Carlos Moore - Fela - This Bitch of A Life

Gilberto Gil
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 18, 2008

Africa, with her many peoples and cultures, is where the tragicomedy of the human race first fatefully presented itself, wearing a mask at once beautiful and horrendous. The Motherland, the cradle of civilization, acknowledged as the original birthplace of us all, where the body and soul of mankind sank earliest roots into the soilAfrica is, confoundingly, also the most reviled, wounded, and disinherited of continents. Africa, treasure trove of fabulous material and symbolic riches that throughout history have succored the rest of the world, is yet the terrain that witnesses the greatest hunger ever, for bread and for justice.

This is the scenario into which Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Africas most recent genius, emerged and struggled.

I was privileged to meet Fela in 1977 in his own musical kingdom, the Shrine, a club located in one of Lagoss lively working-class neighborhoods. It was during the Second Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture (FESTAC), and on that evening the great Stevie Wonder was also visiting.

Fela was the brilliant incarnation of Africas tragic dimension. He was an authentic contemporary African hero whose genius was to make his scream heard in every corner of the globe. Through his art, his wisdom, his politics, his formidable vigor and love of life, he managed to rend the stubborn veil that marginalizes Otherness. Deeply torn between the imperative of rejecting a legacy of subordination and the need to affirm a new libertarian future for his land and people, Fela ended up creating a body of work that is incomparable in terms of international popular music that expresses the cosmopolitanand cosmopoliticalspirit of the second half of the twentieth century.

Fela was possessed by an apocalyptic vision, wherein he saw how tall were the walls that had to be broken down. Thus, he engaged in a messianic rebellion. He was enthralled by the haunting lamentations that emerged from the diaspora of uprooted black slaves, reminding him of his own outraged sense of deracination in his native Africaa land increasingly usurped by neocolonial self-interest. He was divided between the awareness that a universal future for all mankind was inevitable and the awareness that there was danger in denying Africa its own place in that future. Therefore he determined to rescue, both for his own people and for the world, the wise traditions of tribal Africa, having in mind that we might one day constitute a global tribe.

Arming himself with a Saxon horna saxophoneFela made music that harked back to days of yore, when his forebears were warriors and cattle herders. Yet putting into the balance his virtuoso improvisation, his poetic outbursts, he made everyone swing: in the Shrine, in the whole of Lagos, in every reservation, in every shantytown, in every township of the black planet.

Today, some time after his passing, we are at a juncture at which we recognize and acknowledge Felas work. But we must confer another form of acknowledgment, one that goes beyond the careful, reverential attention that, increasingly, is afforded his musican acknowledgment in a wider intellectual sense: one rooted in a careful analytical interpretation of what Fela and his work stood for.

This book is among those that are aiming to fulfill that mandate.

At a time when, all over the world, we are engaged in the huge and (who knows?) perhaps final effort to establish a viable humanist legacy for the generations still to comein an era that I may call posthumanit is indispensable to be able to rely on books that bestow on those efforts a true dimension of legacy.

We need books that will tell us, now and here, and that later on will also tell the builders of posthumankind, about those notable men and women of our recent past, such as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

We need to know who they were and what they were about and how they have enriched us.

Translated from the Portuguese by Tereza Burmeister

Originally published in France in 1982 as Cette putain de vie (This Bitch of a Life), this book was born of a deep friendship with Fela and could not have been written in the first person without his unreserved trust. He never intruded in the work and allowed me full access to his personal files and domestic intimacy. I thank him; his senior wife, the late Remi Taylor; his cowives; and those members of his organization who assisted me in gathering the material for the book: J. K. Braimah, Mabinuori Kayode Idowu (aka ID), Durotimi Ikujenyo (aka Duro), and bandleader Lekan Animashaun. I am also grateful to Sandra Izsadore, Felas longtime friend, for her generous assistance.

Writing the life story of someone else in the first person, then translating it into another language, are tricky and perilous tasks. I succeeded only thanks to Shawna Davis, who transcribed and edited the more than fifteen hours of tape-recorded interviews that served as the building blocks for the original version, then translated the manuscript into English. Her involvement was particularly important in the two opening chapters, Abiku and Three Thousand Strokes, and she contributed the descriptive biographical presentations of all those interviewed, as well as the general introduction to , My Queens (where for the first time Felas wives expressed themselves). Without Shawnas rewriting and translation skills, and keen eye for the artistic, Fela: This Bitch of a Life would have been a much different and certainly less attractive book. My debt to her is immense.

Gratitude is also due to Nayede Thompson, who assisted Shawna with the transcription and early drafts. I am beholden to the late Ellen Wrightformer literary agent and widow of Richard Wrightfor having read the original manuscript and made pertinent suggestions, as did Marcia Lord, whose feedback was greatly valued.

In addition, I acknowledge the generous assistance of Andr Bernab, Heriberto Cuadrado Cogollo, and Donald Cox, whose photos, drawings, and newspaper collages helped create the proper mood for Felas story.