In 1971, right after the devastation of the civil war, I came to Lagos to spend a short holiday with an uncle who lived in Surulere a stone’s throw from Gbaja where Fela had his Shrine.
The Shrine was the melting pot of modern Nigeria music spot—it was the place to be, and Fela Ransome Kuti, as he was then known, was the biggest thing happening on the Nigerian music scene.
I wanted so much to be part of this sensation.
At that point, and I think up to this moment, Fela’s music knew no bounds; didn’t know any tribe nor religion. It was filled with music of value and of authenticity. Fela was the conscience of Africa.
I loved the man with all my being and admired his philosophy and dedication to truth, justice, integrity, equity and equality.
Fela didn’t know that he was Yoruba, and all he cared about was his music and how it became a tool for social justice and for egalitarian change.
I wanted so badly to go to the shrine. I was young, although that was not the major obstacle, but I couldn’t afford the gate even as it was only a few bucks.
I began to hang around the Shrine and listening to the melodious sounds of Fela from the outside of the venue, and mixing with miscreants who littered the frontage and surrounding areas.
On one particular evening as Fela approached the entrance of the Shrine with his bevies of dancers in tow, I waylaid him.
I said to Fela: “ The Chief Priest, I came from the Biafra War and I’d love to watch you play, but I can’t afford it”. Fela stopped in his tracks, turned to me and with a smile asked me to follow him in. He was, I think impressed with my boldness or by the way I laid my English. Either way, he held my hand and put me right in front of the stage. I was in Heaven. For a moment, I thought that I was dreaming.
That show opened my eyes to the enigma that the man was. He began with the yabis which were interludes for throwing insults at government officials and anyone who caught his attention and angst.
As I sat down and still being in a daze, Fela introduced me to the audience informing them that there was a Biafran soldier in the area, and jokingly said that there should be no bombs going off in his Shrine. He condemned the war and wondered why the government was not doing anything to help the survivors of the war.
Throughout my remaining weeks in Lagos, I had an unfettered access to the Shrine as the gate tenders knew better not to stop me.
Many years later in the mid 1980s, I returned to live in Lagos, and the Shrine which was now located at Ikeja became me and my wife’s favorite spot. We followed and supported Fela, attended his funeral, and still worship all that he stood for.
Today, they have turned our music, drama and movies into tribal and ethnic contraptions.
I hear that there is now a clear division along ethnic lines about which music or movies to be played or screened, on the radio, tv stations or nightclubs, and that our politicians are sponsoring this division in what someone described as ethnic acculturation, or if you may, ethnic cleansing; some sort of deliberate ethnic expulsion of certain music belonging to other ethnic groups by those of another.
They claim that the evidence of this nonsense is abounding and that the clandestine acts are being perpetrated by the same people who are fanning the flames of hatred against their fellow citizens in politics and elsewhere.
I began to wonder what Fela would have thought about this, and it became certain that he would not have tolerated this.
In Fela, I leant that music is a culture that mutates and transcends tribes, tongues, religion and boundaries.
After all, Fela’s Afrobeat was a direct derivative of the Eastern Nigerian Highlife music.
No one owns or owes any particular music, it is a universal language that unites all.
To now deploy the evilness of tribal and ethnic politics in our music, is destructive and dangerous.
I feel sorry for musicians and artists who have fallen for this myopism, and may conclude that they were never meant to be artists in the first place.
We must all join hands and be like Fela who knew no tribe nor tongue and promote our culture.
Okey Anueyiagu
December 2005
©️InlandTown! 2006.
