to teach you something tonight as she’s going to sleep with you. I’ve told her everything, she knows you are a kid and knows how to deal with you.” I said that Fela I can’t do this.
We got to my room that I shared with quite a few people and I don’t know how Fela managed it, but my roommates did not come in. Fela said goodnight and as he was going to close the door this lady just appeared in the room. Fela locked the door from outside and was laughing and saying that now we’ll see what will happen in the morning. Well, I need not continue on that story any more but this is to show how much Fela and I loved each other, like brothers; innocent young guys with talent.
Then another incident occurred the day he went to Britain [in August 1958]. Fela had a very beautiful bike, but even at that age he drove recklessly. His mother had bought a little German Opel car and all of a sudden Fela came to me with his left hand bandaged. He had run his mother’s car into a ditch and so he was going to inform her. I went to the house with Fela and his mother complained that Fela was giving her hell, so he’s going to London today to study. Fela said he wasn’t going to any oyinbo [whiteman] country, so as we were parting he said that I should come back as we were meant to be going out that night. His mother told me: “Don’t waste your time to come as you won’t find him here, he’ll be gone.” So this woman tied her headgear and over-cloth, took Fela’s passport with £90, and somehow this stubborn Fela wound up on an airplane to London. And that’s how we parted in the first phase of our friendship. In London he went to stay with one of his brothers who was training to become a doctor, as his mother also wanted Fela to be a doctor. From what I understand he entered medical school briefly but then went on to a music school in London.
What was Fela like when you first met?
You know Fela is a very brilliant chap, very intelligent, and very well rounded up in knowledge of many subjects. And Fela read a lot. He was also then very shy—we were both shy—but it was when we got together that we became terrible and could do anything. At that time he had finished one phase of his education [at Abeokuta Grammar School] and was waiting to go to university. He was an aspiring musician pianist for the second band of [Victor Olaiya’s] Cool Cats highlife group.
What was Fela’s relationship with his mother like?
Beautiful, very beautiful. You would think the mother only had Fela as a child, and for some time this is what I thought, only to learn later that there was an older and younger brother. Fela was the one who gave more challenges and trials of motherly patience and endurance. You should have seen the mother then. She was middle-aged, very strong, very determined, very forthright, very courageous, and very outspoken. I remember in the presence of Fela the mother told me not to follow him but rather show him how to be a good boy, and Fela just walked away making annoyed sounds. I could say that the love that he has for his mother, which later on showed, would be because they are very much alike in character. Both spoke their minds—from the little I saw of her she had values she adhered to. Like the value of a woman being able to do many other things besides the usual feminine classifications we give to women.
At that time Fela’s father had died and so the mother was twice of a father and once a mother—all rolled into one. If you go to the house you will see that she kept the house under rigid control. She wouldn’t follow any ideology, any saying, or any people blindly. I wouldn’t say she was always against the norm but I know she could not be swayed easily. She knew the world situation and politics, especially in Nigeria. She stood by her guns on principles that even go contrary to tradition and custom. Also she was a big freedom fighter and agitator—not only in words, but in action. On top of all that she was very affectionate, because if I look at how concerned she was about me then I can imagine how fortunate Fela and all her children were.
What about Fela’s father?
He had died but what I heard was that he was a trumpeter and also a reverend minister, and as such he used to hide his trumpet in his agbada [Nigerian attire] to go and play, as church congregations frowned upon their minister playing in clubs and social gatherings. They would take it as degrading to the pulpit. If it had been Fela’s mum she would have blown the trumpet in church. That was the type of determination she had, that eventually rubbed off on Fela. I guess through Fela’s father having been a musician Fela got to know quite a bit about music.
You saw Fela again when he returned from London in 1963?
Yes, I was in Lagos with the Uhurus and luckily there was Fela at a place called the Paradise in Ibadan. He came looking for me, and when we started playing he came in on his trumpet. It was when Fela came back from music school in London that he came out with the trumpet. Maybe his father also taught him, I don’t know. But when I first saw him in Lagos I never saw him with a trumpet. And I’ve never, up to today, heard any trumpeter that great. He was just fresh from tutelage and had been taught classical music at the conservatory. And he applied that to jazz. So his jazz was classic as well as innovative. Fela had all the qualities of a great trumpet player—the embouchure, the intonation, the dexterity, the fingering. It was just after this time that he formed his Koola Lobitos highlife band and you can see from his early works that Fela was a jazz fanatic.
I believe that you met Fela when he was in the United States in 1969?
Yes, I went to New York in 1964 to study civil engineering. While there I followed up Fela’s progress and I got his Koola Lobitos recordings. Also Fela would send people to me, and some of them would stay with me, because if he’s a friend of Fela he’s my friend and guest as well.
Then I was told that Fela was coming to the US to perform, and I met him in New York with his Koola Lobitos. Animashaun was on baritone sax, Tony Allen on drums and Tunde on trumpet. They played one night at the New York Sheraton Ballroom in a show organized by the African American community and a group of Nigerians for Nigerian National Day or some significant African day.
Then Fela left for California to tour, but wound up living there for a long time. That is where he gained his extreme African consciousness, blackmanism, and Afrocentrism. And he translated all this into his Afrobeat music.
I think this happens to all of us. It happened to me. My American friends, especially African Americans, found me to be too British. I had two Christian names and they didn’t see anything African about me as my values were too British, my dressing was too British, and my music was too conservative. So you start to form and evolve your own identity. And that is what Fela might have gone through when he was in California.
Tell me what you think about Afrobeat.
Its ingredients are a unique combination of highlife, jazz instrumentation, African percussion, and typical Nigerian movements. I can say with pride and love that myself and the other Ghanaian musicians in the Downbeats might have been the first link with Ghana and highlife for Fela. The way we did things was curious to Fela. The way we would take pains to create things, how we blended and performed our music. That was the foundation of Fela’s Afrobeat—I’m talking of highlife. You see at the time in Lagos there was only the apala and juju of I. K. Dairo and Haruna Ishola, which were mainly an aggregate of percussive instruments. So Fela got easily attracted to highlife, since his interest was in horns.
Afrobeat is a very sensitive music because Fela created it at a stage of his life when he required a lot of sympathy. He was always in difficulty for being outspoken and people would not leave him alone. So he found solace in the Afrobeat, as that was the only time Fela feels free, when he’s playing on stage.
Afrobeat was unique as he made his girls sing chorus for him. Because they are a bunch of dancers and not singers their voices could not stand a very good [complicated] sequence. So because of the ordinary nature of the chorus singing, Afrobeat became the music for the average man and woman in the street. If you take away the girls who sang the choruses you would be left with Fela as an avant-garde jazz-influenced African musician.
Fela always had a message and he made sure it was clearly heard. Here you have him come with a horn segment and it would disappear, then the guitar was there as if it’s monotonous—but it’s preparing you for what Fela was going to say. And when