Nigerian pop music still in Fela Kuti’s shadow
But Felabration organiser not impressed with values, lyrics
Lagos – Fela Kuti was known as “the King of Afrobeat”.
Krizbeatz calls himself “the King of Afro Dance”, the Nigerian music that has got millions dancing across Africa and the world.
For Fela, as he is still known to fans, music was often a life-threatening fight against corrupt military dictatorships that ruled Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s.
For the talented Krizbeatz, a child of the capitalist and democratic 1990s, music is a game.
But the self-assured 22-year-old music producer – real name Chris Alvin Sunday – is still inspired by Fela when he’s at his mixing desk.
“I studied house music in South Africa but I’m Nigerian. Afrobeat is what I grew up listening to. Afrobeat is who I am,” he said.
In 2016, Krizbeatz produced the hit Pana, which has had close to 53-million views on YouTube and was downloaded 10.5-million times on Spotify.
Some feel that 20 years after his death in 1997, Fela would turn in his grave to see the new generation celebrating designer labels, luxury cars and champagne. But Krizbeatz said Nigerian music is first and foremost about the beat.
“If you talk about a Nigerian song, you talk about the beat before anything else. You hear it and you just want to dance and be happy, before you can listen to the lyrics.”
Abdul Okwechime organises the week-long “Felabration” festival of Fela’s life and work. The festival, which ended at the weekend, is held every year around the musician’s birthday.
Okwechime is less than impressed with the turn that lyrics today have taken.
“They talk too much about femininity, the sensuality of women. We have lost protest music, music to wake up to, to make you aware of our society and its ills,” he said, as he took visitors around Fela’s commune, dubbed Kalakuta Republic in Lagos.
Fela lived at his commune – which he once declared an independent republic – with his family, band and 27 wives.
“Now they (modern musicians) talk about butts, they talk about boobs ... the sexuality of women, that’s what they talk about now,” said Okwechime.
Nevertheless, Fela’s music and influence is still important.
Even Nigerian megastar Wizkid – the first Afrobeat artist to headline a sold-out show at London’s Royal Albert Hall – opened his historic concert there in September with Fela’s 1972 epic, Lady.
Other artists pay tribute in different ways. At his Borno Winners Empire studio, in the upmarket Lagos suburb of Lekki, Adekunle Gold is wearing traditional dress and recording his second album.
Around him is his band, The 79th Element, named after the atomic number for gold.
The singer said he has created a new sound, mixing musical styles inspired by Nigerian Afropop, Indian harmonies and Ghanaian Highlife, but underlying it with percussion and vocals like Fela’s in his heydey.
“Fela is no more, but he’s still within us. He’s legendary. If I’m on stage and I don’t hear that sound, I feel that something is missing,” said Gold.
Unlike Fela Kuti, artists no longer risk prison for speaking out, as the internet and social networks have brought greater freedom of expression to Nigeria.
‘‘ Fela is no more. If I’m on stage and don’t hear that sound, I feel something is missing