students he lectured.
Then Nana Kofi Omane and I organized two Fela lectures for the African Youth Command in Tema. Nana was a lawyer for the Tema Development Corporation and an executive of the African Youth Command set up while [now] General Kutu Acheampong was in power to bring back Nkrumahism. In fact, as early as 1971, I and Nana, who had an organization called the Black Brothers International, organized a celebration on Nkrumah’s birthday at the Orion Cinema, Accra. It was packed out, and it was the first time since the anti-Nkrumah coup of 1966 that anyone had identified publicly with Nkrumah.
After the 1972 lectures, Fela got invitations from Nigerian universities like Ibadan to talk on the wrongs and corruption of society and how big men donkey the ordinary people. That’s when he became more political. Fela did this before Bob Marley. Marley did it more intellectually, Fela did it more directly.
Another important interaction between Fela and Faisal occurred in 1973 when the exiled South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela traveled around Africa for musical inspiration. He met Fela in Lagos, and Fela told him to go to Faisal’s newly opened (1971) Napoleon Club in Accra to join the club’s just formed resident band, Hedzoleh (Freedom). So it was with this Afro-rock group (led by Stanley Todd and with Okyerema Asante on percussion) that Hugh Masekela went back to Lagos in December 1973 to record the album Introducing Hedzoleh at the EMI studio.
However, as Faisal wrote in an article for the Ghanaian Mirror of February 7, 1975, things did not go very well in this collaborative enterprise:
I founded, created, financed, managed, produced and arranged them for recordings. On top I organised the Masekela-Hedzoleh tour of the United States. In all I broke through the universal market with Hedzoleh within the short period of one-and-a-half years. Hugh Masekela showed up in Accra [after he had been] introduced to me by Fela Ransome-Kuti, my friend. At the time Hedzoleh was already a champion band of Ghana and they had won a contract for the sound track of the film Contact.
Left to right: Faisal Helwani, Hugh Masekela, and Stanley Todd in Accra, 1973.
Fela (seated center) next to Faisal Helwani (standing) with J. K. Braimah (seated right) and Alex Oduro (seated left) in Accra, around 1976, prior to the shooting of “The Black President” film. Photo courtesy of Samy Redjeb, Analog Africa
As mentioned in the introduction, in early 1976 Fela made several trips to Accra to play at Faisal Helwani’s Napoleon Club jazz jam-session nights, alongside the highlife stalwarts like E. T. Mensah, Stan Plange, Jerry Hansen, and King Bruce, while Fela also played and did his political “yabbis,” entitled “Who No Know Go Know,” for the university students. The Africa 70 also performed for General Acheampong at the officers’ mess at State House in Accra. At this time the Ghanaian military government of Acheampong was still relatively friendly to Fela, as it was still perceived as a radical government that had refused to pay debts to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and was rather propagating Ghanaian self-reliance through initiatives like Operation Feed Yourself. Fela himself, on the other hand, was angry about the assassination of the radical Nigerian military leader General Murtala Mohammed, whom he admired, in a Lagos “go-slow” or traffic jam. He believed, for instance, that Murtala would have legalized marijuana.
Fela returned to Accra in June 1976 with J. K. Braimah and the Ghanaian poet and scriptwriter Alex Oduro to discuss with Faisal Helwani “The Black President” film that was based on the biography of Fela and his musical career in Ghana and Nigeria. As usual Fela came by car, which he always drove himself, as he never trusted anyone else’s driving. Then in December 1976, Fela came yet again with his eight-track mobile recording studio and a huge entourage of musicians, actors, women, and Kalakuta people to begin shooting the Ghanaian portions of the film. This included historical scenes of slaves in the dungeon at El Mina Castle and shots of the Star Hotel where Fela reenacted scenes of his Koola Lobitos band that often played in Ghana in the 1960s.
4
STAN PLANGE REMEMBERS
Guitarist Stan Plange met Fela in the late 1950s when Stan was playing with Chief Billy Friday’s Downbeat highlife dance band in Lagos. Stan had first joined the Nigerian Downbeats group in 1957 when the band had been resident in Ghana, and then had briefly been with Ray Ellis’s Comets and Eddie Quansah’s Stargazers before going to join the Downbeats again in Lagos in 1958. He left the Downbeats in 1962 and returned to Ghana to play for the reformed Stargazers and then the Broadway Dance Band. Broadway was renamed Uhuru in 1963 when Stan became its leader. He left the band in 1972 when he set up his Obibini Record Company. Stan is currently the director of the Ghana Television dance band. This interview was recorded at Stan Plange’s house in Osu, Accra, on August 18, 1998.1
When did you first meet Fela?
I first knew Fela when I was in Nigeria playing for Downbeats from 1958 to 1962—I was also then the treasurer of the Nigerian Union of Musicians. By that time [1958] Fela was just leaving high school in Abeokuta, but he used to come to Lagos to play with highlife bands like Victor Olaiya’s [Cool Cats]. He played trumpet but was playing very badly. Fela was never very good on trumpet but was much better on the keyboards, especially jazz piano. But in those days there were no keyboards [for local dance bands]; we knew of the organ only in church.
It was at that time that Fela got into a good friendship with Joe Mensah, who was playing in the same band as me. The Downbeats was made up mainly of Ghanaians, but the leader was an Ibo Nigerian called Chief Billy Friday. Fela used to come to our shows and at that time he doesn’t drink. He was a very clean musician and even condemned people who smoked and drank. Fela was a very good musician and I must admit very disciplined at that time. This was before he became successful.
Then Fela went to Britain and came back, and the first time I met him again was in 1963 when the Uhurus were playing at a dance at the University of Ibadan. Every year they have a dance called Havana Night—a big thing—so many bands come playing at different places around the campus. That time Fela came to join with us on stage, playing trumpet and wearing a suit. That was the first and only time I saw Fela in suit.
How did Fela first come to Ghana?
It was through Zeal Onyia [a famous Nigerian trumpeter] that Fela first came to Ghana. In 1966 or 1967 Zeal wanted to bring Fela and his Koola Lobitos group to Ghana, so Fela first came alone in his small Opel Rekord car. Zeal brought him to Uhuru House [in Asylum Down, Accra] and told me to take care of Fela. I’ve known Zeal for a long time, even when he was in Ghana in the 1950s [with E. T. Mensah’s Tempos band]. So we went around to book clubs, but Fela wasn’t known in Ghana then at all and didn’t have any recordings.
Anyway Fela went back with Zeal and came back with his band, which was playing highlife but in a very jazz mood. We got the Koola Lobitos to play at Ringway Hotel, Accra, when Ignace de Souza’s Black Santiagos was the resident band. The Uhurus also played there [as did other bands like the Ramblers and Geraldo Pino’s Heartbeats]. Fela also played at a couple of other places, but it wasn’t successful financially. He was sharing the gate with the club owners. His boys were staying at Ringway Hotel. Fela was staying with me at Uhuru House, but he had been wasting all his gate money on their accommodation, so I suggested that Fela bring his boys to stay with mine, because Uhuru was a big band and Fela’s was just a small combo.
The Uhuru band on tour in Togo, 1968.
