Femi Kuti: Redeeming the Tunes

femi Akintunde-Johnson

In the year Fela died I wrote this and more about his first son, and now world acclaimed musician, multiple Grammy nominee, and astute band leader, Femi Anikulapo Kuti:  “Femi has the music, the energy, the resilience and exposure FELA was secretly proud of. For at similar age (27) when Femi became a band leader, FELA turned tail when he confronted the biggest challenge in his fledgling career – Geraldo Pino (I saw the former Sierra-Leonean star at FELA’s graveside). When Pino was on centre-stage, the world revolved around him and his pompous pop music: FELA was stifled, disenchanted and frustrated. He had to run to Ghana!

  However, when FELA was in his full glory, several times more illustrious and magnificent than Pino, the strapping young fella, Femi Kuti began his solo career in 1986 – the year of the great Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense. Yet, the young man struggled through the maze of FELA’s greatness: disadvantaged by his greatest advantage – being genetically linked to FELA.

  He made the most vital, dangerous decision to plant a distinct tree in the garden of Afrobeat, whose swashbuckling owner was alive and flourishing.

  Femi wobbled with No Cause For Alarm (1989); sulked with Mind Your Own Business (1991) and matured with Plenty Nonsense (1995). His naive insistence and wishful desire to sound and act different from FELA produced harried fast-tempo music with messages cascading in staccato exuberance. Of course, the ideological and compositional depth was suspect, if not gallantly submissive.

  Mercifully, his music later took up some character, depth and focus with Plenty Nonsense – even the tempo of his music simmers into the fringes of profundity. It is obvious that Femi Kuti is on a sure path – 20 years after FELA gave him gifts of piano and sax…. 

   Of course, Plenty Nonsense is perhaps too meagre to represent the yardstick with which to judge Femi. It is also gladdening that in spite of the presence of Fela, an album of such promise and velocity as Plenty Nonsense was produced by Femi.

  Now, with the death of FELA, old flakes that had been lost to the subconscious will now escape, catapulting him into sublime height. With Why, Plenty Nonsense, Frustration of a Young Man, Stubborn Problems, etc, Femi has only scratched the surface; and until he realises that what he is running away from, will be the cornerstone of his greatness, he will continue to pant after European tours just to survive.

  Until he realises that an improvement on Wonder Wonder is to bury himself in FELA’s apotheosis; to envelop himself with the huge regalia of Fela’s mighty masquerade paraphernalia… until unashamedly and with serious attention to his inner will, he soaks up the aura and airs of FELA, reinvesting the music with his own embroidery and energy… re-ascertaining the puritan essence of FELA’s ideology; and maintaining an unshaken belief in his own roots and talent… until he assumes all these responsibilities, and stamps his manhood and sensibilities on the offensive depression and oppression surrounding him…until then, he will be a non-event, a mirage, a short dream. And Afrobeat, a fad, a glow light dimmed by death and forsaken by posterity. Time, the master, will alert us…”. (Adapted from ‘’Footprints: Interventions in Nigerian Entertainment’’ – 2010)

 Today, have you not seen how FEMI has replicated himself in Mide, his first son…just like…? And the strapping young man has blown the roof off Afrobeat, threatening to eclipse his illustrious pedigree. 

  Yes, as he clocked 60 (on Thursday, June 16), we submit that, in spite of swathes yet to conquer in the wilderness of Afrobeat, Olufemi Olufela Anikulapo Kuti has erected an unshakable ‘’iroko’’’ in the hearts of Afrobeat fans and acolytes…that no forester, no scavenger, no trespasser can saunter around wondering: ‘’Whose father owns this tree?’’ Thunder will strike him or her… Ararararaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

ODUMOSU: AN ICON WITH A GIANT TOUCH

I ‘met’ this quiet, almost somnolent man through the TV drama, “Evil Encounter” …in the early 80s, and I had been studying his works through the terrifyingly exciting 80s of the original Lagos Weekend Television, LWT when I would suffer bouts of self-induced insomnia while watching the matinees, detective pieces, some adventure flicks, and plenty of sitcoms and local diet….

  My addiction to the original LWT was so extreme that my poor mother almost called a larger family meeting over my 72-hour weekly vigil, between Friday evenings and Monday mornings…when I’d groggily saunter to work – from Iponri, near Apapa Road, Ebute Metta, Lagos… to former Adeola Hopewell Street, Victoria Island where I worked as a clerk – in 1982/83. I never knew how I got to work on Mondays; and was half-hearted at work most Fridays…just so I could get away from work, and plug into the weekend watch-mania…all over again. 

 It was all Jimi Odumosu’s fault! He was head of the Lagos Television, LTV, then, or in charge of programming in the new station, making the octopal NTA look clay footed.

  Years later, by Providence, I came in contact with him – flesh seeing flesh – as I found myself in his profession, or a part of his many pies.

  This is what I wrote about Jimi Odumosu in my book, Reflections: Anthology of Thoughts on Nigerian Movie industry (2021): 

“If we were to ignite a storm of controversy, we would insist that all productions dubbed on videos after 1985, if indeed there was one, were latecomers to the format; for as far back as 1982/1983, many parts of Lagos had woken up to see video tapes of rave-of-that-moment TV series, Evil Encounter by Jimi Odumosu – on the streets, a day or two after the weekend airing. But that will be giving glory to pirates, as the then young brilliant producer of Nigeria’s first truly enchanting ‘horror movie’, on the newly established Lagos Television (LTV) station, didn’t know how his pet project got on VHS tapes! However, were he buying these tapes out of professional curiosity, and a level of conceit, he would have had something to show, now that the tapes and u-matic cartridges of that splendid serials have perished in some fire outbreak in the mid-80s, and subsequent ‘second generation’ retrievals, also suffered technical wipe-out, few years ago. Truly evil encounters!

  In 2004, Odumosu reprised his ingenuity with another emotional blockbuster movie called The Mourning After (featuring Prof. Ahmed Yerima, a professor of theatre, and a clean-pated Bimbo Akintola as a widow traumatised by the demands of African traditions).

  Odumosu has worked in the industry for over 40 years as a scriptwriter, producer, director, administrator, consultant; and retired as Permanent Secretary and General Manager of Lagos Television, to focus on building more talents, and nurturing budding creatives. He is now the CEO and ‘visioneer’ of Lagcity Film Academy, Lagos. 

  With hundreds of TV drama episodes logged as a writer, producer or director, Odumosu has got the stuff of a legend. Few more tips: The Village Headmaster, For Better for Worse, Fiery Force, and M-Net’s Doctors Quarters.”

  On June 4… almost surreal… he turned 70 years old. CONGRATULATIONS, Baba Jimi Odumosu. Long may you reign in abundance of talents, and tranquility. As we said in years passed: Your admirers are in legion…and they salute and felicitate you.