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    Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos [1983]
    Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos [1983]
    Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos [1983]
    Ebook48 pages1 hour

    Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos [1983]

    By Dan Dinello

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    About this ebook

    "Finding Fela" is my personal memoir of a journey to Lagos, Nigeria, to film the legendary African musician and political firebrand Fela Kuti, the "Black President." In 1983, Fela was Africa’s best-known performer: he mixed radical politics and pop music as they have rarely been mixed before. As a white man from Chicago, I experienced extreme culture shock and even got arrested and jailed. Eventually, I lived near Fela's commune, talked with him several times, became friends with many of his followers, and saw him perform at his Lagos club, The Shrine. Now deceased, Fela was the focus of a recent Broadway musical Fela!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDan Dinello
    Release dateDec 3, 2011
    ISBN9781466197923
    Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos [1983]
    Author

    Dan Dinello

    An author and filmmaker, Dan Dinello is Emeritus Professor at Columbia College Chicago. Besides the Smashwords ebook "Finding Fela," he wrote the book "Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology" (2007) as well as chapters in "The Culture & Philosophy of Ridley Scott" (2013), "The Rolling Stones and Philosophy" (2011), "Philip K. Dick and Philosophy" (2011), "Anime and Philosophy" (2010), "Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy" (2009) & "Avatar and Philosophy (Wiley, forthcoming). HIs most recent article "The Contagious Age" posted on Popmatters.com; he has also written about pop culture and science for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Salon.com and Manchester Guardian. Along with making several award-winning short films, Dan directed episodes of the Comedy Central television series Strangers With Candy and runs the Website Shockproductions.com where he sells two DVDs of his work (Shock Productions V.1 and V.2).

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      Book preview

      Finding Fela - Dan Dinello

      FINDING FELA

      My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King in Lagos (1983)

      By Dan Dinello

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Dan Dinello

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1 - The Black President

      Chapter 2 - Mother Africa

      Chapter 3 - Stuck Outside of Lagos

      Chapter 4 - Fire in the Street

      Chapter 5 - Rascal Republic

      Chapter 6 - Urban Nightmare

      Chapter 7 - Buried in Lagos

      Chapter 8 - Shrine Resurrection

      Chapter 9 - Hitting the Road

      Chapter 10 - Prisoner of Arrogance

      Chapter 11 - Confessing to Father Fela

      Chapter 12 - Lagos Jump

      Chapter 1: The Black President

      I leave the United States on January 22,1983, to spend three weeks in Lagos, Nigeria, on a quest to find the legendary African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti. One suitcase contains my clothes; another suitcase contains fifty-seven rolls of Super-8 movie film and 35mm slide film, two cameras, a small tape recorder, two microphones along with assorted cables and batteries. I feel guilty about leaving my wife with full responsibility for my two-month old daughter and seven-year old son, but I badly want to do this.

      I hope to make a short movie about Fela in order to raise money for a larger project about Fela and the pop music scene in Lagos. At a minimum, I want to see Fela and the other musicians in Lagos: Sunny Ade, Commander Obey, Sonny Okossun, Chrissie Essian, and Bongos Ikwue among others. I want to learn about the scene and whether it‘s possible to make a movie in Lagos, the music capitol of Africa. As a white man, I have a lot to learn.

      Accompanying me is a native Nigerian named Joe, a student in the film & video department at Columbia College Chicago where I'm a teacher. Joe offered to be my guide, assist me in shooting the movie, give me a free place to stay at his home, and provide transportation. Most exciting, he claimed to be a friend of Fela's and expressed great optimism about the possibility of meeting and filming him, despite the disturbing fact that Fela had not returned my letters of inquiry.

      For over a year, I’ve been obsessed with the musician and political firebrand known as Black President. Fela Kuti is Africa’s best-known and most fiery performer; he mixes radical politics and pop music as they have rarely been mixed before. Now in his 50s, the singer, saxophonist and keyboardist popularized his unique blend of Western funk and traditional African rhythms along with his own tribal religion. His name means He who emanates greatness, who has control over death, and who cannot be killed by man. Fela, along with his ethno-orchestra Africa 70, invented the sprawling, hypnotic Afrobeat style that merged African percussion and polyrhythms with the theatrical flash and funk style of James Brown, the improvisational skill of Miles Davis, the poetic incendiary rage of Malcolm X, and the electrifying charisma of Bob Marley.

      His mother Fumilayo pioneered Nigeria's struggle

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