Fela. John Collins

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      Sandra Iszadore began Fela’s political radicalization and collaborated with him musically.

      While there he and his eight-strong Koola Lobotis group made a record called “Keep Nigeria One,” a patriotic song that supported the federal government during the 1967–70 Nigerian Civil War. He also met the African American singer Sandra Iszadore (Smith) at a show of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Los Angeles. Sandra was associated with the militant Black Panther movement of Stokely Carmichael and others, and she gave Fela The Autobiography of Malcolm X to read. It was then that Fela began to be “exposed to African history,” as he puts it. It was in the United States that his first real Afrobeat style—influenced by both soul-funk and modal jazz—came together. It was also while in Los Angeles that he began to call his band Nigeria 70.

      The Africa Shrine, Africa 70, and Anikulapo-Kuti Are Born

      Fela returned to Nigeria in 1970 with his new Afrobeat sound, and at first he and his Nigeria 70 band continued operating his Afro-Spot club at the Kakudu Club. This is a description of how the musician Tee Mac Omatshola first encountered Fela and his club at that time.¹⁷

      My mother, Suzanna Iseli Fregene Omateye, had the exclusive hairdressing Salon Bolaji, and I just returned from Switzerland having obtained a degree in economics and a master’s degree in the flute. I took up a job with UTC (a Swiss department store group in Lagos) and was just forming the Afro Collection.¹⁸ I went from the UTC head office every lunchtime to my mother’s salon to eat some food. So in August 1970 I went there on a Friday and saw a slim gentleman sitting there. My mother introduced me to him as the son of her good friend Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti who was the first Nigerian lady to drive a car (and my mother was the second). She told me that her girls were doing the hair for Fela’s wife, and so I sat beside of Fela and we talked. I told him that I studied classical music in Switzerland and France and he told me that he is playing Afrobeat and jazz. He invited me to come to his Afro-Spot club next evening where his manager Felix received me. I was taken to Fela’s dressing room filled with girls. Fela sat there with a big joint in his mouth; it smelled bad and I asked him what the hell he was smoking! He said, “Natural Nigerian grass!” I joined him on stage [later] with my flute and I had the feeling that my fingers were playing on their own. Fela and the band loved my performance and I played many more times with him in the next twenty years.

      I should add that Sandra Iszadore briefly joined Fela in Lagos in 1970. In fact he even made one song with Iszadore on a later trip by her called “Upside Down” that was released by Decca West Africa in 1976. This is about a man who travels the world where the telephones, light supply, transport system, etc. all work in an orderly way. However, when he comes back to Africa he sees plenty of land but no food, plenty of villages but no roads, plenty of open space but no houses. In short, education, agriculture, communications, and the power supply are in confusion. Fela’s reference to electrical failures is a quip on the state of NEPA, the Nigerian Electrical Supply Authority, which in the 1970s broke down ten to twenty times a day.

      It was in 1971 that Fela moved from the Kakadu Club to the larger Surulere Club, changed the name of his band from the Nigeria 70 to the Africa 70, and renamed his Afro-Spot venue the Africa Shrine, which included a small shrine. By this time he had developed the idea of his “comprehensive show” in which his band would take a break in the middle of the dance set, change into animal skins, and return to play a floor show that included dancing and funny novelty acts. According to the band’s hand-drummer Daniel “J. B.” Koranteng, Fela wore a costume made out of snakeskin, another musician a leopard skin, while J. B. himself wore one made from a lion skin.

      In 1971 Fela teamed up with Ginger Baker (formerly with Eric Clapton’s band Cream). The British rock drummer had crossed the Sahara Desert that year and made a film of the journey,¹⁹ as well as making a visit to Ghana’s veteran master drummer Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren). Baker subsequently went into partnership with a Nigerian and helped set up Nigeria’s first multitrack studio, ARC Studio

      During the summer of 1971 the Africa 70 played in London with Ginger Baker at the Abbey Road Studios in London to record the album Fela Live with Ginger Baker. It was there that Fela first met Paul McCartney, who later, in 1973, was to visit Lagos on a recording trip with his band Wings and who got into a confrontation with and Fela at the Afro-Spot club in Lagos when Fela accused McCartney of trying to steal or woo away some members of the Africa 70.²⁰

      In London the Africa 70 played at the Cue Club, the Four Aces, and 100 Club and also toured the country. “J. B.” Koranteng told me that when they played in Wales and the band marched up to the stage for their “comprehensive show” section of the performance dressed in animal skins, the crowd panicked. Some started rushing for the door and others tried to jump out of windows, until Ginger Baker cooled them down and explained it was all part of the show.

      It was in 1972 that Fela released his much-loved Yoruba Afrobeat “Sakara Oleje” about loudmouthed braggarts. That was also the year that the Africa 70 toured Ghana in a program organized by Stan Plange and Faisal Helwani. This included a performance for the leader Colonel Acheampong, as the new military government of Ghana was pro-Nkrumahist and still radical at that time. So Fela was quite comfortable performing for this military leader. Fela also played for and “yabbied” the university students at the Legon campus and the African Youth Command in Tema.