Everybody say Ye-Ye!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4AA6EuZe-k] Michael E. Veal A humid weekend night in the early 1990s. The scene: outside the Afrika Shrine nightclub in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria, home base of the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his thirty-piece orchestra, Egypt 80. Even though the ubiquitous, machine gun toting soldiers of the Nigerian army have a well-deserved reputation for making the lives of ordinary civilians miserable, they are decidedly peripheral to tonight’s scenario. The Shrine is understood to be Fela’s autonomous zone, where his own anarchic, hedonistic law prevails. The atmosphere is festive as the audience enters, a mixture of students, activists, rebels, criminals, music lovers, and even politicians, policemen, and soldiers arriving incognito. They make their way through the sea of traders hawking their goods by candle light snacks,drinks, cigarettes, and marijuana as the sound of the Egypt 80 spills from inside the open-air club. After purchasing a ticket and being frisked for weapons at the doorway, audience members enter the interior of the Shrine, a semi-enclosed counter-cultural carnival of funky, political music, pot smoking, mysticism, and provocative dancing. Four fishnet-draped go-go cages, each containing a loosely clad female dancer grinding languorously, rise out of the smoky haze. A neon light in the shape of the African continent casts its red glow over the stage. In addition to more food, drink, and marijuana vendors, the rear of the club houses an actual shrine a large altar containing religious objects and photos of Fela’s Pan-Africanist political heroes, including Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sekou Toure, and his late mother, Mrs. Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti. The Egypt 80 band has been playing since midnight, wanning up the crowd with classics from Fela’s older recorded repertoire, such as ”Trouble Sleep” (1972), “Why Blackman Dey Suffer” (1972), “Lady” (1972), “Water No Get Enemy” (1975), “Opposite People” (1975), “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” (1977), “Dog Eat Dog” (1977), “Beasts of No Nation” (1986), and bandleader/baritone saxophonist Lekan Animashaun’s “Serere (Do Right).” The band is awaiting Fela’s arrival, so these songs are sung by various band members, including Animashaun (known around the Shrine as “Baba Ani”), second baritone saxophonist Rilwan Fagbemi (known as “Showboy”), Fela’s ten year- old son Seun, and artist/musician Dede Mabiaku, whom Fela often referred to as his “adopted son.” Fela, the “Chief Priest of Shrine,” finally arrives with his retinue around 2 A.M., to tumultuous applause. Dressed tonight in a tight purple jumpsuit stitched with traditional Yoruba symbols and shapes, he makes his way through the crowd to the stage and salutes his audience with the clenched-fist black power salute. He steps up to the mike and pauses, surveying the crowd with mischievous eyes while taking intermittent puffs from a flashlight-sized joint in his hand. Finally he speaks: Everybody say ye-ye! The crowd roars in response, and Fela segues directly into the profane, no-holds-barred criticism of the country’s leaders he has offered his audiences for the past two decades: Bro’s and sisters, if you want to know how corrupt this country is, that word “corruption” has lost its meaning here! Fela arches his eyebrows, thrusts his chest and stomach out, and marches around the stage in imitation of the arrogant and obese ogas (literally “bosses”), men of importance who parade their wealth around Lagos in the midst of suffering: “Yeah, I’m corrupt, man!” The crowd bursts into laughter, and Fela continues his monologue: In fact, corruption has even become a title in this country! In Germany, they have President Kohl. In America, they have President Bush. In England they have Prime Minister Major. Here in Nigeria, we have Corrupted Babangida! At the mention of their president, the audience shouts in deafening unison “Ole!” (Yoruba for “thief”). Fela switches into pidgin English and recounts an incident in which the president was snubbed by French president François Mitterand during a recent state visit: When Corrupted Babangida go for France, Mitterand no wan meet am. He go dey send a cultural minister. He go say Nigeria be nation of thieves. The man was disgraced. When he came back, the fucking army was kicking ass all over Nigeria! Na how many students dem kill fo’ dat one? The crowd roars in laughter and approval, the Shrine now rocking like a revivalist church: You see, bro’s and sisters, I know dem. They are nothing but spirit beings. They are the same motherfuckers who sold Africans into slavery hundreds of years ago. In fact, the same spirit who controls Babangida controls Bush and Thatcher too. Everyone is here to play their same role again, and I want you all to know that tonight; Babangida, Obasanjo, Abiola, they have all been here before. That’s why I call this time the era of ”second slavery.” They don’t have to come here and take us by force our leaders sell us up front. Everybody say ye-ye! The audience shouts “ye-ye!” punctuated with cries of “yab dem!” (abuse them). Bro’s and sisters, I’m gonna play for you now, a thing we call M.A.S.S.”Music Against Second Slavery.” Fela spins around and sternly surveys the orchestra members, who stare at him intently. Slowly, he begins to clap out the song’s tempo to the band, wiggling his slender body to the rhythm. Though short in stature, he wields enormous authority onstage. A guitarist begins a serpentine single-note line, accompanied by a percussionist thumping out a thunderous rhythm atop an eight-foot traditional gbedu drum laid on its side. The audience indicates its growing excitement by yelling Fela’s various nicknames in response: “Omo Iya Aje!” (son of a powerful woman [literally “witch”]), “Baba!” (father), “Abami Eda!” (strange one, or spirit being), “Chief Priest!” “Black President!” Fela raises his hands above his head and waves the percussionists and rhythm section in. Time itself seems to slowly shift along with the sticks and the shekere rattle, whose steady chirping frames an intricate tapestry of spacy rhythm. Stepping to his electric organ at center stage, Fela begins to improvise around the rhythm with greater and greater density. At the height of his solo, he waves in the