Vusumzi Nkomo
A certain kind of calmness, a kind of Blue that saturates every frame, that calm hue. Fela, his fame, the lives & miles traversed between birth and his grave. Beyond mortality. The film stages not how he dies, but how his life made his death possible, if not necessary.
Fela is bound up, which is to say, can’t be thought of outside the nightmarish gore that is post-colonial Africa. His resurgence in popular culture, politics, mass media, and public memory means that we must re-insert him (against efforts to dis/mis/place him) into/back-to the centre of this post-colonial contradiction, a centre he so fearlessly trouble/d.
One day go be one day
A Carhartt Work-In-Progress & Dazed + NTS production, by Akinola Davis Jr. An interrogation into Fela the historical titan, musical maverick, Fela the father, the person, the political agitator & griot, a fuckin’ riot; a grand life lived fully. But it’s also about Fela the son, someone’s son.
Seun Kuti, Fela’s youngest son, iphelo, the first to be introduced as voice over narration, speaks of Felas’ “collective consciousness” as one founded on, or rather subjected to, trauma and a gratuitous violence whose strands they carry with them.
“You just want to like (groans!), you know?” (Seun Kuti)
“Purple people we’ve been beaten black and blue”: Fela, a Blues’ life
A/the flickering florescent light lights, blinking at floating balloons, with the right amount of scary corridor creepiness and screechy sounds. “At the end of a life/ the voice of the land remains”. The visuals are layered with, and simultaneously intercepted by, a poetic recital ( by Nigerian musician Obongjayar) emotively delivered with a dose of punchiness, of & w/ soul, delivered with & as Blues.
The body-bending choreography of a blonde-haired shirtless lad, the mind-fucking editing juxtaposed with the boy’s arm-twisting dancing, a young Fela deep in the waters of his land, the “Water of Osun”, precipitating the fiery Fela’s voice and things he spit, the “Fire of Ogun”. A man clad in Blue jeans and Blue short-sleeved shirt, a white cloth covering his eyes, brandishes boastfully iGqajolo, a zol with such carelessness overlooking a busting city lying under a Blue sky.
Unyana womntu!
We are invited into a conversation about the centrality of Fela’s mother in his life. The idea, it seems, is to solidify this filial tie tied by blood, a bond beyond the grave. Fela’s Mother, appears with other mothers (“it takes a village to…” blah blah blah) throughout the film, carrying a teary-eyed black boy. The women/mothers are uniformly clad in Blue and white, moving in a circle, at times, with so much majesty, grace and intentional tranquillity. It is a circle of nurturing, of love, protection, divinity, and transference of fortitude and whatever Fela might need in this life. Femi, Fela’s oldest son, with Lemi Gharikowu, Fela’s close collaborator and confidante, speak of the relationship and psychological & spiritual connection between Fela and his Mama, founded on mutual admiration, being and praying together: “Listen carefully, to the call of the womb that birthed you”!
Fela, Fela, Fela.
His troubles with the brutality of post-Biafran Nigerian society and powers that be made his death possible. But not as devastating as the death of his mother, leading him to deliver, the story goes, a coffin to a residence of one of the Generals in Lagos, in protest for his Mama’s passing and the State’s role in it, a crime committed with such unspeakable impunity. It is, after all, the duty of the living to defend the dead by way of seeking justice on their behalf and protecting-preserving their memory; following that logic, it is justifiable for a Son to want to end the world on behalf of a slain Mother! If not, then iGwala kuloNina!
Fela and/in death
Femi has a lot to say about Fela against death; he later echoes a statement Fela makes in an old documentary called ‘Music is the Weapon’ where he says “I have death in my pouch; I can never die”. Femi recalls a day Fela was once beaten until he was “lifeless” only for him to re-emerge the same night at the ‘Shrine’ playing with bandages in his head; “Fela could not die, after that day.”
He continues to haunt post-colonial Africa, like a ghost that refuses to succumb to death. His being re-discovered in young people’s musical circles, his re-appropriation in-to popular culture/imagination, the UK Jazz scene slowly being penetrated by his spirit, are all proof of Fela’s insistence on living forever.
“Fela could not die, after that day.”
Comments