Fela: Kalakuta Notes

345 Pages·2015·8.84 MB·English

by  John Collins

fela
john collins
Foreword by banning eyre
discography by ronnie graham
KalaKuta notes
second edition
Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press Library of Congress
Middletown CT 06459 Cataloging-in-Publication Data
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2015 John Collins Collins, John, 1944–
Foreword © 2015 Banning Eyre Fela: Kalakuta notes / John Collins; foreword
All rights reserved by Banning Eyre; discography by Ronnie
Manufactured in the United States of America Graham.—Second edition.
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill pages cm.—(Music/Interview)
Typeset in Albertina MT Pro Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8195-7539-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)—
New, revised, and expanded edition of Fela: ISBN 978-0-8195-7540-1 (ebook)
Kalakuta Notes, © KIT Publishers, 2009. 1. Fela, 1938–1997. 2. Musicians—Nigeria—
Biography. I. Title.
Wesleyan University Press is a member of
the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in ML410.F2955C67 2015
this book meets their minimum requirement 781.63092—dc23
for recycled paper. [B] 2014042402
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: Fela at a Brixton show, London, 1983. Photo by Jak Kilby.
to my wiFe and son,
dovi helen and
thomas Kojo collins

contents
Foreword by Banning Eyre ix
Introduction 1
part one Early Days
1. The Birth of Afrobeat 27
2. Joe Mensah Remembers 41
3. Fela in Ghana 49
4. Stan Plange Remembers 55
Part two Confrontation
5. The Kalakuta Is Born 67
6. “J. B.” Talks about Fela 73
7. The Kalakuta Republic 81
8. The Black President 114
9. Amsterdam and After 125
part three Retrospect
10. Mac Tontoh on Fela 139
11. Frank Talk about Fela 152
12. Obiba Plays It Again 165
13. Smart Binete Sorts It Out 174
14. Anku Checks Out the Beat 178
15. Nana Danso Orchestrates 183
16. Some Early Afro-Fusion Pioneers 197
17. Interview with Fela 204
18. Afterthoughts and Updates 209
19. Felabrations at Home and Abroad 238

Chronology 259
Notes 269
Selected Bibliography 281
Discography 285
Appendix A: “Shuffering and Shmiling” Score 303
Index 309
Foreword
Fela Kuti (1938–1997) and Afrobeat are here to stay. It is fair to say that no
African musician has ever exerted such a powerful cultural force during
his lifetime and left such an extensive and resonant international legacy
after his death. Rather than fading, Fela’s stature and influence worldwide
keeps growing year by year as young musicians come together to form
Afrobeat bands, DJs and remixers chop and dice Fela classics, and all
known art forms—dance, poetry, theater, film, photography, painting—
come together in myriad annual expressions of “Felabration.” Much has
been written about Fela, his life and work, and much more will be in the
future. But this book assumes a unique place in the Fela literary canon
because of its author, a man with the perspective, knowledge, and access to
Fela’s story to render it with the style of a novelist, the precision and detail
of a historian, and the musical insight of an insider to the creative process.
John Collins went to Ghana as a child when his father, Edmund Collins,
brought the family there from England to help set up the University of
Ghana’s philosophy department in 1952. Collins’s mother took him back
to England for schooling, but he rejoined his father in Accra in 1969 and
has mostly lived there ever since, becoming a naturalized Ghanaian.
Collins is today a renowned archivist, producer, author, and a professor