Fela’s Pidgin English Eloquence

 

 

 

     Fela tended always toward extravagance.  His oeuvre is very large, amounting to at least sixty-four albums, many of which I have not heard.  Ignorant of Yoruba and imperfect in my understanding even of pidgin, I can here do no more than encourage others with even less acquaintance with Fela to listen to this remarkable artist who expressed the thoughts of millions in his country and elsewhere and recorded songs that speak to even a bourgeois American suburbanite.

 

 

     Slightly less than fifty years ago, Patricia and I embarked on a study of West Arican history and culture in contemplation of teaching in Nigeria.  We read about Nok terra cottas and Benin bronzes, about the Middle Passage and the Berlin Congo Conference of 1885.  We got an inkling at least of the complex and, I think, comprehensive pantheon of Yoruba orishas well as some sense of the contemporary meaning of juju and witches.  We investigated Nigerian cuisine, as well as one might when limited by the resources of a 1970s American supermarket. 

     And we listened to music popular in Nigeria: King Sunny Adé, the Juju master, Prince Nico Mbarga  (who was actually Cameroonian), and, of course, Fela.  The musician Fela Kuti was born Ransome-Kuti, and for a time used the name Anikulapo, Yoruba for “one who has death in his purse,” though he is most often called simply Fela.  He died in 1997, having established himself as the preeminent figure in Nigeria’s musical scene during the second half of the twentieth century.

     During the last century, the significance and, at times, the beauty of popular culture has been recognized.  Since the term popular implies acceptance by the masses, largely independent of the trends occurring among the elite, one might argue that it registers specific moments in social history more precisely than high art.  Once in Mumbai I watched a film at a gigantic cinema palace, grander than any movie theater I know in America, where every seat was occupied by boisterous expressive fans, cheering, laughing, singing, and gasping while balancing trays of snacks.  The experience of watching a Bollywood musical in that setting surely revealed more about India today than visiting a museum or reading a novel by Arundhati Roy.  Similarly, acquaintance with anime characters, the haunting melodies of Um Kulthum, or the comedy of George Formby can reveal the taste and received ideas of a given place and time [1].  This is emphatically true in the case of Fela who constantly engaged topical themes. 

     The musician, whose birth name was Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, grew up in an affluent and influential family.  His parents had been leaders in the struggle for independence, his mother as a leading feminist and socialist organizer and his father as head of the teachers’ union.  Nobel-winning writer Wole Soyinka is his cousin.  Though himself a relatively privileged member of his country’s small educated middle class, he was brought up to fight for progressive causes, a tendency that accelerated after his visit to the United States in 1969 when he became acquainted with Black Panther Sandra Smith who gave him a copy of Malcolm X’s Autobiography.

     His American influences were musical as well as political.  When young he had performed with trumpeter Victor Abimbola Olaiya who had in turn been influenced by James Brown, but Fela’s own musical style came to be called Afrobeat.  His distinctive arrangements include elements of highlife and Yoruba folk music, but also blues, jazz, and funk, often featuring lengthy repetitious jams with strong horn sections and frequent call and response passages.  He sang sometimes in Yoruba, but quite often used pidgin English [2] in order to seek a mass audience across tribal groups.

     Those fond of Fela’s music, even those most sympathetic to the singer’s anti-imperialist stance, might be given pause by other elements of his politics.  Though he died of complications from AIDS, he considered the condition a “white man’s disease.”  In 1978 he married twenty-seven women in a single ceremony.  His Afrocentrism considered ethnicity (rather than power or wealth) the most essential and definitive characteristic in social relations.  His cultural nationalism was evident as well in his use of Yoruba ritual.  Still Fela was a significant voice of protest against post-colonial oppression and domestic authoritarianism and his frequent use of pidgin, a dialect most used by the powerless, underlines his advocacy for the poor and working class.

     He began, however, with the group Koola Lobitos doing love songs like “My Lady Frustration” (1968): “Everybody knows how much he meant to you, baby/ But you still insist that your heart's alright.”  Other tracks are dance music and focus on the night club scene, such as “Its Highlife Time” (1968):

Jump for joy

At this freaky club

He’s brand new craze

that makes me craze

 

      From 1969 on, however, his dominant themes were regularly political and cultural.  His Nigerian and international antagonists are identified in his “yab” (ridicule) of Moshood Abiola, “I. T. T. (International Thief Thief” (1980) and his political ally Olusegun Obasanjo.  As Abiola had been appointed a vice-president of I. T. T. he might represent multinational corporations as well as oppressive forces within the country.  Identifying such exploiters as stealing the people’s money, he blames them for “oppression,” “inflation,” “confusion, and  “corruption.”  

     Asking “Why Black Man Dey Suffer” (1986) his answer is clear.

 

Our riches them take away to their land

In return them give us their colony

Them take our culture away from us

Them give us them culture we no understand

Black people we no know ourselves

We no know our ancestral heritage

We dey fight each other everyday

We are never together, we are never together at all

 

     Just as the British colonialists had practiced “indirect rule,” selecting local traditional leaders who would collaborate with the European program, today’s ruling class rewards a few Nigerians to ensure their support.  These Africans then reinforce outside domination by building their own support by passing some monies down the line.

 

Them get one style wey them dey use

Them go pick one African man

A man with low mentality

Them go give am million naira breads

To become of high position here

Him go bribe some thousand naira bread

 

     Similarly, in  “Colonial Mentality” (1977) he notes that some Africans have adopted the European view as superior, leading them to look down on their own people.

 

De ting wey black no good

Na foreign things them dey like

 

E be so them dey do, them dey think

Dey say dem better pass them brothers

 

In “Underground System” (1992) he praises Nkrumah but attacks Obasanjo. 

 

When one good man want rise for Africa

Today Bad leaders dey go wan finish am o

When one good man want rise for Africa

Today Useless people dey go wan finish am o

 

     Fela’s attitude toward the Nigerian government, always critical, was brought to a head with his creation of the Kalakuta Republic, a commune of his family and entourage in Lagos which he declared to be an independent nation [3].  He complained of the military and police authority’s frequent raids in “Zombie” (1976): "Zombie no go walk unless you tell am to walk."  The following year the compound was destroyed by the military in an attack during which the singer’s mother was thrown from  a second story window ultimately dying from  her injuries.  It is unsurprising, then, that for Fela the security forces bring only “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” (1977). 

     Fela had meanwhile changed his group’s name from Nigeria 70 first to Africa 70 and then to Africa 80 reflecting his Nkrumahism, pan- Africanism, and socialism.  In 1979 he founded a political party, the Movement of the People supporting the artist himself as a presidential candidate, but the organization soon folded under heavy political repression [4].

     Fela’s Afrocentrism is consistent.  Rejecting European culture, he declares in “I no be gentleman at all o/ I be Africa man original” (“Gentlemen,” 1973).  During the Biafran War in 1970, Fela released “Viva Nigeria” which pleads “Lets join hands Africa, we have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.”  In “Expensive Shit” (1975) he declares “Me I be Fela, I be Black Power man”  “I no go agree make my brother hungry.”  In “Mr. Grammarticalogylisatitionalism Is the Boss” (1976) he criticizes the emphasis on English language proficiency in the educational system.  Even in the matter of toilet etiquette he prefers the traditional practice. 

 

Don't worry about my nyash ooh

I dey use water to clean my nyash when I shit finish

Yes, I dey use water because anytime way I use

Toilet paper, my nyash still dey smell, ahhhhh

My fore Father's teach me for Africa the correct way

                           “Don’t Worry About my Mouth-o” (1977)

 

     He is equally hostile to all organized religion [5], denouncing priests and imams alike as exploiters tied to the ruling class. 

 

Na the best friend to Bishop na him be director

 

Pastor's house na him dey fine pass

My people them dey stay for poor surroundings

 

           “Coffin for Head of State”

 

My people them go dey follow Bishop

Them go follow Pope

Them go follow Imam

Them go go for London

Them go go for Rome

Them go go for Mecca

Them go carry all the money

 

put your minds into any goddamn church

Any goddamn mosque

Any goddamn Celestical

Including Seraphoom and Cheruboom

 

We now have to carry our minds

Out of those goddamn places

               

                                “Shuffering and Shmiling”

 

      Apart from resisting authoritarian action by the state, Fela protests class stratification.  In “Alagbon Close” (1974) he speaks for the poor, including those called agbepo, who, in a country where most areas (even in Lagos and Abuja) lack sewage systems, carry human waste away from residential areas.   

 

I dey do my part

I be human being like you like you

 

     Using similar imagery in “Expensive Shit” (1975) he combines his own arrest for possession of cannabis when he swallowed his joint and was detained and his excrement regularly searched (though he managed to substitute another prisoner’s) with a general image of citizens who prefer to walk away from the shit, i. e. the corruption and repression of the rulers.

 

Him go bend the yash, him go shit

Him go comot away from him shit

Him shit go be the last thing wey him go like to see

Because why, oh? (Because the shit dey smell)

 

     He comments on issues other than repression from the point of view of the general population, the availability of safe water, for instance, in “Water No Get Enemy” (1976).  In “Opposite People” (1977) he complains about those who act contrary to the people’s interests. 

 

Everyone dey dance, him go push

Everyone dey talk, him go shout

Everyone dey hear, him go sleep

Everyone dey think, him go drink

 

In “Go Slow” (1972) the traffic jams of Lagos, then the capital, become an image for the country’s stagnation under selfish and tyrannical leadership.  He insists that the country should belong to the common people, saying “Man must be man for him land o.”

     Fela became the leading entertainer of his country while maintaining a vigorously adversarial attitude toward its rulers.  The listener to his recordings is overwhelmed by the full orchestrations and spellbound by his hypnotic repetitions.  His music remained primarily dance music (as the stage show emphasizes).  Fela is always hosting a party, however serious the theme of his lyrics.  Like the blues, his oeuvre indicates that art can transmute suffering, redeeming human experience by recasting it in aesthetically pleasing, even celebrative, forms without denying the pains it may describe.  His unstoppable plucky defiance, his art, renders his opponents fatuous and often ludicrous in spite of their holding the stronger hand.  Whereas the fans of artists like Victor Jara from Chile, José Afonso in Portugal, or Woody Guthrie in America were likely to be engagé even before encountering the music, many of Fela’s listeners were drawn first by his sound even before discovering that the man strutting on stage was not simply a romantic but remote show business idol, but rather was speaking their language and representing their interests, creating a body of work that found admirers far beyond West Africa.

 

 

 

 

1.  Some works are sufficiently admired by critics to be considered simultaneously popular and “high” art.  Among them are Homer, Dickens, Mark Twain, George Herriman, Walt Kelly, Louis Armstrong, and Bob Dylan. 

2.  The low prestige associated with pidgin is implied by the common term “broken English.”  Of course, blues, jazz, reggae, rebetiko, and fado all developed not in concert halls but in the low dives of the lumpenproletariat.

3.  When I arrived in Lagos in 1979 with my wife and five-year-old daughter, I wanted to attend a show at his compound, but in the end did not venture there, having been told that the music would not begin until after midnight and that audience members had to strip to their underwear.  As I did not go there, I cannot confirm if these conditions were real. 

4.  It was revived by Kuti’s youngest son Seun Kuti in 2020. 

5.  Fela makes no distinction, for instance, between the British and thus colonial Anglican church and the indigenous Christian cult of the Cherubim and Seraphim.