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  • Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins
  • Graeme Counsel
Fela: Kalakuta Notes. By John Collins, with a foreword by Banning Eyre, discography by Ronnie Graham. 2d ed. (Music: Interview.) Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. [xii, 330 p. ISBN 9780819575395 (paperback), $24.94; ISBN 9780819575401 (e-book), $19.99.] Music examples, illustrations, chronology, discography, bibliography, appendix, index.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or “Fela”, as he is known to millions, was one of Africa’s most influential and successful musicians. An uncompromising figure who promoted Pan-Africanism, he elevated music to the status of the voice of the people, declaring that “music is a weapon of the future” (Frank Tenaille, Music Is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music [Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002], 76). His “weapon” of choice was Afrobeat, a new musical style that he created in the early 1970s. It both challenged authority and set a new musical direction.

A challenge in writing about this larger-than-life figure is to separate the myth from reality. Fela attracts the kind of adulation that is the provenance of rock stars, and indeed, in his life he experienced the kind of awful tragedies and miraculous achievements that make for a sensationalist account. Yet Collins presents a scholarly and sober reflection written by one who not only knew him but who was a fellow musician. Few biographies of musicians are written by performers, and here lies one of the great merits of Collins’s text. Fela’s music was sparked by a complex mixture of influences and styles, amidst political upheaval, and it takes a deft hand to provide clarity and depth.

Collins is a Professor of Music at the University of Ghana and is one the foremost experts on highlife music. A music archivist, producer, and engineer, he is also a remarkable musician in his own right, having recorded extensively with Ghanaian musicians in the 1970s. This close contact and exposure to African musical styles led to his friendship with Fela, for Ghanaian music was a strong influence on Afrobeat.

The early chapters of Collins’s text provide a clear account of the musical milieu that the young Fela Kuti experienced. Fela grew up listening to a wide range of styles, and his Afrobeat had its antecedents in earlier African and African American popular music. As a youth, Fela listened to and sang Christian hymns courtesy of his father and grandfather, who were both Anglican priests. Part of a musical family, his grandfather, Rev. J. J. Ransome-Kuti, recorded over forty songs for Zonophone/EMI in the mid-1920s. Traditional Yoruba music was also pervasive in Fela’s early years, and this music, which both praised and placated local deities, was played on drums such as the dundun and featured call and response vocals, the latter a prominent feature of the Afrobeat style. New recording technologies such as the radio and the 78-rpm disc, coupled with the advent of World [End Page 516] War II, which saw thousands of U.S. and British soldiers arriving on the shores of West Africa, created appetites for jazz and the highlife musical styles that were sweeping Ghana. In the 1960s, Fela brought these influences together and mixed them with soul and funk. This complex fusion of styles is articulated confidently by Collins, who provides insightful contexts and explanations of the local African musical styles. Indeed, his text is significant as it goes beyond presenting a biography of Fela, featuring excellent sections on Ghanaian highlife music and Nigerian apala and juju, for example. Thus, it is a text that contextualizes Fela’s life within the wider sociopolitical developments that were occurring in West Africa and the African diaspora in the 1960s and 1970s. Collins offers a cogent case through interviews with prominent musicians of the era and with those in Fela’s bands.

From the text it soon becomes apparent that Afrobeat was much more than a musical style: it was more akin to a musical revolution. It directly challenged governments, promoted Pan-Africanism, and decried the politics of corrupt elites. It celebrated its Africanness while criticizing those who pandered to Western styles and tastes. Afrobeat was unapologetic, and...

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