Nigeria, the land of plenty

Arese Amokpae in the role of Sandra This week is the week of Felabrations . Many music events are celebrating the memory of Fela Kuti across Lagos. Freedom Park has a series of Afro-beat concerts, same thing at the New Afrika Shrine . And this year a musical called Fela - arrest the music, written by Paul Ugbede, in reference to the life of Fela, in Nigeria, during which Fela was a strong critic of the short-comings of successive governments and generals. State coffers where used to fill private pockets, especially with bubbling oil resources being the main government income. Theft, corruption were the essential ways to get rich for the happy few who in the meantime ignored the poverty and the stagnation of the masses. The musical was played at Muson Centre, the classical musical institution of Lagos. It was musically directed by a Nigerian who graduated at the Muson center itself, Ayo Ajayi, therefore one of the first musical made in Nigeria. This was, in my view, a very good th...

make-up for the Gods, smoke for inspiration Fela came from a well-off family of Abeokuta. Soon after Nigeria was made independent, he went to England to study music at Trinity College, classical music at first and soon turned to jazz. He played there with a band called the Koola Lobitos which was fairly successful in the clubs in London in the early sixties. He went back to Nigeria and recreated his band, gathered influence from James Brown, highlife music and developed a musical style progressively known as Afrobeat. His band was renamed Nigeria 70 at the beginning of the 70's He travelled to the US on tour and was introduced by Sandra Izsadore to the conditions of black americans and the black liberation movements with the politics of Malcolm X among others. Upon his return to Nigeria, he became more active politically. He set-up a recording studio called Kalakuta republic and a night-club not too far called the Shrine. He was opposing to the rule of Generals who had po...

who's wearing the hat? Lagos Jazz Series is back in Lagos, an interesting mix of jazz directions produced in a couple of venues in the course of a week. Well, this year the line-up was disrupted by the killings of Radisson Blue in Bamako, Mali which caused American artists to cancel their trip until further notice. An unfortunate confusion between Bamako in Mali and Lagos in Nigeria. While both are in western Africa, they are worlds apart. Lagos has not seen any terrorist acts or at least not in recent years. Occasional armed robberies may happen but these remain rare and police is now doing a much better job to prevent them. chinese vibe from the Collective Fortunately, not all artists were coming from the US and two big artists made the day on November 27th over a collaboration. First Seun Kuti and Egypt 80. Seun is the younger son of Fela. He is keeping alive the flame of his father Fela Kuti by perpetuating Afrobeat, pretty much in the way his father left it a...