Fela Read online

  Compiled by Toshiya Endo

  (http://biochem.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/-endo/EAFela.html)

  1

  Abiku

  The Twice-Born

  After three years of waiting, my mother and father really wanted a baby. But it wasn’t me they wanted. No, man! No! They wanted any fucking baby.

  You know, the meek, quiet type. Well-mannered. Yes-Sir this. Yes-Sir that. They didn’t want a motherfucker like me, man! Well, here I am now. I came. In spite of them. In spite of everything. I was born twice, man!

  The first time I was born was in 1935. What I experienced twice I have no recollection of. Nothing! Zero! That’s one of our limitations, man, not knowing where we come from. Anyway, when I was born my father wanted to imitate his own father. They were both Protestant reverends. So to make some white man happy, my father asked this German missionary to … name me. Can you imagine that, man? A white man naming an African child! In Africa, man, where names are taken so seriously. There’s even a special “naming ceremony” each time a child is born. Without that, it’s said that a child can’t really enter the world of the living. And just to make some white missionary happy, my own father. . . . Oh, no, man! Nooooooh!

  You know what that motherfucker named me? Hildegart! Yes, man. Hildegart! Ooooooooh, man! That’s how much I wasn’t wanted. Me, who was supposed to come and talk about Blackism and Africanism, the plight of my people. Me, who was to try and do something to change that! Oh, man. I felt that name like a wound. My father had rejected me. And my mother too. The one whose very womb had born me. Here I was, tied hand and foot, being handed over to the executioner!

  Bear the name of conquerors? Or reject this first arrival in the world? The orishas they heard me. And they spared me. Two weeks after my first birth, my soul left my body for the world of spirits. What can I say? I wasn’t Hildegart! Shit, man! It wasn’t for white man to give me name. So it’s because of a name that I’ve already known death. Maybe that’s why a name is a matter of life or death, more for me than anybody else. What can I say about parents who wanted this motherfucking compromise? It’s only recently I’ve begun asking myself questions about them, their past. You see, till now I’ve been so busy with the whole African problem I rarely ever looked at my own ancestors because the other thing was more important. But things are beginning to fall into place.

  Both on my mother’s and father’s side, my ancestors came from Ilesha in Yorubaland. My father was the Right Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti. His middle name, Oludotun, means “The Great Being Is Always Right”. I think my father was convinced that he, too, was always right. In any case, that’s the impression he made. Oh, he could be so hard with his children! There was Dolu,1 my sister, the eldest of all; then Koye,2 then me; and lastly, my younger brother Beko.3 The only person who could call my father by his nickname – “Daudu” (The Good Teacher) – was my mother. We had to call him Sir. Yeh! That’s how it was! That’s what they call respect, man!

  I don’t know much about my father’s maternal side except that they all came from Ilesha. But on his paternal side, I know quite a lot about my grandfather, Reverend Canon J.J. Ransome-Kuti. He was the one who was a missionary in Abeokuta. He died young, at sixty-something. My grandfather became a legend. He was one of the big pioneers of the Yoruba Christian Church. He was a musician and composed religious hymns. The man was so talented. The missionaries fully exploited his talent too. They took him to England to do some recordings in London. One of those who took him there was named Ransome. You follow me, man? They took him around London and had him record something like twenty-five records – 78rpms – with the label EMI. That was in 1925. At the time, his songs were so popular in Nigeria. Religious songs, you know. But very Africanized. Even now his tunes are used for folksongs and things like that. Ah, Canon J.J., he was some man! He was so Christian that the traditionalists in Abeokuta almost killed him. Man, even after a hundred years of Christian penetration in Yorubaland, the people continued to resist. They were against the missionaries. So you know what had to happen to as fervent a missionary as my grandfather. One day, he was attacked. They had wanted to kill him, but he didn’t die. They just left him there, thinking he was dead. But he was not dead. My grandfather was motherfucking strong, man!

  Now, where was I in the story? Oh, yes. After leaving England, the missionaries then took my grandfather to Jerusalem. You know what for? So he could kiss the ground where Christ had walked. Imagine that! Now when they showed him Jesus Christ’s tomb, he was so devout he jumped in and wanted to go to sleep right there. But that’s not all, man! Once he got back to Nigeria, the missionary named Ransome thought he would honour my grandfather by giving him the name Ransome. So they put Ransome between his name to make it Ransome-Kuti. That’s how my family got the name Ransome, man!

  My grandfather, though, wasn’t even born into a Christian family. His father – that’s my great-grandfather whose name I haven’t yet found out – was an authentic traditionalist who resisted to his very last breath the spread of Christianity in Yorubaland. But in spite of that, he was unable to keep his own son out of the hands of the missionaries, man. Remember that then, around 1800, the only schools where you could learn to read and write were missionary schools. These oyinbo schools didn’t mean shit to my great-grandfather: “The white man gives out his medicine at the same time as his poison.” I can almost hear him cry out, man, the day when his wife announced that his own son would be going from then on to one of those schools! “The white man is only here to steal our sheer butter!” My grandfather would never forget those words, however Christian he became afterwards. And they were handed down from father to son and only got to me when I was already big.

  On my mother’s side, things are still a bit unclear. I know though that on her father’s side I am a descendant of a slave. You know that till around the middle of the nineteenth century the slave trade across the Atlantic was still going on, making ravages everywhere in Yorubaland and also among the Ibos, Calabaris and other peoples who lived along the coasts and in the interior – what’s called Nigeria today. Again this fucking matter of a name, man! Nigeria! Who ever heard of such a name before 1906? No joke, man. It was the wife of a colonial governor who pulled it out of her head or out of a hat. I swear! In any case, my mother’s father was a freed slave. He was captured as a small boy in Ilesha – probably seven or eight years old at the time – and was taken as a slave to Sierra Leone. The British decided to give this freedom thing just in time to keep my mother’s father from being shipped off to the plantations of the West Indies or the south of the United States. That was in 1834.*

  Once free, many of the slaves in Sierra Leone who still remembered their country of birth wanted to return. My grandfather was one of those. He was among the Egba from Yorubaland who left Sierra Leone around 1838 – on foot – to return home. I think it must have taken them years of walking before they got to Lagos. Two thousand kilometres on foot! Imagine that! My grandfather walked … and walked … and walked, man. The funny part of the story is that just as he was getting near to Ilesha, about one hundred and fifty kilometres away, my grandfather got tired. So he stopped and settled in Abeokuta and stayed there.

  You see, my grandfather was just a child when he was captured. He grew up in slavery. He didn’t know his ancestors. He didn’t even know his real African name. He had to accept Christianity. That’s how he acquired Thomas. That’s the name the missionaries of Sierra Leone imposed on him. Becoming in turn one of those staunch Christians himself, he ended up building a church. He had only one wife whose name was Adejonwo, which means “We Are All Looking Up To The Crown”. Today I interpret the word “crown” as meaning tradition. For, in spite of her conversion to Christianity, my maternal grandmother continued worshipping Oshùn, the goddess of rivers and ravines. She was a descendant of that family which worships Oshùn. That was the kind of woman who gave birth, in 1900, to my mother Funmilayo* Thomas. Imagine that, man, today I could have been na
med Fela Ransome-Thomas!

  Fela’s father, Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti (“Daudu”)

  Photo: West African Photo House, Abeokuta

  2

  Three Thousand Strokes

  On 15 October 1938, I was born a second time in a hospital somewhere in Abeokuta. Abeokuta? Terrible, man. A planless town. Desolate. The only people you saw in the streets were tax collectors and soldiers. There was the reservation where the white man lived – called “Ibara” – and then the town. Finish. Abeokuta was the deadest town you ever saw. Nothing happened. There were occasional Yoruba ceremonies, but we children were discouraged from being interested in such things. Our family was Christian and those things, we were taught, were “pagan”.

  The people of Abeokuta had pride because, as they recounted, “Abeokuta was never colonized.” I once heard an elder say: “Let the Englishman tell about the Adubi War. He wanted to make a road from Lagos to Abeokuta. One man only fought the whole English army. Many soldiers were sent, but they all died-o.” I swear, man! It’s true. They could not take Abeokuta. The British had to sign a Protectorate Agreement. So Abeokuta was a protectorate because of the 1914 War of Adubi. This is not mythology, man. This is fact. Historical facts that aren’t taught in school.

  Where did they take me after my birth? Maybe to the Abeokuta Grammar School where my parents were living then. The school was owned by them. Some students who came from far away would board at the school. But all that is very blurred in my mind! It was a big school with well-tended flower gardens. In time, the Ransome-Kuti family compound was referred to as a “village” because it was self-dependent. There was the school, with its chapel, my parents’ large house and a garage too for the one family car. Yes, man, my parents had a car. Then, there was a huge courtyard where countless day-to-day activities went on. We grew our own food and raised lots of goats, chickens and other small livestock. There was everything one needed in the Ransome-Kuti compound. But at home I was never free. That much I remember very clearly, man.

  My father, Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti, was Principal of the Abeokuta Grammar School and for a while of the Grammar School of Ijebu-Ode, several kilometres away. He was also the first President of the Nigerian Union of Teachers. There was something curious about him though. Unlike other clergymen, he was never a pastor of any church parish. He was mainly concerned with teaching. He preached sermons very rarely; probably only during school functions. What he did do was invite other reverends to preach in the school chapel. I think that my father must have seen there was something wrong in the Nigerian education system, in Nigerian politics and Nigerian social life. Maybe he didn’t understand what it was exactly. But in any case, he transformed Abeokuta Grammar School into a forum, a forum of teaching, a forum of learning.

  My father was so strict, man. He believed in discipline. He also taught music at school. And probably got his musical aptitude from his father who was also a composer. When it came to his music lessons he was even more strict. He wouldn’t hesitate to use his atori (cane) to whip the back of his students. I was among his best students in music but that didn’t keep me from getting beaten with the atori. He was so strict during our lessons that we were all afraid. If anyone got out of line, he would get his nyash (ass) beat severely. Mark you, he would whip your nyash, then say: “Straighten up your knees!” And if you didn’t straighten them, you would get even more severely beaten.

  My father was so strange! He was strict, but he was also interesting because he was always jovial. Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti liked flowers and he had the most neatly kept flower gardens you can think of around the school compound. He wouldn’t allow goats to graze or to come around there and he always had us students chase them away. He was generally in good humour, except when you went against his laid-down principles.

  If you offended him while he was beating you, you would get beaten with three times as much force. I always wondered how a man who looked so jovial could be so fucking cold when he would flog you. The students were terrified of him. Whenever they heard the words, “Oga mbo” – meaning, “The Principal is coming” – there was a stampede. The whole place would become pandemonium-o, with everyone trying to find their own place to avoid the beatings. My father used to believe and say, “Those who walk crookedly are either rogues or men of dubious character.” So if you walked crookedly in front of him you would get the shit beaten out of you. That’s for sure.

  My mother wasn’t any better than my father. Ummmmmmmmmmm!!! She beat the hell outta me, man. My mother was the most wicked mother ever seen in life when it came to beating. Oh-la-la! Every time, I would say, “This is the end of me.” Oh, how she would beat me! She beat me with sticks. Different kinds of sticks … small, big, medium. She doesn’t think about it twice. She’d say, “Bend over. Touch your toes.” And with my nyash up in the air, she would beat my ass like a man. Five strokes. Twelve. Twenty-four. Thirty. She is something else! Well, you see, I couldn’t reconcile her love for me and the beating. I couldn’t reconcile it. I understood it later on, but not then. My parents themselves were confused. Confused about education and how to bring us up. They were really into the white man’s education. So if you ask me who was worse – my father or my mother, I couldn’t say. . . . They were both bad. My mother would kick my ass and my father would kick my ass. You know what I mean? They were both kicking ass, man. Left, right and centre.

  I’m telling you, man. The beatings that I, Fela, alone received amounted to no less than three thousand strokes. After my father died I started thinking about it. I began counting all the beatings I could remember. And I counted … three thousand! Three thousand, I’m telling you. Between my mother and father combined I got three thousand strokes between the ages of nine and seventeen. That’s without counting the beatings I got from my teachers. I’m not kidding, man. My teachers too. Oh, yes, they kicked my ass almost every day, man! There’s no week I didn’t get ass-kicking. Ask my brothers. Ask anybody who was with me at school at that time. The education they brought was to kick the boys, kick their asses. They thought the white man was right, you know.

  What I liked about my father is that he kicked everybody’s ass. One day, he even kicked a white man’s ass. It was a British education officer who made the rounds inspecting schools. My father’s school was built by our people in Abeokuta, not by the British government. So my father never allowed any British to come and inspect his school. When this inspector came, my father told him he couldn’t inspect the school, but the man insisted. My father said: “This is MY school!” And he grabbed his atori and flogged him out – flam, flam, flam! Oh, man, I dug him for that!

  The Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti did not like the military either. He wasn’t into politics, but in his own way he would also clash occasionally with the military colonial government of his day. One day, for instance, he was passing through the premises of the military settlement of Abeokuta with his hat on. A Nigerian soldier ordered him to remove his hat. “Why?” asked my father.

  And you know what that fucking soldier answered?

  “Don’t you see you’re walking past the British flag?”

  When my father still refused to obey the order, the soldier tried forcing the hat off his head with a bayonet. My father resisted and received a bayonet stab in the face, near the eye. He almost lost an eye from the injury. Ah, but the British authorities heard about that, and how! My father complained bitterly and made a big fuss over it to the colonial authorities. In the end, the soldiers’ barracks – which were then at Itesi, near Sacred Heart Hospital – were removed from the heart of town where this incident occurred and moved to the fringes of town, in Lafenwa. And they’re still there today. The British military and their Nigerian lackeys were kicked out of town because of my father’s protest. As a child, though, I never knew about that terrible incident. That stupid soldier was capable of killing my father, man! It wasn’t until 1974, after the first police raid on my house, that my mother told me the story.

  �
��That’s what they did to your father, too,” she said. “They cut his face with a bayonet, almost took out his eye, in front of Sacred Heart Hospital. . . .”

  When I was small I felt nothing about the British colonial soldiers I used to see around. They just seemed a part of the scenery. I never felt anything towards them. I thought it was the right thing that was happening. I was born into it. It never occurred to me to ask why they were there. My parents never brought it up. All they would talk about to us children was religion, man.

  Sad? Happy? Indifferent? What did I feel in my childhood? I couldn’t say if I was happy or unhappy. It was a confused life for me. Things I wanted to do I couldn’t do then. I had to do what my parents told me to do. What did I want? I wanted to be free, go out with my friends, but my parents wouldn’t let me. They had this English colonized mentality, you see. Luckily, I found some solace in the companionship of my sister and brothers. At the beginning I was closer to my younger brother Beko, because we’re about the same age. But then my elder brother Koye was very friendly and we became close too. We were all close. Maybe because we all feared our parents. Even today, as far as I’m concerned I’m close to all of them. We have our squabbles but we’re all close. We only differ ideologically.

  They live in their own world and have their own materialistic quarrels. Quarrels about how my sister behaves, about the family property in Abeokuta and things like that. I don’t get involved. Actually I don’t discuss particularly with them. I refuse to get into squabbles over things like heritage, property, etc. If things come in, just pass it to me. I don’t want to know how they do it.