of Okukuseku gin. He said: “Ha-ha-ha promoter, rain beat you, me I’ve got my money.” The next day I still had a balance to collect for Fela, so I sold one of my taxis to pay him. Fela always respects me for that.4
El Sombreros, the Koola Lobitos, and the Latin Touch
El Sombreros, a youthful pop band that played mainly rock music and soul, were put together and promoted by Faisal Helwani to support a Ghanaian tour of Fela’s Koola Lobitos in late summer of 1968. This is what one of its members, Johnny Opoku-Akyeampong (Jon Goldy),5 told me about the group:
The line-up of El Sombreros was Bray on drums, Kojo Simpson on bass, Turkson on rhythm guitar, Alfred Bannerman on lead guitar,6 me on vocals, and a female singer called Annshirley Amihere who was a shit-hot soul singer. Our signature tune was “Take Five” an old jazz tune. We also played other jazz-influenced tunes like Jimmy Smith’s version of “Got My Mojo Working.” Faisal and his F Promotions organized the tour, which consisted of three gigs only. The first one was at the Lido nightclub, then Kumasi City Hotel and The Star Hotel, respectively. There was an MC in tow who traveled with us known as Big J and even a journalist known as Jackie. The Koola Lobitos stayed at the Grand Hotel during the tour.
This is what Johnny told me of Fela’s character at the time:
I think Fela had a sense of his own destiny even back then, and no one could mess with him. I found him and his musicians to be quite high-spirited, at times irreverent and a lot of slapstick humor. But on stage they were a tightly disciplined band. Fela was already sporting his tight-fitting James Brown–like costumes back then. The music was basically the Nigerian style highlife with a jazzy feel to it. Even back then you could tell he was a superb arranger. His approach then was a typical Western-style format similar to the Sammy Obot–Uhuru [big band] style, but less swing big-band style and certainly not like the guitar-band style typical of other Nigerian artists. Also at that juncture the African shamanic feel was not yet in evidence in the mix. Fela was a shit-hot trumpeter who always strained to push the limits of the music within the conventional highlife structure. As for the political stance I saw nothing like that during ’68 during the tour.7
This is what Alfred “Kari” Bannerman told me:
I remember Fela would sometimes start the band off on a tune, go to the bar and down a full glass of transparent liquid, and then to my surprise go back on stage to play blistering solos on his trumpet! Many years on Dele Sosimi pointed out to me what I thought was gin was actually a glass of water, as Fela didn’t drink8—but smoked all right. At the time having left the GBC [Ghana Broadcasting Corporation Band] where long chord progressions were the order of the day, I was taken in by the two-chord modal nature of Fela’s compositions. But things were tough as this was before the onslaught of Afrobeat and they [i.e., the shows] were sparsely attended. The guitar the Koola Lobitos used had a nail sticking out, holding neck to body!9
The reason Helwani chose the name El Sombreros for the pop group was that at the time Latin- and Spanish-sounding names were a vogue with some pop bands in Ghana and in fact the country’s leading soul band was called El Pollos. Likewise the Sierra Leonian leader of the soulish Heartbeats band, Gerald Pine, called himself Geraldo Pino. Furthermore, Fela’s band was called the Koola Lobitos. So Faisal Helwani insisted that the name of the Fela’s youthful support band (originally called the Beavers) should likewise have a Spanish-sounding name and that the El Sombreros should wear Latin-style costumes. Here are Bannerman’s views on this:
I really didn’t like the shiny, frilly multicolored costume, plus [sombrerotype] hat. We were playing “Jumping Jack Flash,” the Rolling Stones, etc. But it wasn’t something that jelled with my soul, and who would like to be part of a band named like they were Mexicans? On the other hand, Fela I found intriguing and very smart as he had his signature designed shirts, which were almost collarless.
Despite the fact that the Koola Lobitos did not sport Latin costumes they were in fact influenced by Latin music to some degree—as in the late 1960s Fela was not only drawing on jazz, soul, and R & B, but also on Latin salsa music: as in the songs “Oritshe/Orise” and “We Dele.”10 “We Dele” is in a minor-key bluesy-jazz style, and “Orise” is more highlifish, but both use Latin-style horns to accompany and/or respond to the vocals.
This Latin touch in Fela’s music may have come from several sources. Fela was an avid listener of modern jazz, and the Cuban mambo had made a big impact on jazz from the late forties, such as with the “Cubop” associated with Dizzy Gillespie, the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, and Stan Kenton’s Afro-Cubists band. Then came the “pachanga” dance craze of the 1960s that swept across the globe, including Africa,11 followed in the late sixties by the salsa (hot sauce) music that was created in New York with its large Latino population. Salsa went on to influence American soul and R & B when Cuban congas were added to rock and funk bands, and there was a new Latin “bugalu” dance craze among the youth that went international.
The Latin tinge is reflected in a number of the Afrobeat songs Fela composed after 1970. One is “Jeun Ko’ku,” which opens with a Latin horn fanfare and utilizes a Caribbean clave rhythm. Other Latin and Latin-jazz-influenced songs are the mid-1970s “Water No Get Enemy,” “I No Get Eye For Back,” “Who No Know Go Know,” and “Na Poi.”
Despite the Spanish tinge in Fela’s music, his main musical direction in 1968 was highlife-jazz and soul.
This is what Johnny Opoku-Ayeampong has to say on the matter:
In 1968 he seemed to be looking for a new sound and had split the repertoire into the jazz highlife which we already knew, and something more soulish. So it was of two types, something called Afro-highlife and the other genre was dubbed Afro-soul. For me the Afro-highlife was only slightly different from the Afro-soul, which I preferred because it was less jazzy, less highlifish, and perhaps a bit more danceable—though not quite as funky as the American soul which by then had literally taking over most of our mixed repertoire at the time. It could have been deliberate as throughout all his music, one could detect that he wanted to be different, but it was quite subtle in those days. Also I think the Afro-soul was mostly sung in English or pidgin and the Afro-highlife mostly in Yoruba. Musically I did not immediately warm up to him because for most of us teenage musicians horns and highlife were not exciting and challenging enough. Also we had no horn players in our midst and other horn players around were older, too formal in their approach and would only play in B♭, C#, etc.—which was a pain for the average guitarist. We were then doing all the horn parts on the guitars until we progressed to the organ, mainly due to the advent of the Heartbeats influence [resident in Ghana 1964–68]. However at the gig at the Lido Fela played alone on the piano—a jazzy bluesy piece which suddenly gained my utmost respect and admiration.
Opoku-Akyeampong did not see Fela play again until early 1971 when Fela came to Ghana again and did one of his shows at the Labadi Pleasure Beach in Accra. By this time the Fela’s band was called the Africa 70, the soul and funk influence was more pronounced, and Afrobeat had crystallized. According to Opoku-Akyeampong Fela had by then become so popular that there were huge crowds at the event, and here he describes the music.
One thing which struck me after absorbing the early music was the undeniable influence of James Brown, like his danceable 1967 “Cold Sweat” single and albums which I loved that he released in 1968–69. That’s where Fela got his rhythm section, [where] the bass, drums, and guitars came from. Perhaps Fela “Africanized” it the more with the percussion, but the rest was all his own creation. Of course none of this detracts from this great man’s musical genius. If anything it is a true testament to his creativity, and I wish he had acknowledged it as such…. Again Fela accidentally coinvented jazz-funk. No one but James Brown had attempted anything quite like that before ’71. And I don’t recall J. B. doing anymore of those instrumentals.
