How FELA bagged Grammy Lifetime Award

“However, when Motown came, he declined them. And he gave reasons why he did not want to sell his license to them. He said when he died, what would he leave for his children? He knew he had already lived a fulfilled life. And the way his business was set up, maybe he didn't want his children to struggle after he would have been gone. In all, Fela kept many things to his chest as well.”

Notably, Femi would later say in the course of this conversation that, “This is a man who would tell you that 'I don't need anybody to tell me that I'm a great man”

Like Yeni, Femi believes the award is a crown on Fela's work and legacy.

“It was well-deserved, well received. I mean, it was very hard to find a composer like Fela. Fela has been named several times as one of the greatest composers of the 21st century, multi-instrumentalist, composer. He wrote all his music. When the band started, it was Fela's inner charisma and what he wanted that he instilled in the musicians that played and performed with him. And if any left, he made sure he brought somebody that was even as good or even better. And he would go out of his way to groom you. When he disbanded Afrika 70 and came up with Egypt 80, he had many hits from Egypt 80 then - Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense, O.D.O - Overtake don Overtake Overtake, Beast of No Nation, Army Arrangements. Great albums all; and these were after Tony Allen left. Meanwhile, people had thought disbanding a great band like Afrika 70, which had travelled the world, was a bad idea. But Fela was the composer; the band was his weapon, his instrumentation, his child, kind of. He wasn't worried. And then he groomed. I joined Egypt 80, and I remember that he groomed all of us to become good musicians.”

Coming at a time when the world seems focused on Nigeria as the epicenter of afrobeats music, a direct offshoot of Fela's afrobeat, does Yeni think both rub off on each other?

“I don't know if they rub off on each other or if Fela just laid a very strong foundation. The hip-hop that is being celebrated today, a lot of the artistes sampled Fela's music. Sometimes it's the drum pattern or the bass. They just sample different parts of Fela's music, or sometimes the words. So I think the foundation that Fela laid was a foundation that people could build upon.”

The revolutionary musician

Whilst Yeni couldn't particularly recall what the organisers cited for giving Fela the award because she was backstage waiting to go on stage to receive the award with her siblings: Femi, Kunle and Shalewa, one thing she gleaned was that “they talked about his fighting for his people, being beaten several times by law enforcement agents and his house being burnt, all for what he believed in. And the fact that he continued the struggle, unrelenting…

“Fela felt that music was what you used to enlighten your people, hence the slogan: 'Music is the weapon of the future.' He didn't believe in war. He didn't believe in guns and bombs. But he believed in using music to enlighten his people to aspire to greatness, for freedom. For him, music was a message.”

“It was what he believed in, and he wasn't going to chicken out. In fact, the more you fought him, the more he dug in his heels and said, 'No, this is the right thing. This is the right way. I want a better Nigeria. I want a better Africa. I want an Africa where, as an African, I can drive to South Africa, drive to Senegal, and no border will stop me.' African unity. That's why he admired Nkrumah. Nkrumah was fighting for African unity. Why must I get a visa to go to Benin (Republic)? Okay, I don't need a visa to go to Benin, but I will still pass a border and they will stamp my passport. That template that Nkrumah was fighting for, which ECOWAS was founded upon, but which they didn't get right, is what Europe is using now. They even spend the same money.”

For Femi, Fela fought the authority even in the face of threats, brutalisation and even incarceration because he was not a man to chicken out.

“Malcolm X knew they were going to kill him and he stood his ground. Patrice Lumumba knew he was in danger and he stood his ground. I think that was a time in Africa where you had people like that.”

Even when the arrests became regular and uniformed men were always coming to their house to the extent that it was easy for the children to think their father was into something criminal, Femi said:   “Our mother made sure we understood his fights. The first time we saw him in a cell in Alagbon, we all cried. But my mother did a very good job on our own side to ensure we understood what Fela was fighting for; and we listened to his music, we understood him clearly. So, we were very proud of him. I mean, the streets, the bus drivers, the danfo drivers loved us just for being his children. At the bus stops, the cinemas – Jebako, Rainbow; I would not even pay to enter because I was Fela's son. They loved his music, they loved his fights – in Mushin, Agege…. But when we went to the bourgeoisie areas, they would say, 'Ah, Omo Fela, what are you doing here? No, you can't befriend my daughter o'. They would kick us out. It happened to my sisters as well.”

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Now, even though he has continued the fight against bad governance like his father, using his music– call it a chip off the old block; Femi said he would rather not go through all the suffering and battering his father went through – largely because he sees the people as ungrateful, sometimes docile.

“Would I sacrifice the shrine of my family fighting for Nigeria? I don't think so. When I know the caliber of people I'm dealing with; when I know that the government can manipulate the system at will, would I want to frustrate myself? I think I've learned too much from Fela's mother's death, from Fela's beating... Nigerians voted for Obasanjo. How do I, as Fela's son, justify that? Then they tried to lie against me in the papers that I endorsed Buhari - you see what I'm saying about the internet? Yes, Osinbajo came to ask me to campaign for them and I categorically said no. He even came to the shrine and I asked him in public: 'Sir, did I accept to campaign for Buhari? Did I collect money from you?' Me, tell people to vote for Buhari that jailed my father? How is that possible? If you go to my song, 'Sorry, sorry,' I already told the people how the politicians and the soldiers are the same people. We saw how Nigeria has been deteriorating. When the politicians took over in 1999, the first thing they were fighting for was housing allowance, furniture allowance and car allowance, even though not one institution was functioning well – health, electricity, roads…

“Tell me, which government has truly dealt with corruption? Now corruption is like a terminal cancer in the country because the head is bad. When the head is not correct, the rest of the body cannot function well. In Nigeria today, your house help, your driver, petrol attendant, everybody is corrupt because everybody believes that if you are not corrupt you cannot be successful. That's why there's traffic and a driver will pull out from the right way, drive against traffic and he will go scot-free. He will even get to his destination before you that is on the right way. Okada, keke and Korope drivers will get to traffic light and drive through red light, yet nothing will happen. Nobody obeys any law. Why are we so lawless?”

Is Femi disillusioned? Does he think Fela fought in vain?

“No”, he responded; but his slow, quiet apathetic tone contradicts that monosyllabic word.

Prodded further, he explained almost slowly: “I've not lost hope. I'm still here. But it's a tough battle. It's a tough battle because when you grew up from the 70s, when it was two dollars to one Naira; when you could take your Naira anywhere in this world and it would be accepted…  And slowly but surely, we destroyed everything that is our own, like a cursed people. We had Nigeria Airways, what happened to it? We really need to diagnose our problem.

Fela as a father

With Femi asserting that Fela groomed all band members to be better musicians, himself inclusive, the focus shifts to Fela as a father. Did he single out his children for special, perhaps privileged treatment?

To this, Femi says: “He wasn't a conventional father. He wouldn't do your homework. He actually didn't want me to go to school because he thought Western education was not necessary. And he had his reasons. Why would you be teaching us Mungo Park discovered River Niger?”

Having said that, the Positive Force leader understands that this is the education of our time, and he will not stop his own children from accessing it. “But I will go out of my way to make sure they read other books aside the conventional education they give in schools, to have an open mind on religion or any other subject. I will not force them to be Christian or Muslim or whatever, because I don't practise those religions. But I will not tell them, don't. At the end of the day, it's their life, it's their journey. I had to work my way to where I am today, but it was very tedious - in terms of education, in terms of making a success of my life.”

Regarding the question of whether they enjoyed privileges as Fela's children in the band, Femi said they indeed enjoyed certain privileges but it didn't come from Fela and neither did he have to force it.

“Everybody knew we were Fela's children, so why would they touch us? You'd be looking for trouble. But it was a general rule; you couldn't touch anybody in Kalakuta. So it wasn't about being Fela's children. You could abuse, and anybody could abuse us. If you think you could abuse me, my mouth was very sharp too. There were people who abused me by saying, 'Your father wey dey wear ordinary pant'; of course I abused their fathers too. I grew tough; Kalakuta was like growing up on the street; so I could defend myself physically or anyhow.”

Outside Kalakuta, they went through brawls like every other kids, most of which were because they were Fela's kids. For that Femi did not like school. “Teachers who didn't like him took it out on me. Teachers who liked him still took it out on me by thinking I should be able to do certain things because I was Fela's child. I had some seniors who liked me, and some who just wanted to oppress me because I was Fela's child. And then those who loved Fela would pick up a fight with them.”

Reacting to the same question, Yeni was more direct and precise. “Everybody was the same, nobody was different. As his children, everybody was the same; and as members of his band, we didn't get any special treatments because we were his children. Fela was someone that we just idolised.”

Asked pointedly if he didn't spoil them as a global star, Yeni's emphatic answer was 'At all!”

Perhaps, but he surely is spoiling them now from the world beyond with royalties in dollars. This was a subtle reference to Seun Kuti's social media video taunting WizKid and his fans that he recently received 120,000 dollars from his father who'd been gone for 29 years.

To this, Yeni laughed and replied: “That's Seun o. I don't know about that.”

Surely there has to be some truth in Seun's claims, this reporter pressed further; and then she said: “I don't even know what he's talking about. When I heard it, I had to send him a message asking him, 'which money are you talking about?'”

And then she said: “Fela did not die a rich man, but we have managed to sustain his legacy. So we are not rich but we are not suffering.”

The New Afrika Shrine as legacy to Fela

This takes the conversation to the New Afrika Shrine, founded in year 2000 by Yeni and Femi Kuti. The shrine features regular performances by Femi Kuti and his Positive Force Band as well as performances by several other established and upcoming artistes.

It'll be recalled that the edifice got additional global acclaim in 2018 when French president, Emmanuel Macron, opted to be entertained there during his official visit to Nigeria.

Yeni says: “The shrine was built as a memorial to Fela, to maintain his legacy. In our will, our kids cannot even sell this property, it is here to stay. So in 200 years, if you come here, you will meet the shrine. That's our intention, unless one government comes and knocks it down.  It's a legacy building, a memorial building to Fela.”

She explains that it was fashioned after the original Afrika Shrine founded by their father on Pepple Street - one of the streets that now houses the bubbly Computer Village on the other side of the town.

“It wasn't as big as this but we fashioned it after it. The way it's constructed is almost identical. For people who knew the old shrine, when they come in here, they are like you built this just like the old shrine. And we didn't even have the drawing; we just described it to the architect. So it's the old shrine on a bigger scale.”

And of course with dressing rooms and cleaner toilets, she chipped in further.

Still on the New Afrika Shrine, and specifically Macron's visit, Femi in his typical apathy when it has to do with anything colonial said, “I'm not going to go gaga because Macron came here. France has committed a lot of atrocities against Africa, so his coming is no big deal. But to the government of Nigeria, it's a slap, because these are people who don't want to recognise Fela. Would you believe they have not even apologised for killing Fela's mother?”

On what prompted Macron's visit, Femi said, “He was working in Abuja, and he said it was when he came to the shrine that he was inspired to go for the presidency of his country. He said my music inspired him. Then we used to play a song, Sotan, and this place would just go wild. He said it was during those moments that he told himself that if he ever became president and came to Nigeria, he'd make sure he visited the shrine. And I understood they did everything to discourage him from coming, because of course if a first world president comes here, it is an endorsement. Meanwhile you see Nigerian women shouting 'Blood of Jesus,' just because they are passing by 'Fela's shrine'.

Not one to let the part about the government never apologising for Fela's mum's death slide, this reporter reminded him pointedly that he'd never heard or read the family demand publicly for an apology.

To this, Femi said: “Why should we demand it? Don't they know they did it? The thing about this life is if there is life after death, we will all be answerable to our life on earth. I'm a strong believer that if there is life after death, we are answerable.”

As a wrap up, this reporter asked if he felt privileged as Fela's son.

“Why should I feel privileged because my father was famous? What about the places I went to and they kicked me out? I've told you how people wouldn't allow us to befriend their children because of our background. My wife had to run away from home because her parents did not approve of our relationship. We got married without the consent of some of her relatives; do you know how many homes my sisters were kicked out of because they were Fela's daughters, and we would sit down and cry, wondering why? Do you know what mindset we had to have to have lost everything and still be able to stand in our respective spaces today in society, such that when we saw Fela's money, we didn't go and buy cars, but built something solid, symbolic for him, that the whole world recognises today, and which we have maintained for 26 years with just 2,000Naira gate fees?

“Having said that, we are Fela's children and we are proud. Are we fortunate? I don't know about that.”

To the same question, Yeni said: “I'm very proud of my father, I'm very proud of the legacy,  I'm proud to be who I am, I'm proud to be a Nigerian,  I'm proud to be African, Fela made me proud of being African - I prefer to say African than Nigerian because we are trying to bring Africa together as one. Most importantly, I'm happy I'm not Obasanjo's daughter.”

Talk about the Fela family and controversy.