French had wrecked the country in a fit of pique when it had dared to say non to General de Gaulle’s referendum on retaining close ties with France.10
Like Ghana, Nigeria supplied raw materials and soldiers for the British war effort; in fact over, half of the 100,000 Anglophone West African soldiers who fought in Burma were Nigerian—where they became known as “boma boys.”11 Also like Ghana, Nigeria had a tradition of anticolonial activists, for instance, the previously mentioned Nnamdi “Zik” Azikiwe who, like Nkrumah, attended university in the United States. Following his studies (in 1934), Azikiwe became the editor for the African Morning Post of Accra, Ghana. But when he was imprisoned for publishing what the British thought to be a seditious article, he returned to Nigeria in 1937 where he founded the West African Pilot newspaper that fostered Nigerian nationalism.
Also like Ghana, Nigeria had been radicalized by the war, and this growing militancy was evidenced in 1945 by two developments. That year Zik and Herbert Macaulay founded the independence party called the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) that Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti supported. Second, there were a number of big strikes that year by Nigerian workers. There was a general strike led by the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (led by Michael Imoudu) that involved tens of thousands of railway, transport, dock, and civil service workers. Nigerian popular artists of the times even became involved in this dispute, such as the leader of the Nigerian popular theater movement, Hubert Ogunde, who produced the sensational play, Strike and Hunger. Ogunde would eventually be arrested on charges of sedition for his play Bread and Bullets about the 1950 Enugu coal strike.12
By the 1950s there were three main political parties operating in Nigeria that were demanding independence: Azikiwe’s (NCNC) had control of the Eastern Region government; the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) centered on the Northern Region; and the Action Group (AG) was based in the Yoruba Western Region. Internal self-rule was granted in the late 1950s, and in October 1960 the country obtained full independence as the Federation of Nigeria. The first government was an alliance of the eastern-based NCNC and the northern NPC, with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Nigeria’s first prime minister and Azikiwe as the governor-general. When Nigeria declared itself a Republic in 1963, Azikiwe would become the country’s first president, serving until 1966 when the first of many military coups took place in Nigeria.
During these years, when Fela and the Koola Lobitos were playing in Lagos, the city was the highlife hub for both eastern and western Nigerian highlife musicians. After the 1967–70 Nigerian Civil War, many Igbo and other eastern Nigerian highlife musicians and bands relocated to the east.
Fela was also influenced by the recorded music (and occasional trips to Nigeria) by Ghanaian highlife dance bands such as the Tempos, who in the early sixties became closely associated with the great Pan-African thinker Kwame Nkrumah. Furthermore, from the late 1960s onward, Fela made numerous trips to Ghana where he was particularly impressed by the music of the Uhuru big band, sometimes stayed at their premises in Accra—and at one point in his early career even thought of relocating to Ghana.
Ghana was the first West African country to become independent, it was home to Kwame Nkrumah, and it was the birthplace of highlife—it’s easy to see how Fela became such a Ghanaphile. When Fela later became politically conscious he became an Nkrumahist. Indeed, he constructed a Pan-African shrine in the early 1970s at his Africa Shrine Club that was centered on images of Nkrumah.
My Encounters with Fela
It was around 1970 or ’71 that I first heard Fela’s songs “Mister Who Are You?” and “Jeun K’oku” (also called “Chop and Quench”) from singles friends brought back from Nigeria to Ghana. However, it was only in 1972 that I first saw him play when I was a student at the University of Ghana at Legon and he and his Africa 70 band played at the university cafeteria, with Fela on keyboards and tenor saxophone.
Then in November 1974 I played for a week in Lagos with the Ghanaian Bunzus Band at Fela’s Africa Shrine Club and Victor Olaiya’s Papingo Nightclub. During this time, the police raided the old Kalakuta Republic. After his acquittal Fela assisted us in the recordings that we and our sister band Basa-Basa and our manager Faisal Helwani were making at the at the EMI studio in Lagos.
In December 1975 I again met Fela in Lagos when I was on my way to Benin City to work with and write about the highlife musician Victor Uwaifo. I interviewed Fela on this occasion. This was probably around the time that Fela began discussing with the Ghanaian poet and screenwriter Alex Oduro the possibility of making a film of Fela’s life.
Early in 1976 I met Fela several times in Ghana when he came to Accra to play at Helwani’s Napoleon Club jazz jam-session nights. On these trips Fela did his “yabbis” for the university students, telling them how the Western world had deliberately hidden the long history of Africa. He called these sessions “Who No Know Go Know” after his 1975 album of that name.
In June 1976 Fela returned to Ghana to plan “The Black President” film, in which I played a British colonial education inspector. It was in December 1976 that Fela arrived in Ghana to begin the actual shooting of the film, and it was on this occasion that I introduced him to the famous Ghanaian guitar-band highlife musician E. K. Nyame, whose songs had been popular in Nigeria when Fela was young.
Basa-Basa guys and bus in between Accra and Lagos. The Basa-Basa band went with the Bunzus band to Nigeria to play and record.
Poster for a Fela show at the Napoleon Club jazz night, 1976.
I spent the month of January 1977 in Nigeria acting in “The Black President,” and during this trip I met Fela’s wife, Remi, his mother, Funmilayo, his sister, Dolu, his brother Beko, and his three children: Yeni, Femi, and Sola. Later that year and also in 1978, I met Fela several times when he was going back and forth between Accra and Lagos doing the overdubs of the destroyed sound track of “The Black President” film at the Ghana Film Studio in Accra.
In 1981 I met Fela and his Egypt 80 band in Holland at the Amsterdam Woods summer festival and later took a group of Dutch journalists to meet him at his hotel. He had just released his album International Thief Thief (ITT).
A Note on Sources
In addition to my own reminiscences, diaries, journalistic works, and interviews, this book also draws on Ghanaian and Nigerian newspapers. I conducted an interview with Fela in 1975. The two interviews with Faisal Helwani were shortly after Fela’s death. I also enjoyed long conversations with two eminent Ghanaian musicians, Stan Plange and Joe Mensah, both of whom knew Fela intimately in his early days. I spoke to George Gardner, Fela’s Ghanaian lawyer during the late 1970s. Fela employed several Ghanaian musicians in his band, and I have included an important interview with his 1970s conga player, “J. B.” Koranteng, as well as Fela’s 1980s’ percussionists Frank Siisi-Yoyo and Obiba Sly Collins. Nigerians I talked to include Fela’s lifelong friend J. K. Braimah; the musicologist Meki Nzewi; the Afro-fusion artist Tee Mac Omatshola; Smart Binete, who organized Fela’s last Ghanaian tour; and the percussionist Bayo Martins, who at one point in the early 1960s played with Fela. I interviewed the Ghanaian musicians Mac Tontoh of the Uhuru highlife dance band (later the Osibisa Afro-rock band), and Nana Danso, whose Pan-African Orchestra includes instrumental versions of some of Fela’s songs—as well communicating with Johnny Opoku Akyeampong (Jon C. G. N. Goldy) and Alfred “Kari” Bannerman, who worked alongside Fela in the late 1960s. I also interviewed the late Professor Willie Anku of the University of Ghana, who has transcribed several of Fela’s songs.
For additional context I have included some comments
