Cotonou deserted; everyone had gone to Abomé. We did, however, play the following night at the Centre Communitaire in Lomé, Togo.
We all learned a lot from our short stay in Nigeria. Fela is the top musician there, much more popular than foreign artists such as James Brown, or Jimmy Cliff, who was barely able to pull in a crowd of 6,000 at the 60,000-capacity football stadium at Surulere on 28 November. A lesson for Ghanaian pop fans, I think!
Bandaged but unbowed, Fela performs in what he called a “pope’s” or “alhaji’s hat” after returning from his court victory.
The entrance of the Africa Shrine in Mushin in 1974.
Five days after the November 23 attack Fela was released from jail and so was able to help Faisal coproduce the albums by Basa-Basa and the Bunzu Soundz. Fela also took over from Feelings Lawyer (Wole Kuboye) and played some of his current songs. One I recall was “Everything Scatter,” which praised African heroes such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, and, more controversially, General Idi Amin of Uganda. Fela insisted Amin was a heroic figure, settling scores with the Indian traders in his country and getting Europeans to carry him around in a palanquin. Another song that Fela was playing at this time was “Confusion,” released the following year, which is about the problems created for West African countries having multiple languages and currencies.
In 1976 Fela used his technique of turning confrontation with the authorities into music when he released for EMI his album Kalakuta Show, which describes the police attack on him on November 23, 1974.
6
“J. B.” TALKS ABOUT FELA
Daniel Koranteng, better known as “J. B.,” was one of Fela’s conga players between 1971 and early 1975. He is half Ga, half Fanti, and was born in the Accra Police Depot in 1948. I interviewed him at the music department of the University of Ghana, Legon, on May 11, 1999. As he explains, although he did not start playing congas for Fela until April 1971, he danced for him much earlier.
How did you meet Fela?
Fela came to Ghana in 1967, and at that time I was playing drums for a traditional Ga kpanlogo group called Play and Laugh and was the soul dancer for the Bugulu Dance Group of Accra Newtown. I was a fantastic soul dancer, and so was called J. B., or James Brown. The dance group played at the Pan African Hotel, Grand Hotel, Tip Toe Gardens, Lido—and anywhere where there were bands that could play soul; like the El Pollos, Barbecues, Uhurus, Geraldo Pino’s Heartbeats [a Sierra Leonean band] and the Black Santiagos led by Ignace de Souza from the Benin Republic. Fela and his Koola Lobitos band came with a beautiful Nigerian lady dancer called Dele and they all stayed at the Pan African Hotel. Fela normally played side by side with the Uhurus, and as the Bugulu dancers used to perform with them we also performed with Dele. I loved the way Fela held his trumpet, he turned it sideways and played Yoruba highlife like “Ashe Love” in a jazzy way.
Fela with Africa 70. Daniel “J. B.” Koranteng is standing second from right.
When was the next time you met Fela?
It was in Lagos. You see there was an Al Hadji who lived in Accra Newtown who heard in 1969 that Geraldo Pino and later the El Pollos were making it in Nigeria with the James Brown thing. The Al Hadji was managing a soul group called the Triffis led by Lindy Lee [Lord Lindon], and he wanted to take me as well. Later, in December 1969, when we were in the north of Nigeria, we heard that thousands of Nigerians were being repatriated from Ghana [during President Busia’s infamous Aliens’ Compliance Order]. So we changed our name to the Big Beats [that later recorded the famous Ghanaian Afrobeat song “Kyenkyemma,” which means “decrepit” or “old-fashioned”].
I then joined a Lagos soul group called the Immortals, playing jazz drums that sometimes played at the Kakadu Nightclub in Yaba, which Fela renamed the Afro-Spot when he came back from the United States in 1969.1 So Fela asked me to dance with Dele for the Nigeria 70 on a permanent basis and paid me five pounds a week. Six months later two black American music students came to the Afro-Spot to feature on conga drums with Fela’s band, then called Nigeria 70. It was marvelous. The following day Fela asked me that “Do you know anyone who can play congas because I want to infuse these two congas into my Afrobeat.” I told him that I played congas myself. Fela said I should go and look for another person, and I got Friday Jombo [or Jumbo], who played congas with Peter King’s Voices of Africa band. The first time we played double rhythm congas for Fela was Tuesday, April 9, 1971, and it was also the first ladies’ night [women got in free] at the Afro-Spot.
Three months later we toured England and recorded at the Abbey Road multitrack studio Fela Live with Ginger Baker, with Ginger Baker and Tony Allen doing drum solos. We played in clubs in London like the West End, Countdown, and Speakeasy and then went to Wales and Kessington where Ginger Baker comes from. We also met Paul and Linda McCartney and the other members of the Beatles who also recorded at Abbey Road.
Was there not some trouble between Fela and Paul McCartney?
This was the following year [actually in August 1973] when Paul McCartney and his new band Wings came to Nigeria and visited Fela at his new Afro-Spot club in Surulere—before he used the name Africa Shrine. Some of Fela’s musicians were taken by McCartney to help record the Wings album [Band on the Run] without Fela’s permission.2 They employed the horns-men, guitarists, and bass player. Fela is a jealous man and told [backstage]—I believe it was McCartney at the Afro-Spot: “Man you can’t do that to me, do you want to spoil my band, you should have taken permission from me.”3
I believe it was in 1972 that you toured Ghana with Fela?
Yes, we went there in February 1972 when Colonel Acheampong took over from the civilian Busia government. We were actually in Accra when the military coup took place. On that tour we were playing “Open and Close,” “Who Are You,” “Fight Finish,” “Chop and Quench,” and “Je-Je” and we performed at the Apollo Theatre, Tip Toe Gardens, and the university campus in Accra; and also in Takoradi, Cape Coast, and Kumasi. We also played at the officers’ mess at State House for Colonel Acheampong. He was very happy to see me, a Ghanaian, playing in Fela’s group. It was on that Ghanaian tour that Fela got the idea for his “Shakara” and “Lady” tunes. He went to lodge at the Presidential Hotel in Accra and asked the receptionist: “Woman, how do I book my lodging?” She said: “Please, I’m not a woman, I’m a lady.” She was bluffing. So Fela composed the two songs when he got back to Nigeria.
Were you the only Ghanaian musician in Fela’s band at that time?
No. There was Peter Kadana from the north of Ghana who played guitar and later changed his name to Rescole. Then there was Henry Kofi, who was half Ghanaian and half Nigerian and played the triple lead congas. And the drummer Tony Allen, who is half Nigerian and half Ghanaian Ewe. Also a bit later the Ghanaian Nicholas Addo replaced Friday Jombo on the rhythm conga.
When was it that Fela began to get into trouble with the authorities?
It was from the end of 1973 when Fela had changed the name of his club to the Africa Shrine (still in Surulere). There was a judge’s daughter who came to the afternoon jump when she was on school
