Boston — Agile, humorous and a bit out of this world, Femi Kuti is a wonder to behold on stage. If you are not arrested by his sporadic dancing or intense multi-instrument playing, his dancers will captivate you. His frantic energy, coupled with that of the band Positive Force behind him, only adds to the experience and leaves you wanting more.
But who is the man behind the socio-politically charged blend of African rhythms, jazz and pop? How does Femi reconcile his father's legacy with his own personality and what influences him as a man? In an interview at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston during his recent U.S. tour, Femi sits down with AllAfrica's Seyram Avle and in a simultaneously light-hearted and dead-pan tone, speaks his mind about his life, music and Africa. Excerpts:
Is there a particular concept/message behind this U.S. tour?
Everything - first and foremost is the music and playing the music. The lyrics say what I'm talking about, which is what I see politically, socially, or whatever. Because at the end of the day, it'll hopefully give people energy to be able to deal with their life: went to see a good concert, go home and just be happy, "Whoa, I saw a great show." Hopefully it will stay in their memories, to help them deal.
This tour is also about "Live at the Shrine," your new DVD and CD set - what is different about this project?
This one is live - very different, more energy to it. It is recorded at the Shrine with a live audience, and the people there added more to it.
What's your favorite song on it?
Possibly, "Bring me the man now" - very jazz oriented and African - so many rhythms and simple line but complicated. It's very vicious and...what's this word? I think vicious can work.
I noticed your son plays in your band - is there going to be another father-son legacy?
He's playing and doing very well and it will make me happy if he continues with the music but I will not restrict him. He is very good at football, and he enjoys that, so if that's what he wants to do, I will support him. If he wants to go ahead and play for the country and do other great things, he can do that. He should be what he wants to be and can be. He should reach his potential.
Your music is called "World" for the most part, but what do you personally classify it? I like the "World," I like it. If it's world music that means it's acceptable to the world. Now if you call reggae, reggae is acceptable to only certain forms of people, the reggae fans really. Other people will say they prefer pop or classical. You see when it's world music, it crosses many boundaries, so I don't mind. When they started the world music scene, some were like "I don't like world music." I don't know why people like complaining. Look at the other side, what's wrong with world music? Are we not in the world? If they said alien music now that would be problematic!
Which musicians are your inspirations?
Now, no one. I just let the music come and when it does I write it. In the past, my father... and of course his style was very influential when I was with him and growing up. I also used to listen also to the jazz musicians in the seventies like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie etc.
You were in Kenya recently, touring Africa, how was that? How difficult or easy was it? The joys, the ups and downs?
There's no joy - the only joy is trying to mobilize things to be stronger. It's too painful seeing the whole world and then seeing Africa - it's not too impressive. And then when you think of the future, seeing all these youths coming out with so much energy and then there's nowhere for them to generate this energy to. They turn to crime or they just make a nuisance of their lives because their parents, and the government and society have not, in the past, provided the amenities for them to channel this energy. Even here wherein the youth can channel their energy, they have a lot of complications. Now in a society [where] there is nowhere for the youth to channel their energy, chaos [rules]. And then the elders don't realize that they are getting old so it is them and their children they are putting in danger. Africa is heading very fast in that direction, and that is not amusing.
The Live 8 concerts just ended, and in one interview you were critical about their lack of Africa perspective...
I was not critical. To be critical means they were doing something wrong. There's nothing wrong about what they were doing. I just said I have nothing to do with it. If they are having concert somewhere and I'm not part of it, why should I be critical? People call me in my house, "Why aren't you there? Do this or that..." Why should I? Until this day everybody keeps asking me. I was not critical. They asked my opinion and I gave it - which is not critical. I said I don't know the organizers, the agenda of the organizers. The organizers are talking about Africa, to tell his other colleagues or the other people. They already hear a lot of it on their news so if they need a concert to make themselves aware, good for them. But nobody can educate me on the suffering on Africa where I live, I stay, I sleep and wake. I've been there for 43 years. You want to educate me on the leaders or to tell me that I have no light and you have light.
If you want to educate your people, please feel free to educate them. Please you're most welcome if you can get the whole of Europe and America to understand the plight of the African man. Please do it quickly. Because every second that passes, we should remember one child is dying. As we're talking the war is still on in Rwanda. Is it Somalia, is it Rwanda or Cote d'Ivoire or Liberia, or name the country for me? If they can end the problem immediately, please they're most welcome. If Jesus arrives today, who won't be happy? We'll all be happy.
Your music speaks a lot about Black people and Africa. What particular song would you say speaks your message most - for Africans to be aware of themselves and realize that there is a lot of potential within Africa?
"Blackman Know Yourself" would probably the one. It's very direct, not too political and its just straightforward that you have to know yourself, be proud of your heritage. Black people are not aware and its because of the kind of education we have had over the years. We're not aware of the gravity of what our forefathers and our mothers and brothers and sisters went through at the time of the slave trade. Now if we could visualize in our minds, five hundred years of slave trade, to do that you just have to look at Hitler and the Jews, the Second World War. People are sympathetic towards that because there is footage on it. There is no footage on the slave trade. There is no amount of acting we will act to show the extent or the gravity or the pains Africans went through during the slave trade. We can only just say and speculate and anybody can say, yes you sold yourselves, and then we blame ourselves.
We have been fighting over 200 years, blaming ourselves for the slave trade. If indeed some of us were bad, what about the hundreds of thousands of us that were good? What about the others, families that until today don't know? Can you imagine the people, families who were lost, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives? You have to marry another wife, because you're separated. You cannot imagine. Heritages were lost, people cannot trace their backgrounds anymore. Maybe one, two generations, and if the slave trade did not happen, imagine the stories we'd have as adults and children today, telling our children. If we can appreciate that, that's already a big step as Africans, to appreciate what we went through in the past. When we cannot relate to the past, there's no way we'd ever be able to appreciate the present. Because no matter what, whatever we are today, it is the past has brought us to this point in our lives. Now if we keep blaming our forefathers or the past, we'll not be here. So we should understand the pain of that slave trade, that 500 years, that's about six or seven generations of Africans that were enslaved and we're still enslaved.
And another one - we don't think in our languages. We should be thinking in our languages. How many of us can think in our languages? So we dream in English. It's like the computer, you take the chip and put it in another language that's speaking Chinese to you, you will not understand. To even understand ourselves and communicate as Africans is always a fight because of the colonial era. When we appreciate that, already that's a very big step. Then many things will just come to your being. You will even be able to deal with your present day life. You will be able to see things for what they truly are. What we are now today is we are groomed to be gullible to what the film or news tells us, which is not the reality of the day-to-day basic life of the average human being.
What other parts of the African conscience will you...
(Interjects) Go and understand that one and you will understand every one. There's no other one, appreciation of what we went through. When you understand that, you can know, you can start to trace your being until today. If you don't appreciate the past, Africans will just arrive, from anywhere in Africa, the minute they step in America they believe it is all over - God's country -- and the excitement just ruins everything for them because they have arrived; they're out of the suffering, they believe. Their education has told them to look up to America, the movies, everything. So when they arrive and they're lost, they don't even want to go back but they don't want to die. They're not ready to die here and they don't want to die at home, so they're confused.
They tell us Jesus Christ is coming. We have plugged our children to be Christians or Muslims - to what avail? What is the purpose as African people? They tell us not to be idol worshipers; we were killed for being idol worshippers. To be an idol worshipper is because you have a statue of a god you believe in, like the god of iron, in front of you and you pray to it. So what do you say about the statues of Jesus Christ all over the world? Or Mary, all the angels, their pictures? That is statue worshipping. If God says "Thou shall not have any other god but me" it means even Jesus cannot be termed as a god because God is jealous. So no mater who we are or what we are, nobody can ever be greater than the creator himself. When you understand this, I don't see why you can't deal with your life. Life should be easy.
Considering what you've just said about God and idol worship, what would you say is your religion?
I'm spiritual. I try to understand my life, understand being, creation. The magnitude of this world is - I would not like to say its impossible, but is nearly, I think, beyond human comprehension. Look at the ants, giraffes, crocodiles, snakes, monkeys, pigs...that is on land. Now imagine the chaos in the sea - we can only film a little bit of the motions at a particular time. But imagine the whole impact of this whole world, all the movements in the sea, waves slamming in the pacific. Then education teaches us to be arrogant, because you have arrived, you have some money, you have a car, you have a wife, you have two kids so you now think you're a man. You're doing well in school. You truly don't know anything about this life, because when problems start, real problems confront you, you don't know how to deal with it. Problems of life.
With your spirituality and your music - how are they intertwined? Where does your inspiration come from?
From my life, I try to relate with my day-to-day life, what happens to me, which happens to most of my friends or anybody, day to day, to trust? I've trusted so many friends that I decided not to have any friends. What is a friend at the end of the day? If you're a friend, you can be a friend, if you're not a friend, you're not a friend. I'm not going to trouble myself looking for a friend. I'll deal with people the way people relate with me and understand.
On Fight to Win, you collaborated with The Roots and Mos Def - are there any future collaborations in the works and who would you most like to work with?
No. I keep an open mind now. An opportunity came by and I seized the opportunity - as the way I saw it. Somebody knew Mos Def, somebody knew Common, introduced me, I was in the studio, going to the studio, had a big recording then walked out. I would like to do something with classical music, one with the strings. I'd like to do something with some jazz musicians, but it's not my priority. I'm not going after that. I'm going after what I want, which I don't even know. All I do is practice and if the music comes I write it. I just enjoy playing the music and in my own life I want to evolve around music, I want to be. I know what I want in my life. I know what I have to do: I wake up, I practice - it's what I enjoy most and I live by that, those standards I set for myself.
Not too much is known about you personally - Femi the man, what kind of things you like, your favorite things...
This one may be hard - I don't know what I like... [chuckles]
Perhaps I could point you in some direction, favorite food?
I eat anything, depends on how hungry I am.
How old are you?
43, June 16, 1962, Saturday
Favorite color?
I like blue, grey, red, yellow -it depends. Colors just change with my mood. Left to me I think I might prefer today maybe blue or grey, black - very simple. I like simplicity. I try to be as simple as possible. I think when you have so many things and you acquire all those things, they're a luggage in your life. I try to just focus on things I would need at death. What do I want three cars for? Some people have 10 cars - what do you want 10 cars for? Some people want so many big mansions. If I had a big mansion, it would be taken over. I won't be able to sleep in all the rooms and since I know I want to be lonely or want my privacy, get a small room for me and music.
What is your favorite place on the earth?
My favorite place is the shrine. Ah, easily. I like my shrine too much. I love my life there. I love it. I won't compromise that for anybody. I love it better than my house which causes a big problem for my family and I, because my family prefers me to be at home and the house helps prefer me to be at home and I prefer to be at the shrine. You see my greatest wish will be to just even die there. One day I'll sit there and just pass on.
And the Shrine is open to...
Everybody, everybody, 24 hours. Everybody walking around.
What kind of impact would you say it has had on your neighborhood, the people?
You'll have to ask them that.
Alright, what do you perceive to be the impact?
Happiness, bottom line. When I'm not there they all tell me. You've watched the DVD, the reaction of the people there is not stage managed. It's what they do every day of my life, they bother me like that everyday. It's now like an addiction. It's not like they bother me, I now understand - they just love what is going on. They love the Shrine. They love that they can come to a place and just sit down and the poor man, for once in his life, can feel big and because he sees the rich kids or the rich people showing off their wealth on the streets, he can come and watch a big TV and watch CNN at will, any time of the day he wants. He can buy a drink, he doesn't have to have a big car waiting for him outside to have a good time. They depend so much on the music there, which is four times a week. I play two times free for them. They feel as if I belong to them. They're on my case 24 hours. They know everything I'm doing. When I'm sleeping, when I'm awake, when a girlfriend comes, when she's going, they know everything. They gossip you know, and it's live and direct, so it's quite amusing. If I'm even going to get angry, they know what to do to make me not angry. So it's a funny kind of life.
So you've extended your family in a way...
So to say, you know. Like when I'm not there, I can feel their anxiety waiting for me. When will this man come back? Because they've even threatened me that one day I'll want to travel and they won't let me go. They say, "We're going to stop you from going - you travel too much." So there's love there. Bottom live is that there's a lot of love in our midst there.
Apart from the music, are there other things in particular that you do to target the youth, for instance in education?
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
I was a youth and nobody helped me. It is not my duty to help anybody. I will not consider myself as... I'm living my life, and I'm trying to set standards for my son. Hopefully it will rub off on a lot of people. I will groom my son to be as good and godly as possible. Hopefully it will rub off in school and everywhere, to excel - to always want to win, to go out into the world vigorously and win and excel, and always think of the underprivileged and help where needs be. If he has the money to build many schools he should do so, I will not restrict him. I will only educate him, and pass what I have to him. So what can I do? I can build a shrine. I can build a school. I will do all that if I have the opportunity, which I'm already doing. I think it's a stupid question, because I think any sane person should do that. It's like I cannot understand if my son says thank you to me, and he's always saying thank you. It is his privilege for me, not his privilege, it's his, not his right, it has to be like that. If a father does something for his son, I can understand his thank you, I should do it for him. If I see him suffering and I can ease his pain, then what am I his father for? So what's the thank you? I just want him to be happy. If he says, "thank you," I'll say he's welcome but I don't need his thank you. It is his right as a child to have all the amenities to grow, which is every human beings' entitlement. If everybody had all their needs fulfilled, a fulfilled lifetime, there would be no problem - which should be started from the homes, schools, from the streets, everywhere.
If everybody had a car or had the opportunity to have a car, why would you steal a car? You would look so foolish. The act of stealing, the thought of it, will bring the person to awareness that "Oh wow, this is embarrassing." That was how, I believe, hundreds of years ago in the African community, to steal - you would look so stupid! Because everybody had everything. You are hungry, there's food, clothes? It's when you want to show off to your friends that "I have ten pairs of jeans! I've got Gucci!" That's where problems start. What is Gucci? What is the designer? What makes another person better than another person? Is the objective of education to make some people better or haves and have-nots? That's why education should be free. If we want to watch football, we want to see the best footballers on the field and not because I have money I should put my son there. Or because I can cheat, to put my son or somebody I want there. No, we want to watch good football so we don't care who's playing good football, as long as we can all watch good football, and bring the football to a state where, even we win or lose, we've played a good match.
You've talked a lot about education, what's your opinion on certain key points, are there any sore points and good aspects that you see, say in Africa or Nigeria specifically?
There's no education in Africa. How I was taught in school is different from the way the next generation or my son is being taught today. There's no education now - an education where there are a hundred million people and a million are getting education and ninety-nine million are not getting education - there's no education. When you go into Africa, the attitude with which you enter a place is very important. If you go into Africa as a tourist, you will not see Africa. If you go into Africa with an open mind, and you want to know, you want to understand or you've heard some things - is the government corrupt, you want to find out - you will get it right there, you will know the government is corrupt. You just have to look on the streets there, just look at the faces of the people. If you want me to tell you - are Americans happy? - I can give you my answer, if I want to or not. Or Europeans. What I see is that people are really stressed in the world today. That's because of hundreds of years of going the wrong way.
An engineer will say he's an engineer and he knows nothing about how to repair an aeroplane. So what is he engineering? He should change the name. He's now sitting in the office saying he's an engineer - go and repair a car, do some engineering.. not just writing on your desk, engineer! So an African man will say he's an engineer, that's what they've been doing for at least forty years. That's what it is these days. There's no proper education.
