It was a peaceful but yet a long stressful journey right from the junction of Oke-Odo, the bus-stop between my school road, University of Ilorin and Terminus under- bridge. One would think there’s something so special about my city from the way I am talking about it, but yes, the new bridges constructed by the Abdulrazaq administration are worth something to talk about.
By Bankole Taiwo James
On the 18th of April 2024, I took a solo trip from the quiet city of Ilorin in Kwara state to Ikeja in Lagos State. You might want to ask why. Don’t rush to ask, we shall get there.
It was a peaceful but yet a long stressful journey right from the junction of Oke-Odo, the bus-stop between my school road, University of Ilorin and Terminus under- bridge. One would think there’s something so special about my city from the way I am talking about it, but yes, the new bridges constructed by the Abdulrazaq administration are worth something to talk about.
It was already past 9:00 pm before I could finally find a motel, a mile away from the Kalakuta Museum to lodge for the night. Thank the gods, it wasn’t really expensive, just N6,000.
On April 19, 2024, at exactly 12:00 pm, I packed myself with all my video recording gadgets out of the motel and mounted the Kalakuta Museum in Ikeja for the first time in my life. It was my first time in the museum even though I have heard tales and stories about the museum, but guess what, I wasn’t there for the museum. I was there to meet Mr. Seun Kuti, so I did not bother entering the museum. Instead, I packed myself to join the Egypt 80s band in the rehearsal room.
It was the first time I ever met Seun Kuti and The Egypt 80's Band. All thanks to Mr. Ayo Moses (Seun Kuti Manager) and particularly Mr. Dapo Edwards, who made it a success. Just imagine the kind of feelings and emotions that rushes on you when you finally meet the son of a legend you’ve been studying for your research project.
I was there to interview Seun Kuti, but Seun was nowhere to be found. “Seun is not here yet, but he’ll be joining us very soon,” Mr Dapo told me.
Luckily for me, my visit to Kalakuta was before Seun’s music tour, so I had the opportunity of meeting Egypt 80s band rehearsing before Seun eventually joined the band. I was so lucky enough to meet some of the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti band members - 'The Egypt 80' who were present at the rehearsal. Most of these people are now old, but when they grab the mic, they are on fire. There was a particular old man in blue native attire, the man really amazed me with his musical skills. The way he was chewing Fela's lyrics; it was as if he wrote the song.
The band is a hybrid composition comprising both male and female. The females are the backup singers, while the males are the instrumentalists; the drummers, guitarists, pianists, etc. Seun was the lead singer, but this man can do almost everything from singing, backup and playing the instrument.
I saw him playing the piano that day which makes me wonder how many things he can do. The joy of sitting among Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 band while rehearsing at the museum was a feeling that consumed me. Witnessing how the Kuti's family curate music patterns and rhythm into Afrobeat Music is mouthwatering. Cmon! Come and see the way Seun was vibing to his songs with dancing steps that remind me of late Fela Anikulapo Kuti whenever he's performing on stage. The resemblance is just too much.
It was already past 4:00 pm by the time they were done with the rehearsal. After spending the afternoon at the Kalakuta Museum with Seun Kuti and The Egypt 80’s Band rehearsing, Seun and I headed back to his beautiful home in Ikeja for the interview. Oh my God! That was the last thing I ever hoped for. Inside his vehicle, several thoughts were just roaming inside my medulla oblongata, and I almost forgot the questions I had already prepared for Seun. There at his house, I met his wife, the one and only Mrs Yetunde Kuti, popularly known as chefyeidekuti on her Instagram page. I won’t forget my experience with Yetunde. She is indeed a wonderful wife and has a flexible personality.
The interview was a quick one, but an eye-opener for me.
The interview kicked off:
Interviewer: So today when we talk about afrobeat music or afrobeat musicians, we talk about the likes of Rema, Davido, Burna Boy, Simi, Asa, but when we talk about Fela Anikulapo and afrobeat music, I sense that something is not clicking well because to conceptualise Fela’s afrobeat music, we can connect it to the concept of Pan Africanism, which I think is something lacking in today’s afrobeat music. So I’d like to ask what afrobeat music is? What makes a song an afrobeat song?’
Seun Kuti: Afrobeat was my father’s way of interpreting the ancestral artistic message for their people. So as long as you have a positive message of liberation, which no matter what anybody in the world or any corner of the globe says, is Africa’s foremost priority to remove the chains of neo-colonialism and imperialism from the neck, hand and foot of our people.
It is our priority, our duty, in fact it is why many of us told our ancestors in the nether world that we want to come back here and for some reason we get here and we all begin to betray our true calling.
No African man in this world is satisfied, he is not engaged in the distribution of these people regardless of what they post on Instagram, whatever they do they are not satisfied and that’s why they can never have enough. They do the same thing every day and get bored and that is because they are not feeling the true nature of who they are supposed to be, that is people on the vanguard of the liberation of the African people all over the world.
So if your music has that African groove that we all recognize and has the message, I think that can be said to be an afrobeat. But more than all of that is that the artist himself must be convinced that he is a revolutionary. Afrobeats are for expressing the realities of your people, there is no afrobeat without the realities of the African people. When we say the people, we mean the majority of the African people because you can be talking about the things that only 1% of Africans are experiencing and it’s the reality of African people because those people are Africans people too but when we say the people in this sense of the world, it’s the experience that dominates Africa.
Not what some people can create for themselves in some niche space where they have excluded 90% of their people from. That cannot be the space we are shouting into, which is why everybody is saying ‘Japa’ because we are locked out of that space so since our people would not let us enter their space, let us look for where the space is open for more people.
Your music has to represent the majority of your people’s experience. then you can say I’m an afrobeat artist. If you have also agreed that you wanted to be an afrobeat artist because you can speak the reality of your people with hip pop, you can be soul singers speaking the reality of your people on that mass real scale. So you must also decide first that I want to be an afrobeat artist and then it has to be on the side of the people in a revolutionary way.
Interviewer: In what way has your dad influenced your music career?
Seun: Ahh, in many ways, this is a good question. Being Fela's son is easy, being Seun is hard. Most people in the world think that we automatically have to make it in music because your dad will open the door. You see, what they don’t understand is that yes, your father’s name opens the door for you quite alright, straight up, but then there are expectations immediately.
As an artist, many people are given the chance to make mistakes, given the chance to try again, given the chance to grow into the artist they are supposed to be or whatever. But as a Fela’s child, you are expected to have known everything before you step through that door. Nobody is giving you the chance to go do what you’re supposed to know. In terms of being Fela's son and being a musician, what is Seun doing; judged like his father, that’s the bitter sweet side of it.
I tell you that even if I do not play music, and I was an architect designing houses, people still look at the design and say it is not as fine as his father’s music was. When your father is great, what you must understand in life is your responsibility as somebody born into the line, a line that is a bloodline like mine. People also forget that Fela is standing on the shoulder of his mother and what it took for him to feel that position that you have to feel in her own struggle and in moving her message forward, and many people back in the day used to say, ‘Oh! Fela is not like his mother, standing for the poor.’ Until they realised Fela was 10 albums deep before he got a hit song in Nigeria. That’s how to persevere, that’s how it is when you come from a great line because people want to test and retest you all over and you have to continue to prove yourself.
I think that’s it and in terms of influence, no greater musical influence is in my life than my father’s and growing up with Fela in his house. Afrobeat was everywhere and our compound was a very musical place. People practiseD on different instruments, and everybody was high all the time, so they were partying all the time. So, I grew up in a very musical space as well which for me has advantages because most of these songs I even work on, I write, everything is similar to me. When I feature other people and they play their music, it is all familiar to me because I was raised in such a musical space. I think for that reason, my father really influenced me but he never told me to be a musician.
Interviewer: You said your father never told you to be a musician, so can you tell me what prompted you to choose music as a career?
Seun: My desire to be a musician was mine, at least to the extent that it could be mine knowing that my father took me to every show, took us on every tour. I went to the shrine every time, but he didn’t tell me to be a musician. I told him I wanted to be a musician, maybe it’s in my thoughts because he put me so much around music, I had no choice but to choose to be.
Interviewer: How does growing up as the son of the late Fela Anikulapo feels like.
Seun: You can only feel something like that when it happens to you. Being Fela’s son did not happen to me. If I was somewhere one day, then Fela adopted me, it would be different. You know, I don’t know how I was born. I feel like this every day of my life. It’s always more intriguing for people who are outside looking-in than for those who are inside looking out. That’s how it is.
My dad was my dad. I grew up with him. I saw him every day, and also the important thing is that Fela did not live like a superstar. My dad was a very simple guy, the Fela I met, the stories I heard of him when he was younger are not the same guy. People change, people grow and, in their lives, they continue to grow, and that was my father’s case as well. I’m Fela’s son every day of my life. I’ve been Fela's son for 41 years, and that’s a long time. I can tell you about people who want to treat you differently and always do different things. When I was growing up, it was a stigma to be Fela’s child.
Suddenly people became in love with Fela so much but when I was growing up, that love was not there. I couldn't even go to my girlfriend's house. But my dad, you know all those things didn't matter because my house was full of love and comfort, and I don't know excitement and madness, and so for me, I had a very interesting childhood and that is part of who I am today but I don't feel any way by being Fela's child now. It has always been in my default position.
Interviewer: How do you see the future of afrobeat?
Seun: You see, I think it is time for the first time I change what I have been telling people whenever they ask me this question. Had TB Joshua been alive today, I might have said yes, I know what the future of afrobeat is like but since TB Joshua is no longer alive, I can’t say what the future holds.
End of interview….
Shortly after we ended the interview, Seun gave me a big bottle of water to take as a parting gift. That hospitality from him is one I can never forget.
Key takeaway from the interview:
The late Fela Anikulapo Kuti did not tell Seun Kuti to be a musician. His desire to be a musician was his.
Afrobeat was Fela’s way of interpreting the ancestral artistic message for African people.
Afrobeat is for expressing the realities of African people; there is no afrobeat without the realities of the African people.
The future of afrobeat is uncertain.
Being Fela’s son was easy, but being Seun is hard.
My journey back to my town was the most embarrassing experience I ever had in my life. By the time we were done with the interview, it was already 7.15 pm. So I had to rush to Berger to see if I could still make it back to Ilorin that night. Funnily enough, it took me almost two hours to get to Berger because I was almost lost within Lagos.
Finally, I got there around past 9 pm and by that time, the park was already empty and scanty. The driver I met there advised me to sleep over so we could move as early as 4:00 am the next day. I complied. I spent the night sandwiched between swarms of mosquitoes and a medley of pungent smells wafting from various gutters and directions.
Imagine sleeping beside someone you don't even know and he's assuring you that you would be safe with him. But he was right, I was safe with him and he kept to his promise. We left as early as 4:00 am in the morning as he promised, we got to Ilorin by 12:00 pm.
I'll treasure the memory of meeting Seun Kuti, son of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, and share the story with my children and grandchildren for generations to come - a humble encounter marked by his kind gesture of offering me a refreshing bottle of water.