TO FEMI ANIKULAPO-KUTI, ON HIS 50TH

I believe it is still appropriate what I wrote about FEMI the same year FELA died (1997)… fifteen years ago! Happy birthday, Femi….welcome to the elders’ council.

  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 Non-sense, 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’’ by Femi Akintunde-Johnson)

Today, I submit….that in spite of great 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!