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FELA IN GHANA

Fela’s early Afrobeat hits in both Nigeria and Ghana were the singles “Mister Who Are You” and “Chop and Quench” (“Jeun Koku”), and the albums Open and Close and Rofo Rofo [Rough Rough] Fight. According to Bayo Martins, the song “Mister Who Are You” is a complaint against “bigmanism” and pomposity and aimed at the then Lagos State governor. “Jeun Koko” was “directed at those sit-tight politicians and soldiers in office, refusing to let go, while squandering the purse of the nation.”

During the 1970s, Fela, now with his Africa 70 instead of the older Koola Lobitos, continued to visit Ghana. Indeed, at one point he even thought of building a house in Ghana. I first saw him in 1972 when he was touring Ghana and played for the students at the University of Ghana cafeteria at Legon, where I was a final-year student studying sociology and archaeology. By then Fela was playing electric piano and tenor saxophone instead of the trumpet he had been using with the Koola Lobitos.

A favorite song of the time was “Gentleman,” in which Fela states he would rather be a natural and original African man than one dressed in a suit and tie and affecting refined manners. Another was “Lady” (on the flip side of “Sakara Oloje”), poking fun at refined Nigerian women and sung in pidgin English.

Fela plays, circa 1972.

On that trip Fela also played at the officers’ mess at State House for Colonel Ignatious Acheampong, who had just taken over the country in a coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Busia, who had suddenly devalued the local currency. At that time Acheampong was still seen as a progressive, and as a result Fela dedicated his new 1971 album Open and Close to him, and indeed on the inside cover of the album is a photo of Fela and Colonel Acheampong.

As Faisal Helwani explains, it was in Ghana in 1972 that Fela began his habit of lecturing or “yabbis” his audiences:

I organized lectures at the University of Ghana and the African Youth Command at Tema. At Legon he was talking about Pan-Africanism, patriotism, “blackism,” and the black land of the Nile, not about day-to-day politics. And you know the Legon university students—anyone who will come and stand and talk more than thirty minutes, they will walk out and leave you. But Fela lectured them for three hours and they were still there. Some of today’s ministers were among the students he lectured.

Then Nana Kofi Omane and I organized two Fela lectures for the African Youth Command in Tema. Nana was a lawyer for the Tema Development Corporation and an executive of the African Youth Command set up while [now] General Kutu Acheampong was in power to bring back Nkrumahism. In fact, as early as 1971, I and Nana, who had an organization called the Black Brothers International, organized a celebration on Nkrumah’s birthday at the Orion Cinema, Accra. It was packed out, and it was the first time since the anti-Nkrumah coup of 1966 that anyone had identified publicly with Nkrumah.

After the 1972 lectures, Fela got invitations from Nigerian universities like Ibadan to talk on the wrongs and corruption of society and how big men donkey the ordinary people. That’s when he became more political. Fela did this before Bob Marley. Marley did it more intellectually, Fela did it more directly.

Another important interaction between Fela and Faisal occurred in 1973 when the exiled South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela traveled around Africa for musical inspiration. He met Fela in Lagos, and Fela told him to go to Faisal’s newly opened (1971) Napoleon Club in Accra to join the club’s just formed resident band, Hedzoleh (Freedom). So it was with this Afro-rock group (led by Stanley Todd and with Okyerema Asante on percussion) that Hugh Masekela went back to Lagos in December 1973 to record the album Introducing Hedzoleh at the EMI studio.

However, as Faisal wrote in an article for the Ghanaian Mirror of February 7, 1975, things did not go very well in this collaborative enterprise:

I founded, created, financed, managed, produced and arranged them for recordings. On top I organised the Masekela-Hedzoleh tour of the United States. In all I broke through the universal market with Hedzoleh within the short period of one-and-a-half years. Hugh Masekela showed up in Accra [after he had been] introduced to me by Fela Ransome-Kuti, my friend. At the time Hedzoleh was already a champion band of Ghana and they had won a contract for the sound track of the film Contact.

Left to right: Faisal Helwani, Hugh Masekela, and Stanley Todd in Accra, 1973.

Fela (seated center) next to Faisal Helwani (standing) with J. K. Braimah (seated right) and Alex Oduro (seated left) in Accra, around 1976, prior to the shooting of “The Black President” film. Photo courtesy of Samy Redjeb, Analog Africa

As mentioned in the introduction, in early 1976 Fela made several trips to Accra to play at Faisal Helwani’s Napoleon Club jazz jam-session nights, alongside the highlife stalwarts like E. T. Mensah, Stan Plange, Jerry Hansen, and King Bruce, while Fela also played and did his political “yabbis,” entitled “Who No Know Go Know,” for the university students. The Africa 70 also performed for General Acheampong at the officers’ mess at State House in Accra. At this time the Ghanaian military government of Acheampong was still relatively friendly to Fela, as it was still perceived as a radical government that had refused to pay debts to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and was rather propagating Ghanaian self-reliance through initiatives like Operation Feed Yourself. Fela himself, on the other hand, was angry about the assassination of the radical Nigerian military leader General Murtala Mohammed, whom he admired, in a Lagos “go-slow” or traffic jam. He believed, for instance, that Murtala would have legalized marijuana.

Fela returned to Accra in June 1976 with J. K. Braimah and the Ghanaian poet and scriptwriter Alex Oduro to discuss with Faisal Helwani “The Black President” film that was based on the biography of Fela and his musical career in Ghana and Nigeria. As usual Fela came by car, which he always drove himself, as he never trusted anyone else’s driving. Then in December 1976, Fela came yet again with his eight-track mobile recording studio and a huge entourage of musicians, actors, women, and Kalakuta people to begin shooting the Ghanaian portions of the film. This included historical scenes of slaves in the dungeon at El Mina Castle and shots of the Star Hotel where Fela reenacted scenes of his Koola Lobitos band that often played in Ghana in the 1960s.