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JOE MENSAH REMEMBERS

The late Joe Mensah was a pioneering Ghanaian highlife singer who released eleven albums and several singles. He began his musical career with the Broadway Dance Band in the 1950s. This was against his parents’ wishes, so as a teenager he left Ghana for Lagos in 1958, where he joined Chief Billy Friday’s Downbeat Highlife Band. It was then that Joe became a close friend of the young Fela, just before Joe went to further his studies in London. Joe returned home three years later and rejoined Broadway, renamed Uhuru, in 1963. In the same year he recorded his famous “Uhuru Special” (with “Bosoe” on the flip side) in Lagos with the Uhuru members under the name Big Beats. In 1964 he left for the United States to study civil engineering and pursue his musical career. However, he made many trips to West Africa, and in the early 1970s, with the help of Fela’s horn section, he recorded in Lagos with the Ghanaian band Sweet Talks. He returned to Ghana in 1992, becoming president of the musicians’ union of Ghana. Sadly, Joe died in 2002 after a short illness. This interview was recorded at the MUSIGA offices on September 2, 1998.

Tell me how you first got to know Fela.

We [a group of Ghanaian musicians] got to Lagos in early 1958 to join the Downbeats that resided at a nightclub called Nat’s Club de Paris at 80 Ojuelegbe Road in Surulere. It was not far from Fela’s home as he was staying with his mother at the family house [working as a clerk with the Ministry of Commerce]. We played at the club about four times a week, and one evening, I think it was a Sunday, we played our usual gig. At the end of one of the songs I sang I saw somebody come on stage, put his head between my legs and carry me on his shoulders. He took me through the audience and was saying to the crowd: “You people, have you heard any voice as great as this one? And you just sit down and don’t show any appreciation.” So people began throwing money to us on the floor. After he put me back on stage he collected all the money and brought it to the band. That was Fela!

From that day on my day would never be complete if I didn’t see him and he would not go out without seeing me. We became very close even though he was about twenty years old and quite a few years older than me. I would spend a lot of time at his house, but I never met his mother until one day I went there and she was washing clothes.

Fela had told his mother a lot about me and she said that how is it possible that I look so much like her children. Like we’re related. She also said that I’m too young for my mother to have allowed me to leave Ghana and stay in Nigeria, so from that time I should consider her my mother, call her “Ma,” and when I need consolation, food, or whatever, I should always go there.

Fela and I used to hang around in the night and roamed the whole of Lagos. You know it was then a very peaceful place and we used to walk to the Marina from Surulere. We were so free. We bought food from the women who cook on the roadside and we visited friends. We walked over Carter Bridge to go into Lagos [Island] itself to get to the Marina and the real ghettos around the lagoons where the people were so friendly. Even the traffic in Lagos was exciting as it was then 80 percent full of bicycles. Even Fela had a bike. When we came back in the night to sleep I sometimes stayed with Fela and sometimes at my place, as some mornings we started rehearsals early.

At this time one incident occurred that I’ve never told anyone before, as I’m a bit embarrassed when I’m talking about it. This was one Saturday night when we [The Downbeats] were playing at our normal place, and after finishing singing women were coming after me too aggressively. Fela was watching. He staved them off and said: “Leave him alone, don’t you know he’s a small boy? Don’t you have any shame?” I don’t know how one Yoruba lady talked Fela into this but all I saw was that the lady was following Fela. Her name was Dukpe. So Fela called me and told me: “Joe, Dukpe is going to teach you something tonight as she’s going to sleep with you. I’ve told her everything, she knows you are a kid and knows how to deal with you.” I said that Fela I can’t do this.

We got to my room that I shared with quite a few people and I don’t know how Fela managed it, but my roommates did not come in. Fela said goodnight and as he was going to close the door this lady just appeared in the room. Fela locked the door from outside and was laughing and saying that now we’ll see what will happen in the morning. Well, I need not continue on that story any more but this is to show how much Fela and I loved each other, like brothers; innocent young guys with talent.

Then another incident occurred the day he went to Britain [in August 1958]. Fela had a very beautiful bike, but even at that age he drove recklessly. His mother had bought a little German Opel car and all of a sudden Fela came to me with his left hand bandaged. He had run his mother’s car into a ditch and so he was going to inform her. I went to the house with Fela and his mother complained that Fela was giving her hell, so he’s going to London today to study. Fela said he wasn’t going to any oyinbo [whiteman] country, so as we were parting he said that I should come back as we were meant to be going out that night. His mother told me: “Don’t waste your time to come as you won’t find him here, he’ll be gone.” So this woman tied her headgear and over-cloth, took Fela’s passport with £90, and somehow this stubborn Fela wound up on an airplane to London. And that’s how we parted in the first phase of our friendship. In London he went to stay with one of his brothers who was training to become a doctor, as his mother also wanted Fela to be a doctor. From what I understand he entered medical school briefly but then went on to a music school in London.

What was Fela like when you first met?

You know Fela is a very brilliant chap, very intelligent, and very well rounded up in knowledge of many subjects. And Fela read a lot. He was also then very shy—we were both shy—but it was when we got together that we became terrible and could do anything. At that time he had finished one phase of his education [at Abeokuta Grammar School] and was waiting to go to university. He was an aspiring musician pianist for the second band of [Victor Olaiya’s] Cool Cats highlife group.

What was Fela’s relationship with his mother like?

Beautiful, very beautiful. You would think the mother only had Fela as a child, and for some time this is what I thought, only to learn later that there was an older and younger brother. Fela was the one who gave more challenges and trials of motherly patience and endurance. You should have seen the mother then. She was middle-aged, very strong, very determined, very forthright, very courageous, and very outspoken. I remember in the presence of Fela the mother told me not to follow him but rather show him how to be a good boy, and Fela just walked away making annoyed sounds. I could say that the love that he has for his mother, which later on showed, would be because they are very much alike in character. Both spoke their minds—from the little I saw of her she had values she adhered to. Like the value of a woman being able to do many other things besides the usual feminine classifications we give to women.

At that time Fela’s father had died and so the mother was twice of a father and once a mother—all rolled into one. If you go to the house you will see that she kept the house under rigid control. She wouldn’t follow any ideology, any saying, or any people blindly. I wouldn’t say she was always against the norm but I know she could not be swayed easily. She knew the world situation and politics, especially in Nigeria. She stood by her guns on principles that even go contrary to tradition and custom. Also she was a big freedom fighter and agitator—not only in words, but in action. On top of all that she was very affectionate, because if I look at how concerned she was about me then I can imagine how fortunate Fela and all her children were.

What about Fela’s father?

He had died but what I heard was that he was a trumpeter and also a reverend minister, and as such he used to hide his trumpet in his agbada [Nigerian attire] to go and play, as church congregations frowned upon their minister playing in clubs and social gatherings. They would take it as degrading to the pulpit. If it had been Fela’s mum she would have blown the trumpet in church. That was the type of determination she had, that eventually rubbed off on Fela. I guess through Fela’s father having been a musician Fela got to know quite a bit about music.

You saw Fela again when he returned from London in 1963?

Yes, I was in Lagos with the Uhurus and luckily there was Fela at a place called the Paradise in Ibadan. He came looking for me, and when we started playing he came in on his trumpet. It was when Fela came back from music school in London that he came out with the trumpet. Maybe his father also taught him, I don’t know. But when I first saw him in Lagos I never saw him with a trumpet. And I’ve never, up to today, heard any trumpeter that great. He was just fresh from tutelage and had been taught classical music at the conservatory. And he applied that to jazz. So his jazz was classic as well as innovative. Fela had all the qualities of a great trumpet player—the embouchure, the intonation, the dexterity, the fingering. It was just after this time that he formed his Koola Lobitos highlife band and you can see from his early works that Fela was a jazz fanatic.

I believe that you met Fela when he was in the United States in 1969?

Yes, I went to New York in 1964 to study civil engineering. While there I followed up Fela’s progress and I got his Koola Lobitos recordings. Also Fela would send people to me, and some of them would stay with me, because if he’s a friend of Fela he’s my friend and guest as well.

Then I was told that Fela was coming to the US to perform, and I met him in New York with his Koola Lobitos. Animashaun was on baritone sax, Tony Allen on drums and Tunde on trumpet. They played one night at the New York Sheraton Ballroom in a show organized by the African American community and a group of Nigerians for Nigerian National Day or some significant African day.

Then Fela left for California to tour, but wound up living there for a long time. That is where he gained his extreme African consciousness, blackmanism, and Afrocentrism. And he translated all this into his Afrobeat music.

I think this happens to all of us. It happened to me. My American friends, especially African Americans, found me to be too British. I had two Christian names and they didn’t see anything African about me as my values were too British, my dressing was too British, and my music was too conservative. So you start to form and evolve your own identity. And that is what Fela might have gone through when he was in California.

Tell me what you think about Afrobeat.

Its ingredients are a unique combination of highlife, jazz instrumentation, African percussion, and typical Nigerian movements. I can say with pride and love that myself and the other Ghanaian musicians in the Downbeats might have been the first link with Ghana and highlife for Fela. The way we did things was curious to Fela. The way we would take pains to create things, how we blended and performed our music. That was the foundation of Fela’s Afrobeat—I’m talking of highlife. You see at the time in Lagos there was only the apala and juju of I. K. Dairo and Haruna Ishola, which were mainly an aggregate of percussive instruments. So Fela got easily attracted to highlife, since his interest was in horns.

Afrobeat is a very sensitive music because Fela created it at a stage of his life when he required a lot of sympathy. He was always in difficulty for being outspoken and people would not leave him alone. So he found solace in the Afrobeat, as that was the only time Fela feels free, when he’s playing on stage.

Afrobeat was unique as he made his girls sing chorus for him. Because they are a bunch of dancers and not singers their voices could not stand a very good [complicated] sequence. So because of the ordinary nature of the chorus singing, Afrobeat became the music for the average man and woman in the street. If you take away the girls who sang the choruses you would be left with Fela as an avant-garde jazz-influenced African musician.

Fela always had a message and he made sure it was clearly heard. Here you have him come with a horn segment and it would disappear, then the guitar was there as if it’s monotonous—but it’s preparing you for what Fela was going to say. And when he starts singing everything holds up behind him. Everything stands still, goes on the bed and lies below him so he can express himself.

Fela was also influenced by his own traditional music, which is always held together by the steady metronomic figures of the cowbells and clips [claves] that maintain the measure. Also, if you listen to indigenous Yoruba ensembles and you have good ears, you will hear [something like] the string bass in it. You see, the Yoruba speaking or talking drums come in different sizes. They have, for instance, a big one they call yalo, the mother of the talking drums. Others are bigger or smaller. And they always provide the tonality under the whole percussion. So it was easy for Fela to take this and transpose it onto bass [guitar]. That gave a solid rock to his music.

Afrobeat is a beautiful legacy and great gift that Fela has bestowed not on just Nigeria and Ghana, but on Africa and the whole world at large.