonce.

4:09Famously quoted Fela on one of her albums. Look, it's like, listen to it. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's the hardest shit you've ever heard in your life. He invited me out to the African shrine, which was his club just outside Lagos. Then there is Paul McCartney, Sir Paul, the Beatle, tells the story of seeing Fela play. And it was very intense. But when this music broke, I ended up just weeping. It looked like one of the most amazing musical moments of my life. So this is Fela Kuti. Fela Nikolapokuti. And then there is Berna Boy, the first African musician to sell out a U.S. stadium.

4:46In a video, he shows off a tattoo of Fela's face on his left forearm and also a Fela necklace around his neck. It's like my hero. It's like the best musician I ever knew. Just to pile on. Brian Eno, legendary record producer. When I heard Fela, he absolutely blew my mind. I thought, this is really the future of music. David Byrne. This is not just feel-good music. There's something about this. They're doing stuff I'd never heard before. And I thought, oh, this is really liberating. Even President Obama had some thoughts. Music like fellas is able to not just get folks moving, get them on their feet, but it also makes them feel alive.

5:30Our very best art and our very best music stirs the soul. So how? How is he doing that exactly? To create that reaction in all those people? Unfortunately, we can't talk to him, because he died in 1997, and he didn't leave a lot of tape behind. But for the last three years, we've been talking to the people who knew him. Who fought with him, sang with him, took blows with him, and tried to change the world with him. The story they tell, I hope you'll agree, has everything to do with this moment, as we're all searching for, what do we do now? Am I going to hold it? No, no, I'll hold it. Oh, thank God.

6:16That can be free. Okay. I want to start this series with sort of a prologue by playing you some tape from an interview that we did with a man named Dele, where he told us about his encounter with Vela. Hello, my name is Dele Shosemi. Bami Dele is the full name. Bami Dele means you set foot on the motherland. where we come from. And Shosemi, your last name, does that have a meaning? It's a name given to those who always advocate peace. Shosemi, let there be peace. Listening back to that intro, I realized Dele's name basically contains his story. And his story, in a way, contains the story of Nigeria, with all the promise and tragedy built in.

7:06So fire on. We met Dele in a small studio space in London where he lives and plays in a bunch of bands. He has a trio, quartet, quintet, orchestra. He's been called the ambassador of Afro-B, that is, of the genre of music that Fela Kuti created. In fact, there were many times during our interview where Dele would sing a complete Fela song and do all the parts.

7:36The vocals, backing vocals.

7:44He would sing all the different saxes, the altos, the baritones, all the trumpet lines, the different guitar lines, the percussion, the shakers, all the things.

7:58We'd call him up because we'd heard that he played keyboard in Fela's band in the late 70s and early 80s. We did not expect the story to go where it went. You were born in the UK, you just said. Yes, born here. And then we went back home. That's how I met Fela. He told me his parents were Nigerian, but his dad had gone to London to study economics. He was born soon as they got to London. But then when he was four, 1967, his dad decided to move them all back. What were the circumstances of your parents coming in? In Nigeria, we had just gained independence. 1960. In 1960. Sovereignty to a new nation, the new Nigeria.

8:45There was celebration, jubilation in the streets. 1960, October. In every town, every corner. It's the date we've been waiting to celebrate. Nigeria is free. It was like, yeah, we kicked the British out. Everybody be ready to play your part. We can rule ourselves. And so Dele's dad decides to move the family back to Nigeria because he was a believer. Yeah, we're going to build our own nation. He was going to put his economics degree to work to help build the country's banking sector. When my dad got his qualifications, there was already a job waiting for him. So he didn't even wait. So I went home with my dad in 1967.

9:29He was four at the time. And for the first time in his life, he was living not in a flat in a city, but out in the country.

9:40In the place where he was actually from. I hated it. No ice cream. There were goats that were walking to houses. I saw lizards and I was like, baby crocodiles? No way. What's going on? But I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. it was also in Nigeria where he met Fela. I was in high school. Every morning before the assembly, we used to jam on the piano. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, lean on me. Just popular songs. Anybody who knows the song would just play. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You know. Yeah. And every so often at these pre-assembly jam sessions, this kid would drop in.

10:31Two years above me. Slightly older. He would play with them and he was pretty good. This guy, he just used to jam. I'm like, how does he know all these songs? I just said, anytime he's played, I'm going to be watching him. That kid, it turned out, was Fela's nephew. Koye. Koye. Fela was a massive star at this point. He was like Elvis. If Elvis were also getting into violent clashes with the government on a regular basis, more on that in a later episode, point is he was huge. And so his nephew... He would come to school and be showing off. Oh, this is Fela's latest track. It's called the yellow fever.

11:07This Fela's latest track is called opposite people. This is Fela's latest track. It's called colonial mentality. So one day he was playing and there were some things he can't play together with his right hand. So I just said, OK, let me play that one you're playing. So I just went...

11:38Fela's nephew would play one line, he would play the other. And he says they both loved how the riffs would sort of snake in and out of each other, a Fela trademark. And how when they were playing, their fingers would almost overlap. The symmetry of those two together, there you could feel the tapestry of the two patterns.

12:01So he was so happy. Keep it going on. And then he changed. Long story short, Dele and this older kid, Koye, his piano buddy. A great friendship, camaraderie, evolved, you know. After meeting him, he'll leave school and he'll be going for piano lessons. And I'll go with him. Just to watch. Because my mom will not pay for piano lessons. This goes on for many years. One day, Koye introduces Dele to his cousin, Femi, Fela's son. They become tight. And several years into their friendship, Femi says to Dele, Hey, I'm going to go see my dad. You want to come? Want to come with me? Fela? Yes, please. And then we went.

12:52And then he introduced me. This is what my friend I told you about. And he looked at me like, How's your mom coping? How is your mom coping? How are you coping?

13:09That meeting would change Dele's life in profound ways.

13:20But before we get there, it's important to say a few things. To fill in that gap that I skipped over a second ago, from age 4 to 14, from when Dele arrived in Nigeria to when he met Felakuti. In those 10 years, things did not go as planned for either Dele or the country. Initially, his dad got them set up. Your dad was doing finances for the government at that point? No, no, he was working for a bank. Straight away he worked with Standard Bank, from Standard Bank to Barclays Bank, from Barclays Bank to National Bank. And his dad became a very important person, one of the top financial auditors in the country.

13:59They lived in a compound, they had guards, Dele worshipped his dad. Things were good. But the country was shifting. Toxic seeds were growing. Even before independence. Substantial reserves of oil have been located under the river Niger. You had all this oil discovered in the south of the country. This year, exports may be worth 5 million pounds. In 10 years' time, perhaps 50 million. So the British forced a deal on the new Nigerian government. They said, just because we're leaving doesn't mean you get to use our stuff. If you're going to pull all this new oil out of the ground, you're going to need our equipment.

14:35And if you're going to use our equipment, you have to sign a bunch of deals with British companies. In that way, colonialism really didn't end. It just changed clothes.

14:51The Nigerian government was not technically beholden to the British government anymore, but they were now beholden to British companies. And eventually German companies and Dutch companies and American companies, those companies would continue to extract resources and a very small group of Nigerian political elite would make a lot of money in exchange.

15:15In the middle of this shift, Dele's dad is working at a bank, doing financial auditing, trying to keep the books straight. That was his job. He was one of the fraud auditors. And in 1974-05, he discovers there's a whole lot of money missing from the bank. He had made his findings, and because he was about to release a big scandal and they tried to shut him up. Who's trying to shut him up and why? A syndicate of people who had ruined the bank, defrauded the bank. Dele says his dad was about to file a report, about to name names. He's still not sure who exactly was going to be named, but he suspects they were pretty high up.

16:03At the time, he wasn't aware of any of this. He was 12, and he remembers one day some very well-dressed men came to the door. They came to the house. When your dad comes back, tell him this is his new car. They gave us keys. These men brought a car. And we were like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And then the next thing they come, another visit. This time they hand his dad a briefcase. And he said, look, whatever's in it is yours. And then he's throwing the keys back at him and said, get out of my house. take your briefcase, take everything, get out of my house.

16:37We're children. We don't know what's going on. Luckily, he told us, I've just been told to shut up about my work. I spent all these sleepless nights, and I've been told I should not report what I found. Can you imagine? So the car was a bribe. He explained that to you? Yeah, of course. He called all of us. It was like, you see, in life, sometimes you get to the crossroads, you've got to make a stance. Without a good name, they're nothing. At this point in Nigeria, 1975, the initial civilian government was long gone. There had been several coups. The military government that was in power was actively disappearing people, killing journalists with mail bombs, hanging environmental protesters who protested against the oil companies.

17:25This would all come about years later in public hearings. At the time, Dele's dad had fortified the walls of their house and put bars on the windows. It would all come to a head on the night of September 11, 1975. This is about four years before he would meet Fela. My dad, he was supposed to submit the report the next day. We went to bed. They came that night, about 40 of them. Wow. They started assaulting the building around midnight. This gang of 40, they first overwhelmed the security guards. And then they started pounding on the doors and windows. With sledgehammers.

18:12That's the only way they could get him. Neighbors called for the police. Police said, oh, we run out of fuel. They said they ran out of fuel. Yeah, one of the police stations that they called and blah, blah, blah, blah. We couldn't get anybody to rescue. So you were on your own. Yeah, my dad told us to separate into different rooms. He says he ran to the back of his house, to his room, and hid in a closet. He could hear the muffled sounds of screaming and fighting getting closer and closer. And then the door of the room where I was in, I was thinking myself, oh my God, this door is now going to cave in.

18:53Oh my God. The door was just about to cave in. And I was like, I'm not going to go down without it. I was saying to myself, what do I do? Do I punch? Do I kick? Do I just grab onto one and bite? You know, I was calculating. You know that speed of thought. And then suddenly we just, and we had people running, running. We just had faith. I was like, the door stopped moving.

19:19And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. our security guard had run into town. He had gone into like city center to gather his friends. There were about hundreds of them marching from the village. So they got to our house just as our old door was caving in. They've gone, they've gone, thank God, thank God. Then I heard the guard shouting our names. to make sure we were all right, calling our names. I said, I'm in my room, I'm in my room. And then I opened the door. I just saw a body on the floor in red. My dad had pajamas, you know, pajamas matching top and bottom. It was soaked in blood.

20:16Oh, my God. Multiple stab wounds. there was a massive pickaxe entering into his head. Jesus. Dang.

20:34Dele says his father was unrecognizable. Completely fucked up. My mom was distraught. Then the burial. because we couldn't bury him immediately. We had to wait. It took a week. And because it was multiple perforations all over his body, it is stench. Oh, Lord. I was like, why do we have to lie him instead? And my mom said, it's good. Let people see what they did to my darling, you know? Oh, my God.

21:21But over the years, I can still talk about it, but evil.

21:38So, yeah. God damn. How do you... Just ask for someone's life to be snuffed out, you know? We had to waste about 10 cologne perfume spray in the room because my mom is in an open coffin. And there's one big, massive stitch to keep the skull together because a pickaxe came on the head. I was like, why?

22:16Imagine you are 12 and you see that. How do you process that? I have a 13-year-old kid. I don't even know how you answer that question, but making matters worse for Dele?