By Norm Dixon
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, one of Africa's most popular, courageous and politically outspoken musicians, may finally be silenced, much to the relief of Nigeria's corrupt political and military elite. Having suffered decades of persecution and bouts of imprisonment at the hands of successive Nigerian regimes, Fela now faces the death penalty on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
The musician is being held responsible for the death of a man at his Lagos nightclub. It is alleged that the man was beaten to death by club employees after an argument over money. Witnesses say that Fela was not at the club at the time.
Fela's past experiences with Nigeria's authorities add weight to the widespread belief that he is again being persecuted for his persistent criticism of police brutality, militarism, corruption and the servility of Nigeria's rulers towards the West and big business. The enormous following Fela commands among Nigeria's poor and youth has always worried Nigeria's rulers.
Fela was born in 1938 in the village of Abeokuta in the Yoruba region of south-west Nigeria. His father was headmaster of the local grammar school and his mother, Funmilayo Ransom Kuti, was a feminist and a radical nationalist. She led demonstrations through Abeokuta's streets against British rule in the '40s. She was Nigeria's first woman MP, and it was through her that the young Fela met the revolutionary Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1957.
In 1958, his parents sent Fela to London to study medicine. As soon as he arrived he instead enrolled at the Trinity College of Music. He came face to face with racism. Attempting to rent a room, he was confronted with signs saying "No Coloureds, No Dogs". Upset by these experiences and inspired by the growing anti-colonial movements in Africa, Fela paid less attention to his studies of European classical music than to playing African-influenced music in the Koola Lobitos, a popular jazz and highlife band.
Returning to Nigeria in 1962, Fela increasingly championed African culture and traditions over the Western influences that were swamping the local music scene. By 1968, his music had evolved into what he dubbed "Afrobeat". Afrobeat incorporated elements of west African highlife, supercharged James Brown-style funk, jazz and traditional Yoruba rhythms with intensely political lyrics delivered by call-and-response vocals.
A visit to the US in 1969 developed further his political radicalism and encouraged his already militant African cultural nationalism. He was introduced to the ideas of the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Stokeley Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver and to the revolutionary music of the Last Poets.
Fela returned to Nigeria in 1971 and renamed his band Afrika 70. He opened the Shrine Club in Lagos and immediately scored a big local hit with "Jeun Ko'ku" ("Eat and Die"). By 1972, Fela was a star in Nigeria and throughout west Africa.
His decision to sing in west Africa's English-based lingua franca made his political songs even more dangerous in the eyes of the elite. In Nigeria there are hundreds of languages, but by singing in "broken" English he could be understood by all Nigerians and all west African nations that had formerly been British colonies.
Beginning in 1971 with Why Black Men Dey Suffer, Fela released a steady stream of albums that addressed the concerns of the poor and exploited and furiously condemned Africa's ruling classes and their armies and police. Fela soon became a folk hero in the urban shanty towns, amongst the poor, the youth and the politicised throughout the region. He was also soon in trouble with the government.
The harassment began with drug raids on his club and home searching for the traditional Nigerian herbal intoxicant, igbo. Despite several detentions, the authorities could never gain a conviction. Fela delighted in detailing these failures, the ineptitude of the police and their brutality in song on subsequent albums.
In 1977, 1000 armed soldiers descended on Kalakuta, the commune where Fela and his band live in the slums of Lagos. They surrounded the building, smashed their way in and set upon those inside. Residents were stripped, beaten and tortured. Fela was beaten senseless, sustaining a fractured skull and broken bones. His mother, the respected Funmilayo, then 82, was flung from a second floor window and soon after died. The troops then set fire to the building and refused to allow fire fighters to put it out.
In 1984, Fela was jailed on trumped-up currency charges and spent 18 months in some of Nigeria's worst prisons. He was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.
Repression has only increased Fela's political musical output. In 1978 he released Coffin for Head of State, which blamed the president for his mother's death. Through the 1980s, albums like International Thief Thief (which criticised the US
telecommunications company ITT), Vagabonds in Power and Authority Stealing (both attacking government corruption and the abuse of human rights), Zombie (dealing with soldiers who follow the orders of tyrants), and Beasts of No Nation (released in 1988, this album slams apartheid and singles out Thatcher and Reagan for their collaboration with it) maintained his and his band's (now named Egypt 80) alignment with the poor and dispossessed.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti now faces the gallows. His arrest comes at a time when the military dictatorship of General Babangida seems set to renege on its promise to hand over to an elected civilian government.