outubro 16, 2003
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: A revolução não foi televisionada (nem será)
"77 albums, 27 wives, over two hundred court appearances. Harassed, beaten, tortured, jailed. Twice-born father of Afro-beat. Spiritualist. Pan-Africanist. Commune king. Composer, saxophonist, keyboardist, vocalist, dancer. Would-be candidate for the Nigerian presidency. There will never be another like him."
--Jay Babcock, Mean Magazine (Dec 1999-Jan 2000)
Não chegámos a tempo de ver a exposição Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti
de um dos maiores génios musicais africanos, que esteve aberta ao público do New Museum de Nova Iorque até 28 de Setembro. Mesmo assim, continua a valer a pena passar por lá.
Para quem tiver tempo de ler, deixo-vos uma série de textos, entrevistas, críticas, etc. publicada na imprensa americana e inglesa ao longo de mais de vinte anos:
July 17, 2003
Celebrating the Life and Impact of the Legend Fela
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE
Femi Osunla stood quietly before a wall of snapshots at the New
Museum in SoHo one evening last week, seemingly unaware of the
blaring music and swelling crowd that had gathered around him. Lost
in his remembrances, he was staring at pictures of the Nigerian
singer and political activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who died in 1997.
Some were candid; others were posed. All were taken by Mr. Osunla, a
member of Fela's retinue for nearly two decades.
"I have over 15,000 photos of Fela in my archives," said Mr. Osunla,
whose dedication to documenting Fela's every move earned him the
nickname Femi Foto. He then pointed to his missing bottom teeth, the
small bump on his forehead, the thin scars that mar his face.
Standing on the front lines with Fela in a lifelong battle with
oppressive Nigerian regimes was "not an easy task," Mr. Osunla
said, "but I believed in what he was doing."
"I took the pain, the police brutality, the soldier brutality,
because I wanted the future generation to see that Fela was a great
man," he said.
Mr. Osunla and hundreds of others were on hand at the New Museum for
the opening of "Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti." The crowd (1,500, by the museum's count) was a mix
of intellectuals and models, downtown hipsters and uptown
tastemakers. Throughout the evening a D.J. spun Fela's sinuous, horn-
driven grooves.
The draw was a multimedia group exhibition exploring the cultural
impact of this musician, a legend in West Africa. The exhibition,
which runs through Sept. 28, features 40 works of painting,
sculpture, photography, video, film and music from 34 artists from
Africa and the African diaspora; all were inspired by Fela
(pronounced FAY-lah).
"The most important cultural figure in Africa in the past 100 years
is virtually unknown in America outside of the African-American
community," said Lisa Phillips, the director of the New Museum. "It
is very important we introduce this figure to the American audience."
Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti in 1938 in
Abeokuta, a small town north of Lagos, the former capital. He was no
simple man. Political dissident, polygamist, musical innovator — he
pioneered Afrobeat, a blend of traditional Yoruba music, jazz and
American funk — Fela lived a wonderfully controversial, complex (and
virile) life up until his death from AIDS at 58. Reveling in his
role as rock star, he smoked copious amounts of marijuana, married
27 women in one ceremony and often performed in nothing more than
bikini briefs and a wicked smile. He christened his home the
Kalakuta Republic and declared it immune from Nigerian law. But in
addition to being colorful, he was also prolific, producing over 70
albums and playing a variety of instruments on them as well.
Meanwhile he regularly lambasted Nigeria's leaders and railed
against the injustice he witnessed in his homeland and throughout
Africa. As a statement condemning apartheid, the cover of his 1989
album, "Beasts of No Nation," featured caricatures of South Africa's
former president P. W. Botha, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as
horned vampires with blood dripping from their fangs. His lyrics,
sung in pidgin English and Yoruba, were equally scathing, fearlessly
identifying the names of those he believed to be corrupt. To
Nigerians he was a truth teller and, to some, even a messiah; the
day he was buried, Lagos was brought to a standstill as more than a
million turned out for his funeral procession.
With songs lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, his music
could not be called radio friendly, which may help explain why Fela
never enjoyed the mainstream popularity accorded Bob Marley, a
contemporary with a similar political sensibility. And while songs
like "Zombie," an attack on witless soldiers who blindly follow
orders, and "V.I.P.: Vagabonds in Power" endeared Fela to Nigeria's
downtrodden masses, he suffered at the hands of the government,
which banned his music and tried to silence him, going so far as to
burn down his compound in 1977, an experience he recounted in the
poignant song "Unknown Soldier."
"There are a lot of things about Fela's life and work that are
fascinating on a purely aesthetic level," said Michael Veal, a
professor of ethnomusicology at Yale University and author of "Fela:
The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon." "His music is great.
He was a very charismatic performer. Visually he was very striking.
But at the same time, while all this interesting aesthetic stuff is
happening, you've got someone who has really put their life on the
line to speak as a voice for the dispossessed and to dramatize the
struggle of his society on the world stage."
A painting by Barkley L. Hendricks, an art professor at Connecticut
College, speaks to the many sides of Fela. Mr. Hendricks features
the singer holding his crotch and a marijuana cigarette as a golden
halo hovers above his head, all set against a vibrant orange
background.
"I didn't want to just fall into deification," Mr. Hendricks
said. "It's a piece that's quite complex, and what you see at first
glance is not necessarily all that is there — and that was Fela."
Roberto Visani, who constructs model guns out of discarded material
(everything from crack vials to old crutches) culled from American
inner cities, said he drew inspiration for one of his firearms from
Fela's saxophones. "The first time I listened to his music, it was
like a magnet: it pulled me in," Mr. Visani said. He quickly
backpedaled. "No, his music is like an onion," he said. "There are
so many layers."
The work of the Nigerian artist Ghariokwu Lemi, who was largely
responsible for Fela's politically explicit album covers, is also
part of the exhibition, which oscillates between critical and
celebratory. Sokari Douglas Camp's arresting mechanical statue of a
woman stands in the middle of the main room, the word AIDS in stark
white emblazoned across her forehead. "Yo Mama," a painting by the
Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu showing a woman stabbing a serpent
with her spiked heel, explores Fela's complicated relationships with
the opposite sex.
The show is much more than its curator, Trevor Schoonmaker, 32,
imagined four years ago when he began work on the Fela
project. "Black President" was originally meant to be a modest
gallery exhibit, Mr. Schoonmaker said. But as interest among artists
grew, so did his ambitions. He soon quit his job as an assistant
director at the Brent Sikkema gallery in Chelsea to focus on the
project. "The more and more I talked to people, the more I realized
it had to be a big to-do," Mr. Schoonmaker said.
Finding a home for the exhibition proved to be difficult. Mr.
Schoonmaker courted museums around the United States and London only
to be "shot down by virtually all of them," he said with a self-
deprecating chuckle. But for the New Museum's director, Ms.
Phillips, a show about Fela was an easy call. "You have to take
risks to be innovative," Ms. Phillips said.
And yet, some in the Nigerian community have questioned whether Mr.
Schoonmaker, who is white, is the appropriate person to introduce
Fela to Americans. "A subject like Fela is very personal to
Africans," said the Nigerian music producer Ogugua Iwelu, who worked
with Fela. He argued that the show would have benefited from the
insights of someone more familiar with Nigerian culture.
"If Spike Lee were to have done `Schindler's List,' he might not
have gotten the same cooperation as Steven Spielberg, because that
story is personal to the Jewish community," Mr. Iwelu said.
Still, Mr. Iwelu was not entirely dismissive of Mr. Schoonmaker's
efforts. "I respect his resilience," Mr. Iwelu said. "He has
definitely helped us open a door, and for that we are grateful."
******************************************************
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/07/arts/music/19861107KUTI.html
11/07/1986
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nigeria's Musical Activist
By JON PARELES
THE Nigerian band leader Fela Anikulapo Kuti has been writing and
singing angry political songs since the early 1970's. He calls his
music Afro-Beat; it uses saxophone and brass-section vamps that
suggest a rawer version of James Brown as well as African
percussion, call-and-response singing and Mr. Kuti's own saxophone
solos and gruff voice; the lyrics are in pidgin English and African.
Tomorrow, along with the 26 musicians and 6 dancers of his band,
Egypt 80, Mr. Kuti will perform at the Felt Forum - a concert that
is two years and two months overdue.
On Sept. 4, 1984, Mr. Kuti and his band were boarding a plane to New
York from Lagos; he was stopped at the airport, arrested and
imprisoned for 20 months. Amnesty International, investigating the
charges of currency-smuggling against Mr. Kuti, declared him
a ''prisoner of conscience.'' ''They know my political views will
destroy the image of this country much more than anybody else,'' Mr.
Kuti said at the time, ''because I know what I am talking about.''
After a change of ruler and an international effort to free Mr.
Kuti, he was released in April of this year. The judge who had
pronounced the original five-year sentence apologized to the singer.
And after regrouping his band, Mr. Kuti proceeded with a European
and American tour. ''I didn't expect that they were still so low in
their minds,'' Mr Kuti said this week about the arrest. ''It just
shows how low the mentality of my country's leaders was. I thought
they had developed a little bit of sense.'' Unendearing, to Some
It was not Mr. Kuti's first encounter with government authority. His
songs denouncing corruption, multinational corporations, police
brutality and ''V.I.P.-ism'' had brought him a large audience, but
they did not endear him to Nigeria's former leaders; nor did such
actions as declaring his house an independent republic (it was
attacked and destroyed by Nigerian soldiers) or starting a political
party and running for president of Nigeria in 1979 (the party was
eventually banned).
At the same time, Mr. Kuti was creating and refining Afro-Beat, the
result of an education on three continents. Born in 1938 in
Abeokuta, Nigeria, he grew up in that country, where he led a school
choir and played piano and percussion. In 1959, he went to study
classical music in London, where he also played trumpet and
keyboards in jazz and funk bands. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and
started his first band, Koola Lobitos, influenced by jazz and James
Brown.
The group came to the United States in the late 1960's, and ended up
in Los Angeles. There, Mr. Kuti was deeply impressed by the Black
Panthers and ''The Autobiography of Malcolm X.'' ''The whole concept
of my life changed in a political direction,'' he said. ''The
beginning was quite heavy because the change was a shock to friends
at home.''
When he returned to Nigeria, he began recording politicized dance
music, still steeped in James Brown but increasingly laced with
African elements. He called the band Afrika 70; in 1981, he changed
the name to Egypt 80 as a statement of pan-African unity. ''I'm
playing deep African music,'' he said. ''I've studied my culture
deeply and I'm very aware of my tradition. The rhythm, the sounds,
the tonality, the chord sequences, the individual effect of each
instrument and each section of the band - I'm talking about a whole
continent in my music.'' 'More Spiritually Aware'
Mr. Kuti said he had not written music while in jail. ''I wanted to
conquer the bottom,'' he said. ''Now, my mind is cleared up better,
I am more spiritually aware, and I can face tragic things with less
fear. My analysis of things I want to express is deeper.
''I didn't expect to have a band by the time I left prison,'' Mr.
Kuti said. ''But my younger brother did a lot to keep the band
together for me. The musicians must believe in something to stay.''
The group also includes dancers, some of whom are Mr. Kuti's wives,
married in a traditional ceremony in 1979.
Mr. Kuti has not given up his politics or his political ambitions; a
new song he will be performing tomorrow attacks ''the atrocities of
our leaders today,'' he said. Its title, ''Beasts of No Nation,''
came from a speech by the South African Prime Minister P. W. Botha,
who threatened that June uprisings would bring out ''the beast in
us.'' And Mr. Kuti, who made an album called ''Black President,''
still wants to lead Nigeria. ''I will be president of my country one
day,'' he said. ''There is no doubt about that.''
''My country will be a symbol of free human society,'' he
said. ''Now, there is a lot of violence between the armed forces,
the police and the citizens. If I became president now I would
immediately pass a law that makes every citizen a policeman or a
soldier. Today's society has so many laws and so many institutions,
but Africa needs a different approach before it can develop as a
continent.''
**************************************************
LAGOS JOURNAL
Army's No Fan, but Singer Has an Army of Fans
By JAMES BROOKE
Published - 11/18/1988
It is well past midnight when the chief priest of the Africa Shrine
struts on stage here, dressed in a body-hugging blue satin jump
suit.
With a blast of brass from his band, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti kicks into
the rocking, radical songs that have made him Nigeria's most popular
singer: ''I.T.T.-International Thief Thief,'' ''C.O.P.-Country of
Pain'' and ''V.I.P.-Vagabonds in Power.''
''The longer the military stay in power, the more they fill their
pockets,'' he shouts in pidgin English, eliciting enough hoots and
whistles to rattle the corrugated iron roof of his ramshackle
nightclub.
Most African radicals assail their governments from a safe distance -
usually London, Paris or New York. Nigeria is different. In Nigeria,
anyone can join the Friday night pilgrimage to the Shrine, standing
on a suburban Lagos side street. For a $2 admission fee, pilgrims
get six hours of music, five stages with beautiful dancing girls,
vendors selling cold beer and strong marijuana, and an earful of
anti-establishment cabaret banter from one of Africa's most
provocative voices. Praise on His Birthday
''Nigerians like to fight,'' the sweat-soaked singer said,
collapsing on a plastic chair as his band took over for a
set. ''That's why they like me.''
To mark Fela's 50th birthday Oct. 15, two Nigerian magazines placed
his demonic visage on their covers and The Sunday Times, a
Government-controlled newspaper, ran a five-page spread.
In a birthday message, the Student Union of Obafemi Awolowo
University declared, ''Fela's saxophone has been terrific and his
voice has served as a bayonet against the 'animals in human skin'
that have turned Nigeria and Africa into a plunderers' land.''
Relaxing recently in his house in his standard press interview
attire -mustard-colored bikini underwear and a thumb-sized marijuana
cigar - Fela bristled at the idea that he might be softening at 50.
''I'm not looking about for any nonharassment,'' he said of his
relations with Nigeria's military Government. ''I don't want any
favors from them.'' In a recent song, ''Teacher, Don't Teach Me
Nonsense,'' Fela sings about Nigeria's military Government: ''Who is
the Government's teacher? Corruption and tradition.''
Songs like that have endeared Fela to many Nigerians, but not to the
soldiers who have ruled black Africa's most populous nation for 18
of the last 22 years. In April 1974, the police raided his communal
household in Lagos, the Kalakuta Republic. He was jailed for two
weeks. In November of that year, policemen attacked the Shrine with
tear gas and axes. The attack left Fela with a broken arm and with
cuts that required 11 stitches.
Unbowed, the musician put up a 10-foot electrified barbed-wire fence
around the Kalakuta Republic. In 1977, soldiers attacked. They
burned down his home, destroyed the only print of his movie, ''The
Black President,'' and threw his 77-year-old mother out of a second-
story window. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a prominent
Nigerian women's rights campaigner, died of her injuries the next
year. A Five-Year Sentence
On Sept. 30, 1979, the day before a civilian Government took power
in Nigeria, Fela and his many wives carried a mock coffin to Dodan
Barracks, the headquarters of the military Government. He composed a
song marking the event: ''Coffin for Head of State.''
Fela's problems returned with the return of military rule in 1984.
In November of that year he was arrested at the Lagos airport on his
way to the United States for a concert tour. Convicted of illegally
exporting foreign currency, 1,500 British pounds, he was sentenced
to five years in jail.
''Nigerian prisons are the worst in the world,'' the musician
said. ''Even South African prisons are not as bad.''
In 1985, a new military leader, Gen. Ibrahim B. Babangida, came to
power in a coup and Fela was released, having served 18 months.
Since then the authorities have generally avoided tangling with him.
Part of Fela's wide appeal stems from his use of pidgin, or broken,
English, a dialect that has spread steadily in Nigeria as links have
faded with the old colonial power, Britain. ''You cannot sing
African music in proper English,'' Fela said. ''Broken English has
been completely broken into the African way of talking, our rhythm,
our intonation.''
To keep a finger on the popular pulse, Fela receives a steady stream
of visitors and maintains a large household. In 1978 he married 27
of his dancing girls in a single ceremony. All but eight left him
during his time in jail.
''I get my information mostly from women,'' he said about composing
lyrics. ''When you have as many women as I do, you don't need
newspapers.'' Back to His People's Roots
The son of an Anglican priest, Fela says he has made a conscious
effort to return to Africa's pre-Christian and pre-Islamic roots.
''When you are a colonial boy, you don't know anything about your
own culture,'' he said.
Returning to the ancestral worship traditions of his people, the
Yoruba, Fela worships an eclectic assemblage at his shrine - his
mother, an ancient Egyptian god named Khuti, Bob Marley, the
Jamaican reggae singer, and Kwame Nkrumah, the Ghanaian leader and
apostle of Pan-Africanism.
Detractors say Fela preaches anarchism and that his open and heavy
marijuana smoking encourages drug use among young Nigerians.
In reply, Fela said he opposes ''foreign'' drugs. Indeed, the
interview at his house was briefly delayed because Fela took time
out to whip a young man who had brought smokable heroin into his
household.
''You will never bring drugs into my house again!'' the wiry
musician roared, lashing the man repeatedly with a leather belt.
*****************************************************
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/16/international/19930816KUTI.html?
ex=1059019200&en=7e954992556d8309&ei=5070
08/16/1993
Nigerian Star Blames Politics for Murder Charge
By KENNETH B. NOBLE
Special to The New York Times
LAGOS, Nigeria, Aug. 15
About the only facts on which all sides in the case agree is that
the body of a man was found here in January, not far from the house
of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Nigeria's most popular musician and an
outspoken critic of the military Government.
Fela, as the 54-year-old singer and saxophonist is known, has since
been arrested, jailed, charged with murder and released on bond. He
vigorously denies any involvement in the killing, and he calls the
charges ludicrous and politically motivated.
"These people aren't serious," he said of his prosecutors the other
day. "It's just another one of their ploys to trap me."
"This is how the military works in this country," Fela added as he
relaxed at his home here in his standard press interview attire --
bikini underwear. "They make things up. They'll try anything to get
you." Family Under Pressure
The question of Fela's guilt or innocence is not likely to be
resolved soon. His lawyer, Femi Falana, was arrested last month and
charged with sedition, an offense that carries the death penalty. So
too, has Beko Ransome-Kuti, Fela's younger brother, a doctor and
former chairman of the local medical society who is among the
musician's closest advisers.
About the same time, Gani Fawehinmi, another lawyer and a prominent
civil rights advocate who has often advised Fela, was also arrested
for sedition and held without bail. And even Fela's wife, Fehintola,
was arrested last week in a roundup of dissidents although she was
released the next day.
What members of Fela's large extended family -- which includes
relatives by blood and marriage and an assortment of lawyers,
accountants, musicians and political figures -- have in common is
their highly vocal and persistent opposition to Nigeria's military
Government.
Many of them are leaders in the Campaign for Democracy, a coalition
of about 40 trade unions and civil rights groups that has emerged as
the leading opposition to the military rule of Gen. Ibrahim
Babangida. Campaign for Democracy
It was the Campaign for Democracy that brought Nigeria's largest
cities, including Lagos, to a standstill on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday with three days of civil disobedience to protest the
Government's decision to annul presidential elections held in June.
In turn, the soldiers who have ruled black Africa's most populous
country for 24 of the 33 years since it gained independence from
Britain have made no secret of their distaste for Fela or his
friends and colleagues.
Fela's former communal compound, called the kalakuta, was raided
countless times, most notably in 1977, when soldiers destroyed the
building and threw his 77-year-old mother out of a second-story
window. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a prominent campaigner
for women's rights, died of her injuries the next year.
One of the most publicized conflicts between the authorities and
Fela, who has been imprisoned many times, occurred in 1984. In
November of that year he was arrested at the Lagos airport on his
way to the United States for a concert tour. Convicted of exporting
foreign currency -- 1,500 British pounds -- he was sentenced to five
years in jail. In 1985, when General Babangida, came to power in a
coup, Fela was released, having served 18 months, and until the last
year or so, the authorities had generally left him alone. During
most of that period, one of Fela's brothers, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti
served as Minister of Health in General Babangida's Government.
In the meantime, many of Fela's relatives and associates,
particularly his brother Beko, have stepped up their attacks against
General Babangida's increasingly authoritarian rule. Indeed, last
year Beko Ransome-Kuti became the chairman of the Campaign for
Democracy. Getting Back at Fela?
Then came the death of Adesanwo Shokoya. According to the
authorities, Mr. Shokoya, was a technician with Egypt 80, Fela's
band. Last January some band members accused Mr. Shokoya of
embezzling money, and Fela ordered that he be punished, police
testified in court. Mr. Shokoya reportedly died from blows he
received from two men who whipped him until he collapsed, the police
said.
No one has accused Fela of witnessing the incident or being near the
scene, but he was later arrested and charged with conspiracy and
murder. As many Nigerians see it, the case is being used by the
authorities as a way of getting back at Fela, his brother, Beko, and
other dissidents who have formed the core of an increasingly
effective opposition movement.
The Campaign for Democracy has planned another general protest for
the period leading up to Aug. 27, the date General Babangida has
said he will step down.
"Fela is certainly a nuisance, but he's no murderer," said a
newspaper editor here, who emphasized that he is no admirer of the
man or his music. "He's being punished not for what he's done, but
for who he is."
Fela said he had been advised not to talk about the specifics of the
case and declined to discuss the incident. But Beko Ransome-Kuti's
daughter, Morenike Ransome-Kuti, a Lagos lawyer, said being harassed
by the military authorities "is almost a way of life in our family,
you're used to it after a while."
She added, "It's the price you have to pay when you're fighting for
certain things."
************************************************
07/17/1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/17/arts/music/19910717KUTI.html?
ex=1059019200&en=af307361fbe746c3&ei=5070
Fela Spreads the Word in Song and Sermon at the Apollo
By JON PARELES
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who is one of the most important public figures
in African music, likes to preach. On Monday night at the Apollo
Theater, an introduction to a song stretched into a 30-minute
lecture touching on African medicine, the Gulf war ("When Iran ran,
Kuwait was waiting, so Iraq rocked them too"), sex, pollution, Black
Muslims, poverty and his own remarkable physical condition ("I am
53, but I never get tired and my wrinkles are healing. I'm getting
younger.").
But the song that followed, "M.A.S.S." (Music Against Second
Slavery) was in proportion; it lasted more than an hour as members
of the 30-person troupe, Egypt 80, took instrumental and dance
solos. And the inspired music was as confident, eccentric and earthy
as the speech. It was a leisurely concert, with Mr. Anikulapo Kuti --
universally known as Fela -- leading the band for three hours,
following a half-hour of warmup, including a tune sung by the
bandleader's young son, Olaweseun.
Fela, a Nigerian, is a lifelong dissident who has bluntly denounced
corruption in Nigeria's Government. His defiant acts -- in the late
1970's, he declared his estate a republic independent from Nigeria,
and was attacked by government forces in a bloody battle -- have led
to harrassment and, in the early 1980's, imprisonment. But he
continues to make music that not only carries his messages, but has
its own bruising power. Fela is a great musician, a disciplined band
leader and a riveting performer.
In its three-and-a-half hours of music, the concert offered an
unusual chance to hear old and new material. After he records a
song, Fela stops performing it, so most of his concerts introduce
new material. But for his final piece, he reached back to the late
1970's for a song he said he had not recorded, and it showed how
much his music has changed. The song, "Palsa Palsa," started with a
James Brown-style guitar lick and layered on percussion, horns, lead
and call-and-response vocals. Although Fela's keyboard parts added
dissonance, "Palsa Palsa" still sounded like modal funk.
The new "M.A.S.S." used similar methods, layering riff on riff as
Fela declaimed lyrics in his emphatic baritone and cued sections of
his 16-piece band, 6 female singers and 7 dancers. But the musical
substance was radically different, a dense, brawny, implacable
march. Like Ornette Coleman, Fela has decided that melodic riffs and
insistent rhythm don't need to fit conventional harmony; "M.A.S.S."
went beyond dissonance to something like atonality. Its opening
guitar line was a chromatic zig-zag, and the intersecting riffs
piled atop it didn't share any prevailing key. With Fela striding
and dancing, catlike, across the stage, and the troupe's women
shaking their bottoms, it was a wall of sound as Phil Spector never
imagined it.
The other songs -- "A.S.B.O.P.," based on a rhythm Fela said he
heard in prison, and "B.B.C." ("Big Blind Country"), with Roy Ayers
sitting in on vibraphone -- created grooves of their own, from
rippling to bustling, as Fela sang and chanted about police
brutality, African unity and a dozen other topics. Unlike much other
African rock, Fela's Afro-beat is not sweet or seductive. It gruffly
stands its ground, sure of its righteousness.
****************************************
07/28/1989
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/28/arts/music/19890728KUTI.html
Fela Offers a Mosaic of Music and Politics
By PETER WATROUS
typical piece by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the Nigerian left-wing
political advocate and musician who is to perform tonight at the
Apollo Theater in a benefit for James Brown, plans to start out
slowly, with just the chattering of percussion. He will add layer
after layer of instruments, brilliant saxophone and horn lines that
magically interlock with the bass, drums and keyboards, or guitar
lines. Singers will sing, dancers will dance and after 20 minutes,
his 35-piece band, called Egypt 80, will have taken the audience on
a musical and political journey.
''The music of Africa is big sound: it's the sound of a community,''
said the musician, who is widely known as Fela, in an interview the
other day. . ''A lot of people play African music. It's music of the
people. It's music of togetherness. The tonalities, the rhythms of
the songs, it's all African. We have 43 people on the tour, and a
full show uses 35 of them. People tell me my band is too big, that I
can't go on tour. They try to use economics to destroy the culture
of my people. Why should money get in the way when I'm promoting
greatness?'' Fela, who is in his early 50's and who was reared in a
prominent upper-class Nigerian family, is probably Africa's most
famous contemporary musician. After being radicalized on a trip to
Los Angeles in 1969, where he was introduced to the politics of
Malcolm X, he has spent most of the last 20 years playing music and
putting up resistance to the various regimes, democratic and
military, that have been in place in Nigeria ever since.
His music is inseparable from his politics, and he said it has cost
him dearly: his house - a communal compound called the Kalakuta
Republic - and a club called the Shrine have been raided many times.
He said he has been beaten severely and has been imprisoned. During
recent anti-Government riots in Lagos, several people were shot in
front of Fela's house, a reminder, he says, that the Government was
watching.
''I've been beaten nearly to death,'' Fela said. ''The Government
put me in prison. I went through 20 years of suffering, so it's not
pleasant to do what I'm doing.
''Look, we're very backward. The African continent is degenerating
into what I call the era of second slavery. And it's caused by a
conspiracy of Western Governments on one side and illegal African
Governments on the other side, operating without a constitution. My
Government is like that, a military Government that runs the country
by decree.''
''Privatization in Nigeria is selling the Government to
individuals,'' he continued. ''And with the debt equity swap, the
World Bank is ruining my country with what it owns; it means my
country is on the market. I've never seen that before, historically.
It's happening in Nigeria, Ghana, and these leaders accept this
arrangement. Which makes me feel that they are agents for the
Western system: they do everything, they have the guns to persecute,
and people become poorer and poorer, which is making life difficult
for Africans.
''That's why I use politics in my music. That's the only way a wider
audience will get acquainted with the important issues. It makes
sense culturally as well. In Africa, we don't sing really about
love. We sing about happenings. That's the tradition: there are no
love songs like 'Darling, Kiss Me.' ''
When he was a teen-ager, he studied jazz, listening to Miles Davis
and John Coltrane, and in his saxophone improvisations, harsh and
brittle, one hears traces of the great masters of the American jazz
world. ''I played a lot of jazz in the beginning of my career
because it had cultural information that enriched my mind,'' he
said. ''Coltrane, Miles, Sonny Rollins, that era, because I found a
heavy relationship between that music and my culture. That
influenced me a bit, at the beginning of my career. When I changed,
I used this knowledge to penetrate into the culture of my people.
''When I lived in Los Angeles, I went to hear people like King
Pleasure, but when I came home, I didn't listen to much Western
music. Instead, I listened to mostly traditional music of my
country. When I came here, I tuned into a jazz station, which
refreshed me about what my African-American brother has been
doing.''
The benefit will be at the historic Apollo theater, a place where
many of America's greatest musicians have performed, including James
Brown. ''James contributed to African music in America,'' Fela
said. ''He's African, and though he's not as political as I'd like
him to be, this is a good place to start telling African-Americans
about how desperate the situation is in Africa - not just in South
Africa, but all over. I don't usually play benefits, not even for
Africa: we need good progressive ideas instead of benefits. But
James should have been treated with much more respect in considering
his offense. The penalty was too high. It needs to be protested.''
In December, Mr. Brown was sentenced to a six-year prison term in
South Carolina after failing to stop for the police in a two-state
car chase.
''I love his music,'' Fela said. ''And I love the idea that I'll be
able to help him in a place where the black groups I love have made
their greatest impression.''
*****************************************
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F0071FFF38590C778CDDA10894DF494D81
Fela, 58, Dissident Nigerian Musician, Dies
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN (NYT) 1406 words
Late Edition - Final , Section B , Page 7 , Column 1
ABSTRACT - Fela, Nigerian singer and political dissident, dies at
age 58; photo (M) Fela, the Nigerian singer and band leader who
combined pulsating Afro-beat rhythms and scathing pidgin English
lyrics to goad Nigeria's leaders and denounce their authoritarian
regimes, died on Saturday at his home in Lagos. He was 58 and had
been Africa's most famous musician and his country's foremost
political dissident.
The immediate cause was heart failure, but he had suffered from
AIDS, his older brother, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, said at a news
conference in Lagos, Reuters reported.
***********************************
http://152.1.96.5/jouvert/v2i1/stan.htm
Fela and His Wives:
The Import of a Postcolonial Masculinity
by
Derek Stanovsky
Appalachian State University
On August 2, 1997 the great Nigerian musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti,
died of heart failure due to complications from AIDS in his home
city of Lagos, Nigeria. One of a relatively small group of African
musicians to achieve some measure of international fame and success,
particularly in Europe and the United States, his death was noted in
the Western press by newspapers and magazines ranging from The New
York Times and Time magazine to Rolling Stone and Spin. In each of
these cases--along with the mention of his musical accomplishments,
his radical politics, and his frequent imprisonment by the Nigerian
government--comes mention of his twenty-seven wives and his habit of
performing dressed only in bikini briefs.[1] In obituaries never
more than a few column-inches, why is this information about his
wives and his dress so ubiquitous? What makes these aspects of
Fela's life worthy of wide-spread attention in announcements which
sometimes do not exceed one-hundred words? In these hundred words,
why is there room to mention twenty-seven wives and bikini briefs in
the life of an individual whose musical career and legacy spanned
decades and continents? In short, how is the masculinity of this
postcolonial cultural icon packaged for consumption in the West and
why?[2]
This paper explores the possibility that the production and
consumption of Fela as a radical, third-world cultural and political
figure is coupled with his presentation as radically polygynous and
misogynist in ways that allow him to be fit into the existing
discourses of race and gender in the West by both mainstream and
left audiences. I will suggest that Fela's fame in the West is not
in spite of his polygyny and misogyny, but at least in part because
of them. These elements allow him to be easily assimilated into the
pre-existing script of Western expectations for Black African men,
and additionally provides an implicit contrast that enables
progressive (male) Western audiences to perceive themselves as both
non-sexist and non-racist. I will begin by examining the thoroughly
postcolonial context out of which Fela emerges and into which he is
received. Then, drawing on recent work by Judith Butler on gender as
performative citation and iteration, I will discuss the implications
of this theory for views of race and masculinity in postcolonial
contexts and apply it to the case of Fela and his wives. My aim is
to illuminate both the cultural politics surrounding Fela's death,
as well as explore the importance of Butler's work for postcolonial
theory.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was born Olufela Oludotun Olusegun Ransome-Kuti
in 1938 in Abeokuta, a Yoruba town in Western Nigeria, to the Right
Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, an Anglican priest, and his
wife Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a prominent activist in women's and
nationalist causes.[3] Educated in Great Britain, as were his
brothers, Fela studied classical music in London while his brothers
studied medicine. In London, Fela discovered American jazz and the
music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and his
earliest Nigerian band was a jazz band. In 1969, Fela traveled to
the United States and credits this trip with his own radicalization
through exposure to the politics of Malcolm X and the Black
Panthers. In an interview, Fela recounts:
It's crazy; in the States people think the black-power movement drew
inspiration from Africa. All these Americans come over here looking
for awareness. They don't realize they're the ones who've got it
over there. Why, we were even ashamed to go around in national dress
until we saw pictures of blacks wearing dashikis on 125th Street.
(Herszenhorn)
Along with a newly militant political consciousness, Fela also
returned to Nigeria with new musical influences from artists such as
Otis Redding and James Brown.
Not long after this, Fela and his mother Africanized their family
name, substituting Anikulapo, a Yoruba name meaning "one who carries
death in a pouch," for Ransome. It was also during this time that
Fela formed his influential forty-piece band Africa 70, later
renamed Egypt 80, and began forging his distinctive fusion of West
African highlife, jazz, funk and traditional African tribal musics
which he dubbed "Afro-Beat," a label he later distanced himself
from, preferring instead to refer to his work simply as "African
music" (Stewart 121). Every bit as distinctive as the sound of his
large band, with their hour-long songs featuring intricate
percussion and horn arrangements, were Fela's lyrics.
Uncompromisingly radical, Fela's songs were political attacks aimed
at a Nigerian government and a world order that systematically
exploited and oppressed Africans. With song titles such as "Sorrow,
Tears and Blood," "Colonial Mentality," "I.T.T." (International
Thief Thief) and "C.B.B." (Confusion Break Bones), Fela's songs were
intended as political weapons. They were certainly treated as such
by the Nigerian government, which banned his music on government
radio stations and harassed, beat and imprisoned Fela on a number of
occasions. The most brutal incident occurred in 1977 when hundreds
of soldiers surrounded and overran his communal home, burned it to
the ground, injured dozens of supporters and residents, beat Fela
himself to unconsciousness, broke his hands, and threw his seventy-
seven year old mother from a window, causing her injuries from which
she later died.
It was this attack that cemented Fela's revolutionary political
commitments. It was also after this attack that he married the
twenty-seven women, dancers in his band, in a traditional tribal
ceremony, an act with nationalist overtones in Nigeria and an
affirmation of tribal culture, contexts which are difficult for
Western audiences to appreciate. [4] By 1986, after his release from
two years in prison, he divorced these women. None were forced to
leave their home, though some had already moved on during his time
in prison. The fact of his mass divorce is seldom mentioned in his
obituaries. However, his polygyny is frequently cited, and cited as
if it remained a fact.
The fact of his polygyny is also often used as supporting evidence
for a pervasive misogyny, as if polygyny were the same thing as
misogyny, or as if the tribal practice of polygyny were the source
of all other misogyny. It is true that Fela's views on women were
far from progressive. The sexual politics of the lyrics in his
songs "Lady" and "Mattress" are as reactionary as the titles
suggest, and in interviews Fela remained unapologetic for his views
on women: "To call me a sexist . . . for me it's still not a
negative name. If I'm a sexist, it's a gift. Not everybody can fuck
two women every day. So if I can fuck two women every day and they
[critics] don't like it, I'm sorry for them. I just like it"
(Stewart 119-20). Given such statements, it is not the fact of
Fela's misogyny I wish to contest, but the depiction of its source.
The linking of Fela's polygyny and his misogyny is extremely
problematic. In the West, such a link perpetuates the images of
Africa used to justify and legitimate colonial and neocolonial rule:
Africans as culturally backwards, in need of Western guidance and
enlightenment in managing even basic tasks such as family life. It
also feeds the Western stereotypes of Black masculinity as
dangerously hyper-sexual, and provides an imagined foundation for
these stereotypes in African tribal culture and the institution of
polygyny. [5] It suggests that all African men are misogynists (or
at least potentially polygynists) on the basis of the example set by
a single Nigerian pop-star. Such a generalization is clearly
unwarranted, yet the implication remains. As Chandra Mohanty and
others have argued, homogenizing practices such as polygyny and
labeling them as universally misogynist is a mistake. Universalized
in this way, such institutions are effectively "denied any cultural
and historical specificity, and contradictions and potentially
subversive aspects are totally ruled out" (Mohanty 66). Thus, Yoruba
polygyny becomes implicitly assimilated to every other culture which
practices any form of polygyny, and all are judged as oppressive to
women by an assumed first-world, Western standard of monogamy. It
also denies the possibilities for opposition and resistance these
practices may enable in certain circumstances. For instance, Fela's
public performance of polygyny took place after the attack by
Nigerian soldiers. Part of the meaning of this action under these
circumstances was an assertion of a Yoruba identity in opposition to
the predominantly Christian Nigerian government and as a form of
resistance to the process of development and Westernization being
imposed on Nigerians at the expense of indigenous tribal customs and
practices. In Lagos, many perceived this ceremony as aimed at
criticizing the hypocrisy of some "prominent Nigerians who posed as
modern, monogamous men but openly kept numerous mistresses by whom
they had children" (Howe 132).
To assert a simple connection between this strategically enacted
polygyny and Fela's reactionary sexual politics is thus a suspect
move at best. Such a move depends on the construction of an
authentic, native masculinity which is essentially misogynist in
nature. This masculinity is then deployed to explain, on the one
hand, how an otherwise progressive and radical political and
cultural figure could slip into such regressive and conservative
views on women. On the other hand, it shores up a Western self-image
as the source of all enlightened and progressive politics,
especially with regard to women. This situation might once again
fall under the heading Gayatri Spivak has described as "White men
saving brown women from brown men" (297). Here the brown women are
being saved from the polygyny of a brown man by the now emancipatory
notion of Western monogamy. [6] In fact, such an inscription of
Fela's masculinity into an essentialized notion of native misogyny
fits poorly with the rest of his biography and even conflicts with
it at several points.
Consider again the outlines of Fela's life sketched above. To re-
create Fela as the image of "authentic" native masculinity requires
a great deal of creative license. Fela, from birth, was enmeshed in
the hybrid culture created by British colonialism, decolonization
and neocolonialism that has shaped and reshaped Africa in the
twentieth century. Fela's family belonged to the native elite in
Nigeria, his father being an Anglican priest. What occupation could
more clearly mark the British colonial influence than ordination in
the Church of England? It was certainly this elite status that
secured Fela his education, eventually sending him to London and
Trinity College of Music where he studied trumpet and played jazz in
clubs on the weekends. This life does not easily fit with Western
expectations of an authentic native upbringing, just as polygyny
does not seem to mesh with the images associated with being the son
of an Anglican clergyman.
Further complications emerge if one considers Fela's mother,
Funmilayo, in this context. [7] Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a leader
in the struggle for women's rights in Nigeria and played an active
and visible role in nationalist causes. A founder and leader of the
Abeokuta Women's Union and the Nigerian Women's Union, in 1948 she
helped organize the women of Abeokuta in a successful revolt against
a tax on women. Friend to Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and winner of the
Lenin Peace Prize, by the time Nigeria became independent in 1960
she was perhaps the best known woman nationalist in the country.
This biography too is difficult to reconcile with a story which
attempts to envision a son's misogyny as the direct result of
regressive tribal influences. Here, Fela's mother is a strong,
outspoken political figure active in women's causes, not the sort of
figure one expects to meet if the assumption of a pervasive culture
of native misogyny is accurate.
Given his mother's overtly feminist politics, it is tempting to look
for outside sources to explain Fela's attitudes towards women. One
might, for example, look to his connections with the Black Panthers,
a group not known for their progressive sexual politics. Fela's
travel to the United States in the late sixties is often identified,
both by himself and others, as an important radicalizing event in
his life. The emerging black-power movement in the United States
evidently resonated strongly with Fela's own anti-colonial views and
strengthened his pan-Africanist populist commitments. This story
provides his progressive racial politics with a first-world
pedigree, leaving his regressive sexual politics to be explained by
the residues of tribal culture. But why should everything good and
progressive have a first-world origin, and everything bad and
regressive be blamed on an underdeveloped African culture? This
approach is especially problematic given the progressive nature of
the gender politics practiced by Fela's mother. If a group such as
the Black Panthers were influential for Fela's racial politics, it
seems unnecessary to posit a purely African source for his
regressive sexual politics. One could argue that Fela's views on
women were very much in line with other left figures of the time,
and if he drew his inspiration from these figures for his politics
of race, his sexual politics could also be influenced in this same
way. The argument here is not that the Black Panthers are
responsible for Fela's bad attitudes towards women, only that it is
unnecessary to posit a purely African source for those attitudes.
Even this story will not bear close scrutiny, since Fela's
introduction to the Black Panthers was through a woman member,
Sandra Smith, with whom he had a relationship at the time. It is
clear he took her political views seriously since he adopted many of
them as his own. Given this more complicated background, it seems
unlikely that one either can, or should, identify any single source,
whether African or American, for Fela's conflicted views on women.
Ultimately, it is difficult to claim the title of native
authenticity even for Fela's music. Just as Fela's family background
and schooling were characterized by the fusion and hybridization of
cultures brought about forcefully by colonization, his music also
bears the marks of that history. Even if there were such a thing
as "authentic" African music, it would be hard to argue that Fela's
music should be categorized this way. Classically trained in London,
steeped in American jazz and funk, if Fela is to bear the title of
an authentic African musician, it must be on the basis of an
expanded notion of what counts as authentically African. The lyrics
to his songs are in English, the language of the colonizers. This
fact alone should be enough to cast doubt on this imagined
authenticity. However, English is also one of the reasons for Fela's
success across Nigeria, across Africa and around the world. His
songs are in a language made common by colonization, but global
colonization also makes possible global resistance. Without English
lyrics, it is doubtful his music would have had the same impact or
influence. Sometimes Fela himself described his music in terms of
the Western classical tradition in which he was schooled. "[Y]ou
cannot say Fela is writing one song. No! Fela is writing a song with
five movements. . . . It's like a symphony but in the African sense"
(Stewart 117). What is a symphony in the African sense? And what
sense does it make to claim this African symphony to be
authentically African? However, if capturing an imagined, lost
African purity is not the goal, then perhaps Fela is a very good
choice as a representative of African music. His music is a product
of Africa's colonial and postcolonial history and as such represents
the present realities of Africa. What Fela lacks in purity of native
authenticity, he more than makes up for in richness of postcolonial
fusion.
Although Fela himself tended to identify his music as "African
music," such a label carries with it different meanings when it
comes from Fela, a political activist in Lagos, than when it comes
from Time magazine. For Fela, the identity of "African" has a use in
his pan-African politics for building solidarity across national
boundaries and across linguistic and cultural barriers in an effort
to build an international political movement. In Time magazine, the
epithet of "African" serves more to homogenize and obscure the real
differences among Africans from the gaze of Western eyes, and
creates an imagined, almost mythic, space called "Africa" which acts
as a repository for a host of Western fears and desires. In one case
the goal is to overcome differences; in the other it is to deny the
existence of those differences.
In general, any reference to an authentic "African" or even an
authentic "Nigerian" identity is suspect if what is meant by this is
a pure, originary identity free from any taint of outside influence.
Such an identity is certainly not possible now, and perhaps never
was. This does not mean that there are no such things as either
Africans or Nigerians, only that those identities are not pure,
fixed and authentic, but are always changing as the historical
situations change. Thus, Fela is indeed both an African and a
Nigerian cultural figure; he is so not because of any essential link
to an idealized African past, but because of his ties to a lived
African present.
In the discussion above, the postcolonial context of Fela's life and
work is stressed in an effort to problematize his assimilation to an
imagined African authenticity. However, there is another element to
the image of Fela portrayed in the West in his obituaries and
elsewhere also in need of similar problematizing: the image of his
masculinity and of his sexuality in general. At the same time as
mention of his twenty-seven wives draws him closer to the confines
of an imagined tribal identity, it also inscribes him within the
norms of compulsory heterosexuality as well as sets him apart within
those norms along lines drawn by race. It is at this point that the
work of Judith Butler provides insight into the cultural
complexities which weld these images together. As Butler writes, "It
seems crucial to resist the model of power that would set up racism
and homophobia and misogyny as parallel or analogical relations"
(Bodies 18). That is, it is important not to construe the portrayal
of Fela's race and the portrayal of his masculinity as the result of
two different and disconnected systems of power, but instead to
stress the ways in which each is necessary to the constitution of
the other and how this entire interlocking system of race and sex is
necessary for the emergence of the subject at all. It is this mutual
articulation of race by sex and sex by race and the subject by all
of these that I will discuss in this section. Although Butler, well
known for her work in gender studies and queer theory, is not
usually looked to as a source for theoretical insights in
postcolonial studies, her writings have extended to the
intersections of sex and gender with race. [8] Given the already
hybrid nature of the topic of postcolonial masculinities, Butler's
work is usefully situated to help examine gendered subjects
occupying a wide variety of vexed cultural terrains, such as those
of postcolonial masculinity. My aim will be to show the way
portrayals of Fela provide both an example of the type of situation
Butler is concerned with as well as implicit support for her
conclusions.
The text of the brief "Milestones" obituary in Time magazine reads
in its entirety:
DIED. FELA ANIKUPALO-KUTI [sic], 58, confrontational father of Afro-
Beat; after suffering from AIDS; in Lagos. Flamboyant and
unapologetic--he married 27 women in one mass ceremony--Fela liked
to strut about the stage clad only in briefs. He wielded his
saxophone like a weapon, directing it against the Nigerian
government in songs like V.I.P. (Vagabonds in Power). His commitment
involved more than just attitude: he was frequently arrested and in
1984 was imprisoned.
At every point in the text where sexual imagery occurs, associations
with race can be adduced and vice versa. Some of these racial and
sexual meanings have already been discussed above such as the
overdetermined reference to AIDS, his twenty-seven wives, and his
briefs. Others include his description as the "father" of Afro-Beat
and his wielding of a (phallic) saxophone "like a weapon." Both of
these continue the chain of imagery, so consistently found in
accounts of Fela, that carries traces of both the savage native and
of an unbridled sexuality that has "strut" onto the world stage.
However, the sexual and racial rhetoric cannot be cleanly separated
one from the other. They tend to occur together, one phrase invoking
both sexual and racial overtones simultaneously. This points to
something of the mutuality described by Butler "in which these
vectors of power require and deploy each other for the purpose of
their own articulation" (Bodies 18).
The postcolonial context of Fela's life and death highlights the co-
dependence of the rhetoric of race and sex. This is because both
contexts must remain clearly delineated in order for a postcolonial
masculinity such as Fela's to take shape in Western discourse. This
context also makes clear the ways in which postcolonial
masculinities are produced/regulated by citations and iterations, as
Butler terms them, of pre-existing cultural norms that surround the
categories of both race and sex. These iterations, in addition to
satisfying/enacting the norms of compulsory heterosexuality which
underlie and make possible both masculine and feminine identities,
also must reiterate and satisfy/enact the Western scripts of racial
privilege. In fact, according to Butler, it is only through enacting
and reiterating these already existing scripts that the subject can
come to constitute itself as a subject at all.
All of this implies that the subject named Fela Kuti could not have
occupied his cultural niche in the West as a radical, third-world
cultural figure without occupying it through the iteration of
scripts already bearing the marks of Western racism and sexism. As
was shown in the preceding section, there is no necessary connection
between Fela's African identity and his misogyny. However, when
viewed from the vantage point of what might be necessary to
successfully import Fela for consumption in the West, then it begins
to seem both necessary, and even predictable, that events in his
life be linked in ways that fit Western expectations. Thus, his
masculinity, his politics and his music are all cast in terms of
repetitions of cultural norms that secure his sought-after native
authenticity while simultaneously rendering them safe for Western
consumption. This safety is insured through the staging of his
masculinity in terms familiar to Western audiences, as politically
radical and dangerously sexual, but fatally flawed by backwards
tribal views on the inferiority of women. His politics are radical,
but no more so than the 1960s Berkeley politics on which they are
patterned. His music is African, though accessible to Western
audiences with an ear for Coltrane and James Brown. The unfamiliar
is rewritten in terms of the familiar and then is once again
packaged as new and exotic. The argument here is not that Fela
himself is derivative of Western culture, but rather that Western
culture can receive him only as derivative. What is truly unfamiliar
remains invisible. Here again, one must ask the question, "Can the
subaltern speak?" and once again the answer appears to be "No"
(Spivak 308). Nor can that subaltern voice necessarily be recovered.
The postcolonial context cannot be evaded by an act of will. Perhaps
the best that can be hoped for is an analysis of the mechanisms
which produce its silence. As Spivak explains, "It is the slippage
from rendering visible the mechanisms to rendering vocal the
individual . . . that is consistently troublesome" (285).
An additional side-effect of this constitution and reception of Fela
through repetitions of Western discourse is the self-image it helps
make possible for Western audiences. Western audiences are able to
confirm their view of themselves as both non-racist and non-sexist
through their consumption of Fela's music. Their lack of racism is
demonstrated by their status as Fela fans along with the implicit
belief that racism and the enjoyment of African music are
incompatible. At the same time, the audience can remain critical of
Fela's polygyny and misogyny and thus reassure themselves of their
own progressive first-world sexual politics as compared with those
of Fela. This is done while consuming a stage show replete with
female dancers exuding a sexual intensity which the Spice Girls can
never hope to match, and all accomplished without reference to the
pervasive Western racism and sexism which help set the stage.
So far, only the repressive aspects of these reiterations of race
and sex have been discussed. However, this is only one aspect of
Butler's theory. Even though cultural intelligibility requires the
positioning of a subject within the terms of its own discourse
through the repetition of those terms, Butler also writes:
That this reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is
never quite complete, that bodies never quite comply with the norms
by which their materialization is impelled. Indeed, it is the
instabilities, the possibilities for rematerialization, opened up by
this process that mark one domain in which the force of the
regulatory law can be turned against itself to spawn rearticulations
that call into question the hegemonic force of that very regulatory
law. (Bodies 2)
In other words, it is the fact that the identity positioned as Fela
Kuti does not fit perfectly into the terms of Western discourse and
creates dissonance within that discourse that opens the possibility
of contesting the terms of representation. For Butler, the very
requirement for reiteration testifies to this fact. If there were an
easy, close fit between the subject and the terms in which the
subject is articulated, then continual reiteration would not be
necessary. Repetition is required only where instability exists and
where the subject comes into conflict with the very discourse
through which it is constituted as a subject. Thus, Fela must be
continually recreated as the misogynist native precisely because he
continually threatens to exceed those boundaries. In his music, in
his lyrics, in his public persona, in his life, and even in his
death, the iterations of the pre-existing scripts of race and sex
are recombined and recirculated in ways that also work to
destabilize the boundaries and legitimacy of these representations.
It is through the exploitation of these instabilities that Butler
finds application for her work in queer theory and politics. In this
case, the pejorative identity of "queer" has been substantially
rehabilitated as a site for progressive action and resistance. This
has been accomplished largely through the citation and reiteration
of "queer" identities in new cultural contexts so as to take
advantage of the dissonances surrounding them. Butler writes: "The
public assertion of 'queerness' enacts performativity as
citationality for the purposes of resignifying the abjection of
homosexuality into defiance and legitimacy" (Bodies 21). It is this
progressive potential for change which Butler seeks to emphasize,
along with the fact that this change is enacted through existing
cultural discourses. Change does not require an impossible escape
from the dominant discourse, but instead is brought about from
within that discourse. Similarly, the racist and sexist images
pervading representations of Fela do not preclude the possibility of
their redeployment in new contexts for progressive ends.
It is this potential for positive change and the formulation of
strategies to help bring about this change that Butler's theory
offers to understandings of postcolonial subjectivities in general,
and postcolonial masculinities in particular. There are certainly
damaging and disparaging portrayals of third-world masculine
identities in the West. These portrayals cannot be easily avoided
since they are also the mechanisms which constitute and make visible
these postcolonial subjects. Confined to repeating the terms of
their own marginalization through the reiteration of Western notions
of race and sex, the subjects of these portrayals may see little
hope of successfully disrupting these discourses. However, Butler
notes: "The task will be to consider this threat and disruption not
as a permanent contestation of social norms condemned to the pathos
of perpetual failure, but rather as a critical resource in the
struggle to rearticulate the very terms of symbolic legitimacy and
intelligibility" (Bodies 3). The dissonances and incongruities
surrounding the cultural reception of a figure as challenging in his
contradictions as Fela Kuti may be looked to as a source for methods
of contesting the always tentative hold exercised by the dominant
culture on these images and meanings. Perhaps in the not too distant
future, one may find a postcolonial masculinity being articulated in
the service of a radical third-world feminism, complete with
polygyny, as a challenge to the implicit imperialism of many
existing Western feminisms. This possibility seems no more unlikely
than the recent transformations "queer" identities have undergone.
If such a thing happens, Fela will deserve some of the credit for
preparing and troubling the ground on which future iterations of
postcolonial masculinities will take place.
****************************************
http://elvispelvis.com/fela.htm#obit
Obituary:
Nigerian Musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Dies
Monday, August 4, 1997
The Washington Post
LAGOS, Nigeria -- Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, 58, the maverick Nigerian
singer, composer and saxophonist who fused rock with African rhythms
into a blend known as "
Publicado por Luís Rei às 03:51 AM | Comentários (1)