Nigeria: No Agreement Today...
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The East African (Nairobi)
OPINION
5 October 2008
Posted to the web 6 October 2008
Lucy Komisar
The scene is 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria. Film projections show people racing frantically to escape the hundreds of troops who have surrounded and invaded the Kalakuta Republic, the communal living space and recording studio of musician-songwriter Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
In a handful of years, Fela had become a worldwide music phenomenon through his trenchant political criticism of the regime.
On stage, Fela, portrayed with intensity and attitude by the dynamic Sahr Ngaujah, recounts how soldiers raped and beat people in the compound and how they murdered his 82-year-old mother by throwing her from a second-storey window.
How could the songs of one man be deemed such a political threat that the president, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, sought to destroy him so brutally?
Fela!, a stunning US musical theatre piece premiering in New York, tells the story using Fela's own radical lyrics set to the Afrobeat he created out of jazz, African rhythms, funk and reggae. The play is a stirring musical indictment of decades of misrule by Nigeria's thuggish military dictators.
It was written by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones, who also directed and choreographed. Much of the text is authentic, coming from published interviews.
The theatrical device is Fela looking back at his life as he performs a final concert at his Africa Shrine club after his mother's death. Troops are massed outside the large corrugated tin structure. A backdrop of green glass is set off by strings of red, blue and yellow lights. Drums and horns explode.
It all starts with music. Fela recalls learning about jazz in London in the early 1960s. Then in 1969, he discovers politics in Los Angeles through the work and writings of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis.
Thieving army generals and officials became the targets of Fela's songs such as Trouble sleep, International thief thief, ITT/Pipeline, Zombie, and Sorrow, Tears and Blood.
He names each "international thief thief" including former presidents Sani Abacha and Obasanjo, and Moshood Abiola, who won elections in 1993 but never took office because the results were annulled.
Fela says, "We can confront these criminals, take our destiny into our own hands." And, "Wake up, Africa, our time is now. Let's turn this country upside down."
Not surprisingly, as Fela becomes successful, he suffers increasing repression by authorities. The total of arrests will reach 200. His response is more ridicule and satire. We see him dressed as a goose-stepping general with dark glasses and a jacket with epaulets open to his bare chest over pink theatrical pants.
Relevant Links
Kuti died in 1997 at age 58. A million people marched in his funeral. His songs and now this exciting political show are powerful epitaphs.
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Copyright © 2008 The East African. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
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