Fela, Black President

Back in this post I wrote about a somber, gentle tune of extended hopelessness that made it back onto my turntable after a decades-long absence. Bleak times call for bleak music.

Sometimes though, soft, zen-like disconsolate sounds just won’t do the trick to knock down the ugliness our brain dead overlords are creating. You need to move up to a stronger grade of sheer contempt to spray in their general direction.

That is where Fela’s Black President comes in.

Fela Kuti let his contempt for the Nigerian government be known, loudly, and with great frequency. They threw him in jail. He survived numerous beatings and a lynching before watching his mother be thrown out of a window. None of this shut him up or made him retreat. This is probably a good time to state that at the first sign of trouble I’d sew my lips shut and take the first flight out of town.

Nothing has changed. The corrupt officials, businessmen and the military who hounded Fela are still in charge and there is now an insane terrorist group roaming Nigeria. But, at least they know the people think they are garbage, that they are still laughed at whenever Fela songs play. Fela Kuti has gone from being an African superstar to a global icon. More people listen to his music now, decades after his death, than during his lifetime.

My brother brought Black President home back when I was in high school, a couple years after its 1981 release date. I think Fela was still in prison at the time. When he was released he would go on to tour the USA, playing Los Angeles in a green Speedo.

In a nice twist, my friends really dug Black President and it was played all summer long. Not bad considering that one guy’s favorite band was Rush, another was full-on into AC/DC, and a third was making a strong counter argument for the sensual stylings of Sade. We’d put Black President on the turntable after coming back from hours spent at the beach. We’d make tuna and salsa sandwiches on fresh bread from Tijuana as Fela blared all around us.

I’m not sure we were the audience Fela had in mind for his music.

The Cover

Very nice. Almost feels like a xeroxed and hand-colored punk rock concert flier but this also reminds me of those early, 2-toned record sleeves that came out of Rio at the birth of bossa nova.

I like that the sky is a sickly yellow and that Fela’s horn is blood red.

The Music

Black President is only three songs long but a number of Fela LP’s only have 1 song per side on them so you get 33% more songs here!!  The LP is a best-of that may have been put out in anticipation of the French documentary Music Is A Weapon.

“Sorrow, Tears and Blood” opens up the album on a circular guitar riff, percussive bomps, and keyboard jabs. An electric keyboard solo starts out mournfully, gaining power until the sax comes in. After almost three minutes, Fela’s voice enters, doing ambulance sounds before he starts to sing. Like the keyboard, the song itself starts off melodic, calm and sad while the anger and disgust ramp up. The lyrics speak of living in such a state of terror that “we fear the air around us” before calling sorrow, tears, and blood a “regular trademark.” In the middle of it all, the cops are told to whip themselves and soldiers are told they look like donkeys. Then it all slowly comes back down to the vocal siren sounds again.

I have no idea why this song is so life affirming and liberating but it is. It somehow builds a victory out of continuous defeat. Its like a Nigerian Dunkirk survived every single day. “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” isn’t just my favorite Fela song, its been an all-time favorite song for decades.

“Colonial Mentality” starts off almost like reggae dub before the sax and then the rest of the band comes in with a horn section that isn’t that different from 1970s big band jazz. This time it takes almost 8 minutes for the vocals to enter for a stretch before the solo instruments take over again. It’s my least favorite song on the album and it’s still fantastic!

That’s it for the A side. Flip the platter over and you get “I.T.T.” for the entire side.

This one is a killer too. I.T.T. was an American company that really was a giant mass of garbage. They helped launder money for the Nazis before America entered WW2, were involved in coups in Brazil and Chile, and were the major players in a criminal bribery scandal that failed in putting the Republican Convention in my hometown of San Diego.

A Nigerian cabdriver I’ve rode with a number of times recently told me about I.T.T.’s involvement in his home country and the story behind the song. The company bribed the government to take over the Nigeria’s phone service, which resulted in sporadic phone service at best, and no phone service for much of the time. The driver was laughing and laughing when he was telling me the story. The Fela song was released at the same time that everybody’s phones were going out. He wanted everyone to know who was responsible and how the corruption that caused it was related to so much else in Nigerian life.

I.T.T.’s reputation was so terrible that they split into three successful companies with different names. They are all still around.

I don’t think you need to know any of this history, or even be able to find Nigeria on a map, to intuitively understand it all while listening to Black President. The truth in the music is self-evident.

Of the musicians listed on back of the LP, the American trumpet player Lester Bowie is the only one I know of by name. Tony Allen, Fela’s famous drummer, was out of the group by this point. Fela is long gone but Tony Allen is still at it. His 2017 Blue Note album The Source is a real gem.

Another record to get!

— Nick Dedina