Fela Page 6

  Music is what really made J.K. and I so tight. He was already singing with a band – “The Cool Cats” – and was popular in Lagos. Whenever I came to Lagos, man, we would have a holiday around that band – playing music, singing, dancing. Oh, wow! That was real life!

  J.K. was a helluva woman-chaser then. Not me. At home, my parents didn’t allow me to smoke. I wanted to smoke. I wanted to drink. They didn’t allow me to drink alcohol. I wanted to go with women. But they used to make me fear women and all those things. . . . I was never free at home, man. So I got used to the training. I wasn’t the cause of it. I was taught the cause-of-it-ism. So I was very colonial, a good Christian boy. I never used to smoke, drink, or run around with girls. I was always wearing a suit and tie and was very proper. I loved women, wanted to go with them, but I was afraid of women, you see. Everything made me afraid of women. Would you believe that?

  Not J.K. J.K. wasn’t a Christian, so he was just doing as he liked. He wasn’t from a Christian home. He was a different man from me completely. He was all so free. The girls always liked J.K. He was a nice guy with a fucking nice voice. He used to be a guest artist to several local bands, like Victor Olaiya’s. Actually, he was the steady singer for the Cool Cats. Since he had lived for a while in Ghana, J.K. became popular singing Ghanaian tunes. At that time, man, there was nothing more popular in Nigeria than Ghanaian highlife. Women everywhere would be shouting, “J.K.,” “J.K.,” “J.K.” That’s how I got my first break in singing. J.K. introduced me to Victor Olaiya and the Cool Cats and I began singing with them. J.K. got a Kumba band together – with people like Godrich Khan, who is now a doctor, Femi Williams, and some other boys – and we would go on the air. We were playing highlife and some jazz on the radio, man! Oh, those were such beautiful days!

  Happiness. Why is it so shortlived? Why should suffering bear more weight than joy? My father’s sickness was announced to me with the suddenness of any bad news. I saw him rapidly fading away. And then he died. Cancer of the prostate. That was in 1955 and I was seventeen. I remember looking at him lying there on the bed, motionless. Whatever went through my mind then I have forgotten. Everybody around me was crying. I did too. But I didn’t really know what I was crying for. The motherfucker had beaten me so much, man, that his death was also a little bit of relief. But I missed him afterwards. I didn’t want him to die. I was both sad and not sad at the same time.

  The death of my father made me think about his idiosyncracies. I started remembering many things about him. We had never had anything like a close relationship. But he was an honest man. Strict. With a colonial attitude towards training, education and discipline. But yet an honest man. I liked my father. I didn’t want him to die. But as I went over the past of brutal beatings, I felt glad that he had died. And many times after, I would find myself being thankful that the man had died, because at least I would have peace from then on. But again, my father was my father, after all. . . . And I had lost him. Does any of that make sense?

  Strangely enough, it was my father’s death that opened doors to my parents’ life together. Doors which till then had been shut to us children. Only then did we find out that for years – in fact, ever since I was a young child – our parents had been estranged from one another, to the point that they had even stopped sleeping together from the time I was seven, which would make it around 1945. They kept on living under the same roof but as total strangers to one another, and none of us even suspected it. I don’t know what happened. There was a misunderstanding. I believe my father didn’t support our mother’s political activities. We only knew this on the day of his burial. You see, my mother was in her room that day. And there were all of these women from Abeokuta who had come to mourn my father’s death with her. She was crying and sobbing. The women were consoling her. Then she spoke to them:

  “For ten years I haven’t moved near my husband. And you women, you caused it!”

  I knew then that she blamed the rupture with our father on the women of Abeokuta for whose rights she had fought since the early ’40s.

  “You women, you caused it!” she cried aloud, over and over again.

  Christian or not, my father was still a Yoruba man and I don’t think he liked the idea of not seeing his woman in the house any more, once “Bere” had begun her fight.

  I remember J.K. being at the memorial service held for my father in Ijebu-Ode. J.K. claims that that was the first time we ever met. But I always tell him that’s bullshit, man. We had met the year before. I remember well because at the time we used to spend our holidays together, including Christmas. We would talk a lot. About what we wanted to do in life. About girls. About our childhood. Just about every and anything, man. He was then having trouble finishing secondary school, because all J.K. wanted was to hang out in Lagos, sing, make music and chase girls. All his pals in school said he would never make the “Cert”.* J.K. was such a fantastic guy! Nobody alive knew more about my life at that time than he did. . . .

  Jimo Kombi Braimah (“J.K.”)

  Photo: Chico

  5

  J.K. Braimah

  My Man Fela

  Of average height, brown-skinned with almond-shaped eyes and a generous, contagious smile which lights up his face, J.K. Braimah is good-natured and calm whatever the circumstances. And will listen as attentively – even for hours on end – as he can engagingly carry on a conversation. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1935, to an animist and polygamous Yoruba family (his father having two wives), J.K. grew up in a purely African environment. While the only boy of the three children born to his mother, J.K. has two other sisters and three brothers born to his father’s second wife. His father, a Lagosian, was an accountant; his “blood-mother” a merchant trader. For unspecified reasons, J.K.’s father decided very early to send J.K. to Accra, Ghana, for his primary school education. J.K. only returned to Nigeria for his secondary schooling in Ijebu-Ode. And it was around that time when he would meet Fela.

  Q: When you met Fela what was he like?

  A: Ohhhhhhh! Fela was something else when I first met him. Outwardly, he looked like a nice, clean boy. A perfect square. But inside he was a ruffian, man. And I knew it. Many of my friends, they always tell me: “That crazy boy! What are you doing with that boy? Why don’t you leave him alone?” But this guy, I’ve finished prospecting him a long time ago. This guy, you can feel him the way he does things. You knew that this guy was not a young guy. I told many guys, “This boy, he’s a ruffian. He doesn’t even know how to talk to people. You just wait. We’ll see what this guy can do.” And it was true. Even my family didn’t like Fela and didn’t want me associating with him.

  Q: So how did you both hook up in London?

  A: Well, after finishing my secondary school in Ijebu-Ode in 1956, I began working as a clerk in the High Court of Lagos. I loved law. I wanted to be a lawyer, man. It was with that in mind that I made my parents send me to England in 1958, where one of my sisters was living. I was then twenty-three years old. Can you imagine that, man? Going to England? At that time, that was like going to Heaven for Nigerians! Hoo-hooooooooo! Fela had left to England about two months ahead of me. So we had agreed beforehand on the hook-up. He’d gone to study music. Actually, I wrote Fela to tell him I was coming, but he didn’t know where I was going to be in England. I went to London. At the beginning I enrolled myself at one of the Inns of Court, Gray’s Inn. I was going to read law. . . . And, of course, Fela came round to my house one day.

  Q: You mean he just dropped by?

  A: Yeh … just like that! I was sitting down in my house in … what was this place? It’s a very popular place in Shepherds Bush, you know. But I’ve forgotten the name of that street. Anyway, my sister took me there. She had been in England for some time. So she took me down to this place to go and stay there. And then one night I was sitting down there, talking to this West Indian guy who was my roommate. And I hear somebody knocking. “Who is that?” And in comes Fela. I say to myself, “This boy is looking
for me again? I’m in trouble!” [Laughter.] And from that night I took my few bags and everything and left with him. I went to his place. He was staying in Brisley Gardens, in White City. I didn’t come back to my house again.

  We started sharing the room together. I was paying half. He was paying half. He was going to Trinity College of Music and I was going to North-Western Polytechnic at that time.

  Q: What were you studying?

  A: I told you I wanted to do law at the beginning, but I couldn’t get in. I didn’t make it. You see, I’m not so bright. [Laughter.] When me and Fela started living together we used to go out in town a lot, you know. One day I told him: “Man, we can form a band. We can form a band on our own, man. Why not?” Fela said, “Yeah, we can form a band. Let’s go and do something.” And we went into a shop. We started hiring – you know, hire-purchase – some of the instruments. I got drums. Fela got trumpet, I think. He had enough bread to buy it. Besides, that was his instrument then and not the saxophone like now.

  Q: Who was giving him bread at that time?

  A: His mama, man! But I didn’t have bread to buy shit, man. If I had told the folks at home that I was going to buy drums, they’d say, “What???? That’s not what we sent him there for!”

  Q: So who was supporting you?

  A: My family. He-he-he-hey! Even at the beginning they were doing their ass over when I started doing music, man. They were fucking mad. “We’re not going to send you any more money,” my parents wrote me. They stopped my allowance. Man, I couldn’t understand how people could hate such a beautiful thing as music, and look down on it. I said, “Never mind. I love to play music. Finish.” So me and Fela formed this group called the Koola Lobitos. We started out playing for Nigerian students who were studying in England. You know, all the dances in the halls and that sort of stuff.

  Q: Why that name: Koola Lobitos?

  A: I don’t know why that name. Fela gave it that name. I wanted something different. Anyway, he had his way and we formed Koola Lobitos with some West Indian guys. I played guitar and Fela played trumpet. We used to play highlife, Fela’s compositions, and some other numbers like “I am the O-by-a-wo-wh-y”, and things like that. It caught on. So we were playing with this group till about ’61, or ’62.

  Q: In London?

  A: Yeah, in London. It came to be our thing that at the weekend we get money to spend in our pockets. We used to have gigs, in places where we’d play for students on Fridays, Saturdays. We were always having money with us, Fela and myself. Wole Buckner, who’s now a high-ranking officer in the Nigerian Navy, was there with us. He was playing piano with the group. But he wasn’t deeply in it. You know what I mean? It was the two of us, Fela and myself, who actually started Koola Lobitos.

  Q: How many were you?

  A: We were about a nine-, ten-piece band.

  Q: You used to play for mainly West Indian and African audiences?

  A: Yeah, but we started going more and more into all the jazz clubs, like. . . . The Marquee, the JCC, Birdland and … what’s the name of that club in Gower Street? A very, very popular jazz club? Anyway, we played there.

  Q: What type of person was Fela then?

  A: He was very quiet, although he was very speedy, you know. He was speeding all the time. He was a cool guy, nice to work with. And he loved to play, man!

  Q: Did he drink a lot?

  A: Fela? Drink? He used to drink cider at that time; that’s all he’d drink. [Laughter.] He never got drunk off anything but cider, man. [Roaring laughter.] Whenever we went to parties he would start dancing. He would fill up on cider first. Then he would start challenging the others to dance. Girls, you know … Nigerian girls, they loved us because we were straight. We didn’t fool with anybody. We weren’t the kind of family type who wanted to get married and settle down. We were just doing our own thing. Chasing women? [Laughter.] Fela was very green at that time. Well, not green in the sense that he didn’t know. . . . Well, you know what I mean? He was afraid to fuck, man. [Roaring laughter.]

  Q: He didn’t smoke?

  A: Not even cigarettes. Let alone grass, even for fucking. He was afraid to fuck! We had to take his prick by hand, hold it and put it in the cunt for him. I swear! Well, for example, I tell Fela, “Fuck this woman. This girl will leave if you don’t fuck her.” Fela would answer, “Ohhhhh, she go get pregnant-o!” And I’d have to persuade him. Guys like Richard Buckner – that’s Wole Buckner’s senior brother – didn’t know how to go after women. So they would hang around us. When we’d get women they’d come around and take the girls away from us. All that was Fela’s fault. But we didn’t care because we were very popular.

  Q: That’s incredible.

  A: Man, it’s me, J.K. telling you! … We used to go around town. We were almost every night in the West End. Oh, man, when you would see me in London then. . . . For two years, you could never see me without tie or three-piece suit. I became like a gigolo. Gold rings everywhere. You know. . . . But, shit, Fela was a square, man! A nice guy, really beautiful guy. But as square as they come!

  Q: Your sister must have been happy to know you were in good company, uh?

  A: Shit, no! They were all against it. While I was in England my sisters, my parents kept up their shit: “What are you doing with this guy? Are you crazy? What are you doing with Fela?” I said, “Just leave me alone. I know he’s my friend. He’s my close friend.”

  Q: Then, your family’s opposition had a contrary effect?

  A: Definitely so! How could I drop Fela just because my family didn’t dig him? I dug him, man. We used to sleep together, eat together, sleep on the same bed, you know, things like that. I could never abandon a feeling like that, a friend like that. You know what I mean? If it’s a male friend, like a school friend, say, then we meet at school or we meet outside. That’s a different thing. But we were living together, you know. Telling each other secrets and everything, you know. Right from the time when we were away from our country. So it brought that close love between us because we were not in Nigeria.

  6

  A Long Way From Home

  Imagine me, Fela, eighteen years old, School Certificate in pocket, working as an office employee in Lagos, in a government office, Commerce and Industries? My first job ever in life, man. But I couldn’t stand that rigid shit. I resigned after six months. Soon after, I found another job in the same building. At that time they weren’t needing any workers. They were only needing people to sort of fill in the offices. So I saw no point in sticking around. Music was all I wanted to work at. And now that my father wasn’t there, it was easier to persuade my mother to let me go study music abroad.

  August 1958. I was nineteen. And off to a new life when I left to England! Trinity College of Music meant real hard work. No bullshit, man. I studied there from 1958 to December 1962. The final exam was in two parts, practical and theory. For theory, you had two books: one in harmony and counterpoint and the other in history. I failed theory but passed the practical on my instrument, which was then the trumpet. At Trinity, if you failed one part but passed the other, you had three years to pass the one failed. And if you didn’t pass it again within those three years, you had to pass both parts all over. In two and a half years I passed theory. It took me that much time because I was unable to concentrate on my written studies. You see, I couldn’t read. It was a real effort for me to read anything. I wouldn’t even read a newspaper at the time. Somehow the urge to read had been killed in me. And I came to feel the same way about films too.

  You see, one day I went to watch this film, Hitchcock’s Psycho. There was a billboard outside the cinema house which said: “No entry into cinema house 15 minutes before start of the show.” So, if you’re not there fifteen minutes before the show starts, you’re not allowed to enter. That’s how scary the film is. Then when you enter the cinema house fifteen minutes before the film starts, they start to fill your mind with some fucking music, man. And they put the cinema house dark. And that was the inte
ntion of the producer of the film. Everybody wonders what’s going to happen. Then the film starts rolling. It started so coolly, like nothing was happening. You know how terrible this film was? The actress, Janet Leigh, a big star then, died very early in the film. They killed her very early in the film and the film had another hour and a half to go. The way she was killed I almost jumped out of my chair. That thing scared me! It started me thinking. Like when I read that book about that Simon Templar guy. He was so smart, man. Just a clever man who decides to go and catch crooks. Then, when he’s ready he hands them over to the police or private detective … after he has got their bread. He spends the bread lavishly to make people happy. So, you see why I wanted to be Simon Templar, man.

  These films, these books really made me think twice. When do you see someone like Simon Templar around? Then, you go in the film house to watch Psycho and these fucking films scare you. I said to myself: “I see. So, this is what people do now? Somebody goes into his room, locks himself up, and decides he’s gonna scare the whole world.” I said, “Shit! I ain’t gonna watch no motherfucking scary film again. And I ain’t gonna read no fucking novel or stories unless they are history or true books or education.” That’s why I stopped reading novels and seeing those films, man. The first book I ever read since those days, man, was in 1969 when I went to the States: The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

  Grey. Wintry. Cold. Lonely. That was London, man. I was out of my natural environment. And I’ve always enjoyed being around a lot of people. But my four and a half years in Britain allowed me to really get in touch with jazz. At school I studied classical music. But outside of Trinity I played jazz.

  So it was shortly after I arrived, when I had been feeling the most lonely, that my mother made arrangements for me to visit, of all places, East Berlin. At that time they had just put up the Berlin wall, man. And I don’t want to travel nowhere. I didn’t even have money to travel. But my mother wanted to arrange a holiday for me. Why … East Berlin? The “Iron Curtain” was getting big publicity in England then. It was newspaper headlines. It was said that if you went into communist countries you would never come out; that communist countries were dangerous for human beings. So I was scared to go, man. I didn’t want to go. But how could I disobey my mother?