Hey Dolly fans, Dolly Partons America fans, Chad Iboomrod here, I know it's been a minute, but I wanted to drop into your feet to tell you about this new project, Share With You, a new project that I think you might love. It's sort of a continuation of the Dolly Partons America approach, but it is looking at someone very, very different, the Nigerian musician and activist, Felakuti. Podcast is called Felakuti Fear No Man. Felah, if you don't know him, he invented back in the 1960s and 70s, a style of music that became synonymous with rebellion. It was killer dance music, but it was also so dangerous to the dictatorship and power that they burned his house down. They threw his mother out of a window. He's one of those figures that like Dolly just transcends every usual idea we have of what a musician should do or be. I mean, okay, there's no one like Dolly, she is singular. And especially in this moment, a lot of us are thinking about her greatness, her impact. He's one of the few musicians I would put in her category. I didn't think I was gonna do another podcast after Dolly Partons America, but I could not do this one. We're about to release a series, but I wanted to play it for y'all first. The first episode is the story of one person who knew Fela, played with him and was healed by him. I hope you like it. This episode does contain descriptions of violence. Please know that going in. And thank you for checking it out. If you like it, you can find Fela Kutifirno Man on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. In a world that is on fire, what do we do with art? Like what can music do? Can it actually change things? Like really change the world? Let's find out. ["Fela Kutifirno Man"] In this series, we're gonna look at the life and the music of Fela Kutifirno. Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Anikulapo Kuti. I always get my tongue out of strips over there. Anikulapo Kuti. The father of Afro-B. The black president, the chief priest. I'm gonna argue that Fela is one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. From one of the most important countries that we in the West rarely think about but should, Nigeria, he created an entirely new form of music that not only mixes jazz and funk and all these things, but also layers in resistance, bakes it in. Fela answers those questions about music and art in ways that are beautiful and troubling and profound. And I'm not the only one who thinks this. Here's a quick list. Ayo Adebari, actor, writer, someone I really respect. She's in The Bear, great show. On some red carpet somewhere, she was asked. Oh! Discussion. A musician I have a cult-like fascination with. Her answer? Fela Kuti, who is a Nigerian legend. Bear is a very complicated man. Fela has to be the epicenter. And quest love, one of the great musical minds of our time. I mean, Fela is the one figure who's story resonates with modern American hip-hop culture. The passion, the pain. Jay-Z. The strength, the need to get the message out there. Beyonce. Famously quoted Fela on one of her albums. Look, it's like, listen to it. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's the hardest shit you've ever heard in your life. They invited me out to the African Shrine, which was his club, just outside Lagos. And then there is Paul McCartney, Sir Paul, The Beatles, tells the story of seeing Fela play. And it was very intense. But when this music broke, I ended up just weeping. Looked like one of the most amazing musical moments of my life. Yeah, so this is Fela Kuti, Fela and the club of Kuti. And then there is Burnaboy, the first African musician to sell out a US stadium. In the video, he shows off a tattoo of Fela's face on his left forearm, and also a Fela necklace around his neck. It's like my hero. It's like the best musician I ever knew. Just a pile on. Brian Eno, legendary record producer. When I heard Fela, he absolutely blew my mind. I thought, this is really the future of music. David Burn. This is not just feel-good music. There's something about this. They're doing stuff I'd never heard before. And I thought, oh, this is really liberating. Even President Obama had some thoughts. Music like Fela's is able to not just get folks moving, get them on their feet, but it also makes them feel alive. Our very best art and our very best music stirs the soul. So how? How is he doing that exactly? To create that reaction in all those people. Unfortunately, we can't talk to him because he died in 1997, and he didn't leave a lot of tape behind. But for the last three years, we've been talking to the people who knew him. He died in old school style, old school style. He fought with him, sang with him, took blows with him, and tried to change the world with him. The story they tell, I hope you'll agree, has everything to do with this moment, as we're all searching for what do we do now? Am I going to hold it? No, no, I'll hold it. Oh, thank God, that can be free. I want to start this series with sort of a prologue by playing you some tape from an interview that we did with a man named Dele, where he told us about his encounter with Fela. Hello, my name is Dele Shosimi. Bami Dele is the full name. Bami Dele means you set foot on the motherland. Where we come from. And Shosimi, your last name, does that have a meaning? It's a name given to those who always advocate peace. Shosimi, let there be peace. Listening back to that intro, I realize Dele's name basically contains his story. And his story, in a way, contains the story of Nigeria, with all the promise and tragedy built in. So, fire on. We met Dele in a small studio space in London, where he lives and plays in a bunch of bands. He has a trio, quartet, quintet, orchestra. He's been called the ambassador of Afrobee, that is, of the genre of music that Fela Kuti created. In fact, there were many times during our interview where Dele would sing a complete Fela song and do all the parts. The vocals, backing vocals. He would sing all the different saxes, the altos, the baritones, all the trumpet lines, the different guitar lines, the percussion, the shakers, all the things. We'd call him up because we'd heard that he played keyboard in Fela's band in the late 70s and early 80s. We did not expect the story to go where it went. You were born in the UK, you just said. Yes, born here. And then we went back home. That's how I met Fela. He told me his parents were Nigerian, but his dad had gone to London to study economics. He was born soon as they got to London. But then when he was four, 1967, his dad decided to move them all back. What were the circumstances of your parents coming in? In Nigeria, we had just gained independence. 1960. In 1960. Sovereignty to a new nation, the new Nigeria. There was celebration, jubilation in the streets. In every town, every corner. It was like, yeah, we kicked the British out. Everybody be ready to play your part. We can rule ourselves. And so Dele's dad decides to move the family back to Nigeria because he was a believer. Yeah, we're going to build our own nation. He was going to put his economics degree to work to help build the country's banking sector. When my dad got his qualifications, there was already a job waiting for him. So he didn't move away. So I went home with my dad until 1967. He was four at the time. And for the first time in his life, he was living not in a flat in a city, but out in the country, in the place where he was actually from. I hated it. No ice cream. There were goats. They were walking into houses. I saw Lizards and I was like, baby crocodiles. No way. What's going on? But I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. It was also in Nigeria where he met Fela. I was in high school every morning before the assembly. We used to jam on the piano. Just the populous songs anybody who knows this song would play the alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla alla I just said anytime he's playing I'm gonna be watching him. That kid it turned out was Fela's nephew. Kuey. Kuey. Fela was a massive star at this point. He was like Elvis. If Elvis were also getting into violent clashes with the government on a regular basis, more on that in a later episode, point is he was huge. And so his nephew. He would come to school and be showing off. This is Fela's latest track, it's called Yellow Fever. This Fela's latest track is called Opposite People. This is Fela's latest track. It's called Colonial Mentality. So one day he was playing. And there were some things. He can't play together with his right hand. So I just said, okay. Let me play that one. You're playing. So I just went. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Boom. Boom. Beep. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. play the other. And he says they both loved how the riffs would sort of snake in and out of each other, a Fela trademark. And how when they were playing, their fingers would almost overlap. The symmetry of those two together, they could feel the tapestry of the two parts as me, me, bonga, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu, so he was so happy. I said, yeah, keep it going on. And he changed. Long story short, Dele and this older kid, Koye, his piano buddy. A great friendship, camaraderie, evolved, you know. After meeting him, he'll leave school and he'll be going for piano lessons. And I'll go with him. Just to watch. Because my mom will not pay for piano lessons. This goes on for many years. One day, Koye introduces Dele to his cousin, Femi, Fela's son. They become tight and several years into their friendship, Femi says to Dele, hey, I'm going to go see my dad. You want to come? You want to come with me? Fela? Yes, please. And then we went and I introduced him. This is what my friend told me about. What I need to look at me like. How's your mom coping? How is your mom coping? How are you all coping? That meeting would change Dele's life in profound ways. But before we get there, it's important to say a few things. To fill in that gap that I skipped over a second ago. From age four to fourteen. From when Dele arrived in Nigeria to when he met Fela Kuti. In those ten years, things did not go as planned for either Dele or the country. Initially, his dad got them set up. Your dad was doing finances for the government at that point? No, no, he was working for a bank. Stayed away, worked with standard bank, from standard bank to backless bank, from backless bank to national bank. And his dad became a very important person. One of the top financial auditors in the country. They lived in a compound, they had guards. Dele worshipped his dad. Things were good. But the country was shifting. Toxic seeds were growing. Even before independence. Substantial reserves of oil have been located under the River Niger. You had all this oil discovered in the south of the country. In 10 years, exports may be worth five million pounds. In 10 years time, perhaps 50 million. So the British forced a deal on the new Nigerian government. They said, just because we're leaving doesn't mean you get to use our stuff. If you're going to pull all this new oil out of the ground, you're going to need our equipment. And if you're going to use our equipment, you have to sign a bunch of deals with British companies. In that way, colonialism really didn't end. It just changed clothes. The Nigerian government was not technically beholden to the British government anymore, but they were now beholden to British companies. And eventually German companies and Dutch companies and American companies, those companies would continue to extract resources. And a very small group of Nigerian political elite would make a lot of money in exchange. In the middle of this shift, Dele's dad is working at a bank doing financial auditing, trying to keep the books straight. That was his job. He was one of the fraud auditors. And in 1974 or five, he discovers there's a whole lot of money missing from the bank. He had made his findings and he was about to release a big scandal and they tried to shut him up. Who's trying to shut him up and why? A syndicate of people who had ruined the bank, defrauded the bank. Dele says his dad was about to file a report, about to name names. He's still not sure who exactly was going to be named, but he suspects they were pretty high up. At the time, he wasn't aware of any of this. He was 12. And he remembers one day some very well-dressed men came to the door. They came to the house. When your dad comes by telling him this is his new car, they gave us keys. These men brought a car. And we were like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and then the next thing they come, another visit. This time they hand his dad a briefcase. And they said, look, whatever's in it is yours. And then he's throwing the keys back at us and they get out of my house, take your briefcase, take everything, and get out of my house. We're children. We don't know what's going on. Yeah. Luckily, he told us, I've just been told to shut up about my work. I spent all these sleepless nights and I've been told I should not report what I found. Can you imagine? So the car was a bribe. He explained that to you? Yeah, of course. All the, he called all of us. He was like, you see, in life, sometimes you get to the crossroads, you go to Mickey's house without a good name and nothing. At this point in Nigeria, 1975, the initial civilian government was long gone. There had been several coups. The military government that was in power was actively disappearing people, killing journalists with mail bombs, hanging environmental protesters who protested against the oil companies. This would all come about years later in public hearings. At the time, Dele's dad had fortified the walls of their house and put bars on the windows. It would all come to a head on the 9th of September 11th, 1975. This is about four years before he would meet Fela. My dad, he was supposed to submit the report the next day. We went to bed. They came that night, about 40 of them. They started assaulting the building around midnight. This gang of 40, they first overwhelmed the security guards. And then they started pounding on the doors and windows. With sledgehammers, that's the only way they could get him. Neighbors called for the police. They said they ran out of fuel. One of the police stations that they called and blah blah blah blah, we couldn't get anybody to rescue. So you were on your own? Yeah. My dad told us to separate into different rooms. He says he ran to the back of his house, to his room, and hid in a closet. He could hear the muffled sounds of screaming and fighting, getting closer and closer. The door of the room where I was in, I was thinking to myself, oh my God, this door is now going to cave in. Oh my God. The door was just about to cave in. I was like, I'm not going to go down without I was thinking to myself, what do I do? Do I punch you? Do I kick you? Do I just grab onto one and bite you? I was calculating the speed of thought. Suddenly we just say blah and we had people running, running. We just had to, I was like, the door stopped moving. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Our security guard had run into town. He had gone into like city center to gather his friends. There were about 100 of them marching from the village. So they got to our house just as our old door was cave in. They went, they went, thank God, thank God. Then I heard the guard shouting our names to make sure we were all right, calling our names. I said, I'm in my room, I'm in my room. And then I opened the door. I just saw a body on the floor in red. My dad had pajamas, you know, pajamas matching top and bottom. It was soaked in blood. Oh my God. Multiple stab wounds. There was a massive pickaxe entry into his head. Jesus. Deadly says his father was unrecognizable. Completely fucked up. My mom was distraught. Then the burial. Because we couldn't bury him immediately. We had to wait. It took a week. And because it was multiple perforations, all of his body was stanched. Oh Lord. I was like, why do we have to lie him instead? And my mom said, it's good. Let people see what they did to my darling, you know. Oh my God. But over the years, I can still talk about it, but evil. Damn. So yeah. God damn. How do you just ask someone's life to be snuffed out, you know. We had to waste about 10 cologne per few, spray in the room. Because my mom is standing open coughing. There was one big massive stitch to keep the skull together. Because it pickaxed him on the head. I was like, why? Imagine you are 12 and you see that. How do you process that? I have a 13 year old kid. I don't even know how you answer that question. But making matters worse for Dele, he was told, don't process it. That thing that just happened. Just pretend it didn't happen. Family, friends, they were telling my mom, don't give interviews. Go hide. Be really scared. They may still come for you. Some people say, please don't stop coming to our houses. Please. We don't know if you've been traced. He was told, don't talk about it. Keep your head down. But he'd seen what he'd seen. He told us night after night, he would have this dream where he was trying to warn his dad that something bad was about to happen. But his dad wouldn't listen. And then he would wake up feeling guilty. So that's where Dele was at. When his new friend Femi introduced him to his dad, Fela Kuti. Fela? Yes, please. And then we went and I introduced him to this buddy. This is that my friend, Dele. I was telling you about, you remember the son of that banker, everybody in Lagos knew, chief auditor, National Bank, executor. And he looked at me like, tell me, what happened to your dad? Tell me the story. The same thing as I explained it to him, he shook his head. He said, how's your mom coping? How are you all coping? No one had ever asked him that question before. Have you had psychological counseling or psychotherapy? I said no. I didn't know what that was. He said he'd never heard those words before. But my mom walked in a library. And it was just behind my high school. So I finished from school, walked around the back of the school into the library. In those days we didn't have Google. She saw us. Psychological. Okay, psychological. It's so interesting that he introduced you to the idea that you need to take your psyche seriously. Then he said, look, I'm going to fight for your family because right now both your mom and you children should be in therapy. And right now your mom should not be walking. She should be on permanent holiday. The full salary of your dad. I'm going to fight for that for you. How did that hit you? I was shocked. When he said that, I was like, he didn't know my dad. He's not even family. But he was the only, not the first, he was the only person who was bitter. As in pissed, not scared. That statement, whew, my life just changed. I said, that's it. It's my new hero. I will follow this man to hell and back. Now I know what my calling is. But here's the thing. Daily did not find his therapy where the book told him to look. Instead, he started methodically learning all of Fela's music. All his back catalog started teaching myself. As a teenager, I was 14, going up 15. He says he would hit up anybody who had a Fela record, borrow it, and then he would study the piano part, the rhythm piano. 50, 60 songs. By the time he was 17, he started hanging around the shrine, Fela's club, and watching Fela rehearse. One day I walked up to him and I was like, Fela, can I play this song? I've learned it. He was like, you sure? Yeah, and I want to take it solo. You sure? Go ahead. I got on stage. He counts me in. Eh. Eh. You have to know, bbbb. That's when I call me. Ow! Ow! He says that first run through Fela would occasionally glance at him and smile. Smile. It was the first song I climbed on stage. It's a big deal for me, autority still. Okay, so pretty soon he had joined Fela's band, Egypt 80, as a rhythm pianist, which meant, you know, there are 20, 25 people on stage. You have the horn section, the bass, the drums, percussionists, guitarists, multiple guitarists, and way over on the left side of the stage was him sitting at a Rhodes piano. There are videos on YouTube where you can see these fleeting glimpses of him. He looks like a baby, scrawny Adam's apple. And there would be nights, he says, where they would play a song like Authority Stealing. And it would go on for well over an hour, just that song, which meant after the opening, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, after that, Deli would settle into one riff that he would just have to keep playing. It started up, and then I go, uh. This one. He played it for us backstage in London before a gig with his quintet. He had this little electric piano that he demonstrated on. Can you imagine me playing for 40 minutes? That's stopping me. Fela took repetition to an extreme. We talked to one person who told us, that he once made his band record one song for 24 hours straight, an entire rotation of the earth. And he had a policy that every musician had to play their loops exactly the same each time. And if they didn't, you just get fined. You get fined. We get fined? Oh! Wait, how much? No, if you find him more than twice in a night, all your weight is gone. Can you imagine? So we asked him, playing that one thing, and he said, Can you imagine? So we asked him, playing that one thing, over and over again for hours, with all that pressure hanging over you. Doesn't that make you nuts? No, no, no, no, no way. No. He said, actually it was the exact opposite. That repetitive thing just keeps me home. Take another breath. Uh, mmm, shh, uh, mmm, shh, uh, mmm, uh, keep it going. Uh, no matter what. Uh, mmm, uh, just like the heart, pumping up, pumping up every minute, every second. Mmm, cuckoo, cuckoo, uh, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Walk me through what happens in your mind over the course of those repetitions. It's like it's gonna be okay. It's okay. It's okay. Hang in there. Hang in there. It's okay. There's more to coming in over. It's okay. It's okay. He says every night when he would play that one little loop, he would feel his body calm. His breath would slow down. He would slide his attention into his own lungs, and then pretend he was pushing against the walls of his lungs, pushing them out. And then he would slow his heart rate until his heart matched the kick. And after about 20 minutes of that, he would then drift back to the surface. I told him the secret one. He said, look, after many solos and all that, he said, why don't you take yourself? Look how many people dancing on the floor, zeroing onto one of them, check their moves, find something to engage with in the nature of that astinado. It could be a little boy. If I just zero in on it, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like. And then he's looking at me like. In the interview, he sort of mimed what would happen. He would wink at the boy. The boy would wink back. You're sort of like locking eyes. And then doing movements together. He would move his head to the left. The boy would do it. Then to the right. Left. Left, right. Something I would like to be friends with. Pretty soon, they were basically dance partners. At a distance. Okay. And I'd be like. Maybe just to save it and I get reaction. This is the one part where I wish we had video to save it. We can play what you're doing right now. And I did to the group. At this stage of the interview, Dele was basically having a full-on dance party in his seat. Just imagining him and that boy duetting back and forth. I just used to trip on a hypnotic cleansing. So that was my therapy. I said, I went and checked the psychological therapy and all that. And I realized that it could either be administered or it is something you actually have to find a way. What makes you, what takes you to a place where you're okay? I gotta say, watching you sing the songs, I feel it's such an interesting experience watching you kind of... I mean, I... ...feel like you're channeling something. I did energy, I go... I just love doing this stuff, man. It's my healing. Barang Khattah. Ba, ba, ba. Zee Lan Chan. Ba, ba, ba. Coming out of that interview, the word that I kept thinking about was not healing, actually. It was the word David Byrne used at the beginning. Oh, this is really liberating. Liberation. Ba, ba, ba. How trauma holds you in place. It's like a cage. But Fela gave Dele the opportunity to step out of that cage and be free. At least for as long as he was playing that riff. The reason I started with Dele is he's just one guy, but imagine a million Dele's. Having more or less the same experience. Like Adams, one tiny explosion bumps into the next and the next and the next until you have a cascade of energy. That creates something much bigger. In this series, we'll show you how Fela did that. Not just for Dele, but for the entire country of Nigeria and the world. That's amazing. It's amazing. Fela was a genius. Someone's got to speak the truth. And he was a musical genius. He didn't just speak the truth, he signed the truth. Some say he's the greatest musician in Africa. Others say he's a prophet. Some of that music was prophetic. He became a tyrant. People who are still hero-worshipping him, I feel sorry for them. He's a very complicated man. And we'll get into all that. We'll tell you about his life. I can't tell you how many times the police, army, parked in front of our house. There's a prism of his family, kids. Surrounded and riddled the house with bullets. Then they go away. I said, why would you do that? We'll hear from the people who radicalized him. You can use your music to uplift people. I saw the lights and the people radicalized by him. Will the pose a king ignite a youth movement? Too actually? 50 years apart? The music was like inside of me, it was all around. It was just like, you know, being hypnotized. Grump into a 24-hour party. We'll travel to Lagos, Paris, London, dive into hidden archives to find out what does rebellion look like, sound like. Sound like when the weapon is not guns. Fela said music is the weapon. Music is the weapon. Music is the weapon. But music, weapon of the future. WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners. Sponsors of our programming gain our listeners' attention and their respect. Learn about how your organization can support WNYC and WNYC studios at sponsorship.wnyc.org.
