A Fela guest shot

I love it when readers send stuff in... Not just because I'm genuinely interested in other people's insights, experiences and information, but also because it relieves me of the responsibility of having to generate new content for the blog!

So today we have an essay and a mix celebrating the influence of Fela courtesy of Washington DC-based journalist Iwedi Ojinmah... Enjoy!

Baba is Dead…...Long Live Baba

I remember seeing him for the first time just as if it was yesterday. Through the clouds of smoke and altered by the “come hither” glow of red and blue bulbs that ordained the club, he stood with relative ease…. an omnipotent symbol of a bold and angry new Africa.

I was instantly mesmerized and would be for life.


No Teacher Could Teach This Guy Nonsense

He was bare chested and seemed oblivious to the thin film of sweat that defied the cool wind being dispersed by huge ceiling fans above and that covered his sinewy ebony frame. One circle - in what must be some type of traditional Yoruba chalk - encircled one eye making him look more like a winking raccoon than arguably Africa’s most vibrant singer slash activist. He has now evolved into a far cry from the trumpeter of the Cool Cats aka Koola Lobitos that had once played highlife and modeled evening gear for fashion magazines.

His nostrils flare a little and his eyes sparkle with obvious intelligence as he takes one last monster drag of his cannabis cigar and turns to the crowd with his now patented call to arms of “make I yab them”? The emphatic reply is a resounding “Yab them” !!!”

Ladies and Gentlemen... the place is Ikeja. It is the late 1970s and the location is The Shrine, and Fela Anikulakpo Kuti’s famous “Yab them Night” has just kicked off.

I had picked a good night. Well, make that "we." Stowed away from High School thousands of miles away in the East, my friends and I had travelled all the way to Lagos by “Air - Chi Di Ebere” just to see “Baba” live. We, as well as the rest of Nigeria, had just been hypnotized by that first killer LP that featured both “Shakara” and “Lady” and rather than buy another pair of platform shoes, or Brutus jeans had saved our pocket money to make this hajj possible.

For the first hour it was a non stop jam session of some of his greatest work. Looking back now we can only “Thank God” that he had yet to release such great master pieces as “Water No Get Enemy” or “Africa Center of The World” because as we know Fela was not just a great performer, but a shrewd businessman and refused to play any song you could buy for yourself on wax, tape or 8 track. In as much as they were still being worked on then they were already timeless classics even in the pupa stage and “Fela” delivered them with unparalleled showmanship.

In between sets his tongue wagged like a hyperactive “bulala” as he called out everyone from President, to the Pope, flogging even his own Brother Beko who was the then equivalent of the nations Surgeon General with it, as well as a gaggle of other “useless” “Madams and Ogas”. Not in fear of the jack booted thugs in uniform that had repeatedly suffocated arguably Africa’s most vibrant Press in the past, that night Music was his Weapon as we remained in stunned silence - soaking everything in. By nights end most of us had made a conscious decision to remain either part of the disease or become part of a cure. I say this because out of the four of us that witnessed sheer magic that night 2 would end up being journalists and the other 2 lawyers.

Fela would rewrite that art of confrontation using both satire and an in your face type of challenge virtually new to Africa. This would catapult him to instant super status especially in Ghana, his old stomping ground, and in South Africa where Hugh Masekela would virtually change his new band's format and style even dedicating his maiden album entitled The Boy's Doing It to Fela himself. 60 years later his respect has not diminished one iota as we hear in his ode to Fela on the album Sixty which not just brings tears to your eyes but also tugs at your heart.

He would be the first to actually name names in his songs starting with the fabled "I.T.T." in which he questioned not just then-chairman Abiola’s dubious “modus operandi” but actually mentioned then-President Obasanjo by name. As we know this would set into motion a hateful relationship with the Nigerian Army that would not only span decades and play an unfortunate role in his Mother’s death, but also lead to his incarceration in Nigeria’s coldest and dampest prison located in Jos. In as much as his body was already being ravaged by the HIV virus, it was here that he would catch the actual pneumonia that would cause the heart failure which killed him on August the 2nd, 1997. This is made even more unfortunate when we look at the likes of, say, a Magic Johnson today, who has shown us that having AIDS does not necessarily translate into an instant death and that Fela despite being infected then could have easily lived on with today’s new drugs and given us 20 or 30 years more of sheer ecstasy.

Years later while working at The National Public Radio in Washington I would hear a nightingale-like voice emit from one of the studios and carry through the myriad of its hallways. It wasn’t so much that it was beautiful but it was what it was singing that galvanized me into an almost trot – seeking its source. Stunned I peeped in and looked at the bald head of Sinead O’Connor (then arguably the epitome of controversy and female activism) “blowing” Fela’s “Lady” in perfect pidgin. Later on I would learn that she was preparing for the Manu Dibango’s "Wakafrika" tour and all I could do was just shake my head and smile. I mean here was one of the ultimate feminists of her time singing a Fela song that without a doubt if not encourages sexism certainly winks at it, and she didn’t even know. Rather, with eyes closed, she attacked each line with such energy and passion that one despite her pigmentation, could have easily mistaken her for one of the Kalakuta Queens. Fela himself must have been proud and smiling at the fact that not only does his music continue to live on with efforts put forth by his sons, but also in projects like Red Hot + Riot and by bands like The Roots and singers like O’Connor. Bearing this in mind, he can really Rest in Peace knowing that (and I quote the NY Times) "Afro beat offers plenty of room for allies and kindred spirits, without ever surrendering its own stubborn identity."

And to that we can only add an "Amen" and a "Thank God."

Iwedi Ojinmah for the Times of Nigeria and The Village Square

DOWNLOAD THE ADVANCED BABA MIX

1. Gentleman - Fela
2. Water No get Enemy - Fela
3. War is a Crime - Antibalas
4. Nigerian Gangster - Jay-Z/DJ Mike Love
5. Live in Berlin - Seun Kuti
6. No Agreement - Res, Tony Allen, Ray Lema, Baaba Maal, Macy Gray Positive Black Soul & Archie Shepp
7. Blackman Know Yourself - Femi Kuti (The Roots remix)
8. Omelebele - Victor Olaiya and his International Allstars
9. Lagos Sisi - Bola Johnson
10. NEPA - Tony Allen
11. Live in Berlin - Seun Kuti
12. Mr Big Mouth - Antibalas
13. Roforofo Fight - Fela
14. Zombie - Fela

Thanks a lot, Iwedi! And all you old heads out there... I'd love it if you shared your recollections too!

Fela SHOUTS!!!

So I think I finally got this whole recording from vinyl thing figured out... I'm not yet in possession of the best hardware I could possibly have, but I have a more or less functional setup for now. What I have found myself lacking now, though, is the time. Denis and I have been sliding back into serious pre-production on Phase II of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (ha! must be a millennium since your man typed that majestically majuscular marquee-filler 'pon this page!) so setting up the turntable, making sure the records play through without skips, then editing the AIFFs and converting them to mp3s is just not something I can dedicate myself to at the moment.

Thank God for John B.

Our man has been lacing me up with a steady stream of music to post up here (did I just say "lacing me up"? Does anybody actually still use that term? Man, the 90s feel like such a long time ago!) and today we have another Fela rarity: 1986's I GO SHOUT PLENTY!!!

You'll notice that despite being released during the Egypt 80 era, the record is credited to "Fela and Afrika '70"... That's because the I GO SHOUT PLENTY!!! LP was actually recorded in 1977 (with "Frustration of My Lady" on the B side) but went unreleased for nine years until Decca chose to put it out without Fela's permission. The new B side, "Why Black Man Dey Suffer" was recorded for a 1977 album of the same name (with "Male" on the B side) but was also shelved by Decca.

(You might have seen a slightly bootleg-looking CD in the market called Why Black Man Dey Suffer, with "Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality " on the B side. That's a completely different version on a different LP recorded in 1971 for EMI; they didn't release it, so it came out under the African Songs label. Confusion break bone!)

Anyway, here's a clip from Jeremy Marre's Konkombe: The Nigerian Pop Music Scene:



I uploaded this clip yesterday because I had planned to talk up this theory Denis has about Fela and politics: He says that while Fela was generally thought of by most people (including himself) as a "political" artist, he was really more of a satirist, and the deeper he got into politics, the more detrimental it was to his music. It alienated a lot of his fans in the 80s, and it definitely pushed away his musicians, leading to the Afrika 70 mutiny.

We'll talk about that later, though.

Interesting thing, though: When I uploaded this clip, Dele Sosimi, with whom I had been chatting online earlier that day, messaged me to tell me that he was the skinny youth you see sitting in a chair leafing through a book. I asked him what the hell he was doing flipping through the pages so fast, like, was he really reading it or just playing to the camera? Turns out it was a book on jazz improvisation and he was trying to memorize some licks! That kinda surprised me because I really didn't know that any of Fela's musicians were, you know, musically literate (especially not the Egypt 80 players, who were generally younger and less experienced than the Afrika 70).



> DOWNLOAD IT! <

Fela don come again!

Well... I guess I shouldn't say "again" since I've never really posted a Fela album here before - I just like saying "Fela don come again." That was the first Fela song I remember hearing (or really paying attention to, anyway): You know, FELA YOU DON COME AGAIN O! and he replies, I never come, I still dey for far away... Wait, make I reach the place where I dey go...

Normally, I would probably avoid posting Fela albums as almost his entire catalog is currently in print on CD, but as it turns out, there are quite a few albums that have slipped through the cracks and escape reissue. One such record is Perambulator, released in 1983 on Lagos International Records. Once again, I've got to thank Mr. John B for hooking me up with this (I ought to make him an official member of the With Comb & Razor team the way he's been blessing us with these goodies, right?)

While the cover credits the record to "The Black President Chief Priest Fela Anikulapo Kuti and the Egypt 80 Band," it's not really an Egypt 80 record since both sides were actually recorded back in 1977, when Fela still had his Afrika 70 band (I guess the record's label kinda acknowledges this by crediting "Fela Anikulapo Kuti African '70 [sic] Organization and Egypt '80 Band"). "Perambulator" first appeared in 1978 as the B side to the French issue of Shuffering and Shmiling; "Frustration" (a.k.a. "Frustration of My Lady") was set to be the B-side to 1977's I Go Shout Plenty LP, which Decca ended up not releasing (a different, unauthorized version of I Go Shout Plenty was released in 1986. Thank you, Prof. Endo!)

("Frustration of My Lady" is, of course, is a re-recording of "My Lady's Frustration," the number Fela composed at the piano at Sandra Smith's house in Los Angeles back in 1969 when he resolved to "stop fooling around" and write "AFRICAN music.")

Also worth noting: featured as a "guest artist" on this disc is the legendary American jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie (best known for his work with the avant-garde Art Ensemble of Chicago) who lived and played with Fela for three months in 1977.

Alright... I know you wanna just hear the music, so here the music!



> DOWNLOAD IT! <

Ginger Baker's Stratavarious

As we already established, the members of Ginger Baker's Salt band went their separate ways at the end of their 1972 tour before ever they ever got to record together. But Ginger Baker still managed to release an LP in that year featuring him jamming with African musicians. The album had been recorded in London in 1971 (with the exception of the track "Blood Brothers 69," from - you guessed it, Comfort - 1969) and featured Ginger teaming up with:


Fela Ransome-Kuti (vocals, organ, piano, percussion) I think you might already know who he is.








Guy Warren (drums on "Blood Brothers 69") A veritable living legend of African music, Warren (these days known as Kofi Ghanaba) was one of the founding members of the legendary Ghanaian highlife combo The Tempos in the late 1940s. In the fifties, he moved to the States and ran with the likes of Bird, Monk, Trane, Sarah Vaughan and Erroll Garner. His 1957 album Africa Speaks, America Answers was the world's first attempt to fuse jazz and authentic African instrumentation. It was a bit too avant garde to attract more than a cult audience at the time, but it paved the way for the more popular Afro-jazz records that Babatunde Olatunji would begin to release from 1959 onwards, as well as other general rhythmic developments in Black music as a whole.

As master drummer Max Roach observed, "Ghanaba was so far ahead of what we were all doing that none of us understood what he was saying: that in order for African-American music to be stronger, it must cross-fertilize with its African origins... We ignored him. [Years later], the African sound of Ghanaba is now being imitated all over the United States."


Bob Tench (credited as "Bobby Gass," bass) Bob Tench is the sturdy singer/guitarist best known for his tenure with the Jeff Beck Group. He's also worked with everyone from Freddie King to Van Morrison to Ruby Turner.


Sandra Izsadore (credited here as "Sandra Danielle," vocals) Born Sandra Smith in Los Angeles, Izsadore was a young, afro-sporting dancer and Black Panther when she was introduced to Fela Ransome Kuti at a gig at LA's Ambassador Hotel in 1969.

"Fela asked me my name and I told him," she recounted to Carlos Moore. "Then he asked me if I had a car and I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Good.' He just said 'Good'... Just like that. Then, 'You're going with me.'"
"It just blew my mind 'cause I'd never had anybody be so aggressive with me. I didn't say 'no.'"

Izsadore would become Fela's lover, friend and teacher, giving him a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and opening his eyes to Black consciousness. Their relationship had its stormy side too, and it was this that inspired Fela when he sat at the piano in Sandra's parents' house, composed the song "My Lady's Frustration" and invented afrobeat.

Izsadore sang lead vocals on the Africa 70 classic "Upside Down" and is still involved in music, often working with LA's Afrobeat Down. Holler at herspace.

JK Braimah (percussion) Fela's lifelong close friend JK Braimah was a mentor of a different sort. When they were high school mates in Ijebu-Ode, Braimah would cut school and run off to Lagos to sing with highlife bands and he encouraged the considerably more straight-laced Kuti to do the same. When they were students in London, Braimah co-founded Koola Lobitos and continued his instruction - or corruption - of Fela.

"He was a nice guy," Braimah has said of Fela's university days. "A really beautiful guy, but as square as they come. He didn't smoke cigarettes, let alone grass. He was afraid to fuck! We had to take his prick by hand, hold it and put it in for him, I swear!"

(Shit... I said they were close, didn't I?)

Featured alongside Ginger, Fela, Sandra and JK on chorus vocals are persons identified only as "June, Dusty, David, Remi (I assume that would be Fela's first wife?) (Edit: Or, as John B suggested, it might be Nigerian percussionist Remi Kabaka, who played with Baker's Air Force, McCartney's Wings and other English rock musicians), Auntie and BBC"

"Ariwo" is a traditional tune arranged by Baker & Kuti, "Tiwa (It's Our Own)" was written by Kuti, "Ju Ju" by Bobby Gass, "Something Nice" by Baker & Gass, "Blood Brothers 69" by Baker & Warren, and "Coda" by Baker solo.

This is 1972's Stratavarious.



>DOWNLOAD IT! <

(X AMOUNT OF BIG-UPS to the man called John Beadle, who digitized this album for us!)

Edited to fix typos and layout problems.

Here's to lost tapes found!

One of the abiding tragedies of Nigerian popular music is the fact that there's so little audiovisual documentation of its development. It kinda hurts my heart when I watch, say, the extensive collection of vintage Congolese music performances on Innosita TV because they remind me so much of similar performances I used to watch of Nigerian music stars of the 1970s and early 80s (back when artists used to make videos for every track on their albums!). Not to mention the numerous TV variety shows like The Bar Beach Show with Art Alade, The Tee-Mac Show, Sir Victor Uwaifo's Expo! and The Bala Miller Show.

Today, I don't know if anybody knows for sure where any of that footage is, thanks laregly to the Nigerian Television Authority's shoddy job of protecting their archives. You see, during the lean days of the late 80s and early 90s, it became fairly standard procedure to dub over old tapes. What are you gonna do? Stuff like that happens from time to time, but it's the indiscriminate nature of it that beggars belief. From what I've heard, corner-cutting producers were sneaking into the tape libraries and snatching not just music videos, but even master copies of important television shows like The Village Headmaster and The Adio Family to tape their shows over. Huge chunks of historically significant popular culture disappear with the push of a "record" button (or rather, the simultaneous pushing of the "record" and "play" buttons for my old school heads).

Still, I remain hopeful that at least some of that footage has survived somewhere out there. Lately iNollywood.com has been streaming classic NTA shows like The New Masquerade and Second Chance, and even vintage TV commercials. I have no clue how they acquired this content--and believe me, I have asked--but if they've got it, maybe someone else has some other stuff too, like some heretofore lost performances by the likes of Bobby Benson, The Sunshine Sisters, and Sir Patrick Idahosa & His African Sound Makers.

Fela has fared a lot better than most Nigerian musicians in this regard because his colorful reputation has made him a subject of fascination for filmmakers across the globe. Even then, there's only so much existing performance footage of the man, and a lot of that can be attributed his abrasive personality as well: I can't remember the name of the European filmmaker who traveled to Lagos to shoot a Fela documentary and had to go home with his dreams crushed after the Chief Priest demanded an exorbitant sum for the rights to film him; former NTA producer Chris Obi-Rapu has revealed that plans were in motion for Fela to get his own TV show in the 1970s but network got scared and pulled the plug; and then there was Fela's self-produced hagiopic, The Black President, whose master print was destroyed when soldiers burned down his house in 1977.

This makes it all the more a joy to behold previously unseen footage, especially when its from the less-documented early periods of Fela's career. I'm talking, of course, about the DVD Ginger Baker in Africa.

For those who don't know the story, here's a quick recap: In 1971, Ginger Baker, the drummer of the legendary rock group Cream, decided to take a trip to Nigeria, traveling across the Sahara desert. Once in Nigeria, he situated himself within the local music scene, built the first multitrack recording studio in West Africa, and planted the seeds for the "Afro-rock" era by forming the band SALT (featuring Berkley Jones, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu--who would break off as the power trio BLO--and the Lijadu Sisters).

Apparently, Baker filmed some of his travels but sat on the footage for more than 30 years. Now, finally, he's unveiled it and given us an intriguing (if nebulous) inside look at the Nigerian music scene in the immediate post-Biafra period. To be honest, the film is very clearly a product of its drug-addled times, with incoherent editing reminiscent of the LSD scene from Easy Rider and meandering narration by Baker. But it's worth it all to see the documentary's centerpiece: Baker reunites with his old friend Fela Ransome-Kuti as the rising king of afrobeat performs in a rain-soaked open-air nightclub in Calabar:



Apropos of nothing, I'll mention right off the top that I was rather tickled to see the "Luna Nite Club" sign at the end, because that place was still rocking on Fosbury Road when I was growing up in Calabar in the 80s.

Other than that, while the sound isn't great, but I think it's still a lot of fun to watch what a good time he seems to be having onstage (especially as he playfully "manhandles" his dancers and players). The show seems a lot looser than than his later performance style, and he's still rocking that weird snakeskin vest thing he used to wear before he got into the custom-made embroidered jumpsuits. Ginger Baker has got to have more stuff like this, and I hope he puts it out soon. (Come to think of it, Roy Ayers has said that he's got a boatload of footage from his stay with Fela in 1979/80... Give up the goods, Roy!)

August 3, 2006 - “I’m a artist… and I’m sensitive about my s#!t” (Part Two)

(So... It's about time that I got back to posting blogs from the vaults and general backstory. Sorry I slacked off on this before, but things got kinda hectic during my last couple of weeks in Lagos and it actually takes a little time for me to "assemble" these entries. Pretty much all of them were written on the run, so I'll have half the entry composed on my laptop, then I got to find another quarter that's scribbled in one of my many notebooks, and locate various random paragraphs scrawled on the myriad scraps of paper constantly stuffed into the pockets of my jeans and compartments of my backpack. So organization is not necessarily my strong suit; believe me, Denis never let me hear the end of it. Anyway, let's continue with the story I was telling here.)


As it turns out, yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the death of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. As such, there was a celebration of his life and legacy at New Afrika Shrine - the reconstituted version of the club Fela maintained as his personal court, soapbox, and alternate reality for more than two decades - as a prelude to the massive "Felabration" slated for October.

Denis and I want to go to the Shrine. We're both huge Fela fans; in fact, Fela was a bit of a catalyst in our friendship. We "met" a few years ago on the Okayplayer music board when he posted a poll posing the question "Who is the most prominent African musician - Myriam Makeba, Franco, Manu Dibango or Meiway?" Outraged, I immediately fired back with "How the hell you gonna make a post about important African musicians and not include Fela?" He calmly explained to me that he didn't really know all that much about Fela, having grown up in Francophone Africa, where the influence of a figure like Franco loomed a little larger. The truth is, at the time I was just really getting about Fela's music myself.

By the time I was coming up in the 1980s, Fela was a shadow of the fiercely creative and popular musician he had been in the previous decade. Since the 1977 government-mandated firebombing of his home and the resultant death of his mother, he seemed to be become less known for his music than for his controversial public antics--the weed, the nudity, the polygamy, the blasphemy, the highly theatrical presidential campaigns, the frequent trips to jail and drawn-out court cases--kinda like 2Pac would be in the '90s. His music wasn't played much on the radio and when it was, it tended to be humourous, relatively innocuous dance records like "Open and Close" and "Excuse-O." Our government was a fairly repressive military dictatorship, and just whistling one of Fela's more anti-establishment tunes like "Zombie" within earshot of any soldier, policeman, customs officer or even a traffic warden was enough to get you beaten within an inch of the pearly gates and thrown in jail.

In the eyes of a lot of middle-class parents (like mine), messing with Fela was a gateway to a seriously fucked-up life and they endeavoured to insulate their children from his influence the same way you do your best to keep your kids away from crack pipes, stripper poles and religious cults. Because, really, that's kinda what Fela fandom was: a cult. But it wasn't just a cult full of thieves, thugs and hookers, like most people thought; its membership spanned across all walks of society, including some sectors of the government. I was a late convert: Fela didn't really capture my soul until the day I was getting on the plane to leave Nigeria in the early '90s, but now that I was back, I was looking forward to making a pilgrimage to his sacred temple. Me and Denis had planned a trip to the Shrine for a long time and this seemed the best time to make it happen.

Except that Koko wasn't trynna hear it.

Not that he's not a Fela fan; he is--hardcore. In fact, he was the one who first introduced me to "Baba 70"'s music (or tried to, anyway) back in high school, and he always has a Fela tape in the car (along with a cassette of really cheesy '80s funk & R&B and Toni Braxton's first album, which he plays specifically when he wants to torture me and Denis). As a true Fela-head, he's been to the Shrine a couple of times and he had the portent that the night's event was going to be like an area boy* homecoming festival; unless one absolutely, positively needs to experience the feeling of blood gushing from one's forehead like a geyser as multiple beer bottles shatter upon one's cranium, it might be a good idea to put a considerable distance between oneself and that general area. Me and Denis tried to persist, but Koko was the one driving and if he said we weren't going to the Shrine, then we weren't going to the Shrine.

So there we were yesterday evening, sitting in the middle of one of Lagos's trademark traffic jams, listening to the radio. All the stations are playing Fela's classic jams (well, the two that weren't playing Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" and that dreadful new Beyonce song every twelve minutes, anyway). As "Roforofo Fight" comes on, I'm reminded exactly how much Fela's music informed the creation of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN. The very first scene I wrote in the script (the one where Boy scuffles in the street with the market woman Madam Kuku as a jeering crowd gathers around) was directly inspired by the abrupt, chaotic energy of this song. The second scene I wrote (which is now the first scene in the script) was inspired by "Water No Get Enemy." The go-slow scene was dictated by, of course, "Go Slow." Hell, even the fast-paced, semi-cartoonish mise-en-scene was less an attempt to emulate Guy Ritchie than it was a desire to achieve the kind of collage of vivid detail, grotesque humour and jarring juxtapositions that characterized the sleeve art Ghariokwu Lemi created for Fela's albums.

These thoughts only reinforced my belief that a visit to Fela's house would restore my sagging confidence, so I tried to gain some leverage for my case by cloaking my selfish desires in the guise of selfless professionalism:

"You know... This might be a good way to earn some much-needed production scratch. Straight No Chaser would probably pay good money for some pictures of that event."

"If you even THINK of taking a camera into that place---!!" Koko snapped. He took a breath, regained compsure and then sighed wearily. "See... That's the reason why we're not going to the Shrine. Because I don't plan to be the one to explain to your parents the events surrounding the death death of their son. Besides, weren't you the one who just had to see Yinka Davies tonight?"

Ah yes. Let's get things straight about that. While I do have the tendency to sometimes come off as an obsessive crackpot who's seen Vertigo four or five times too many, there was a fairly logical and practical reason for my yen to meet with Yinka. In fact, there were at least two such reasons:

1. At five o'clock in the morning, after two and a half hours of watching Nigerian videos that mostly looked like this


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

or this



the simplicity and spirituality of Yinka's video washed over me like a moment of clarity.

[I really wish I could include a clip of the video so you could see what I'm talking about, but I just can't find it anywhere.]

2. The Koyaanisqatsi-esque montage of the video impressed upon me the fact that what I really needed to hold this film together was a powerful score like the one Philip Glass provided.

Last time we were in Lagos, a ladyfriend mentioned to me that Yinka Davies was an old acquaintance and that I should give her a call to provide some music for the movie. I wasn't that interested, though. Pretty much from the beginning, we knew what kind of music we wanted for the movie. We were aiming squarely for a retro-romantic feel, so we wanted some afrobeat by Fela (or if that turned out to be too expensive, one of the many Fela disciples) and vintage highlife, rumba and cha-cha-cha from the 1950s and '60s. The idea of using contemporary music wasn't something we had on the agenda at all. In fact, we had something of a maxim: "No jeans and no rapping!" [I'll explain the jeans thing later, fam] But all of a sudden, I felt that Yinka probably did have a certain sensibility that could add something to the vision we were trying to realize.

So I called Yinka. I found her to be warm and cordial on the phone, though she seemed a bit curious about how I had gotten her number. I told her that B____ had given it to me. I told her that I had been a fan of her work as a lead vocalist in Lagbaja's band.

"That was a long time ago," she laughed.

"I heard you were doing some stuff with the Jazzhole folks now, right?"

"Well, I've worked with them in the past... But not at the moment."

"So... uh, what else have you been up to? I heard you were on the new Tony Allen record, too."

"Oh yes! Have you heard it?"

"No... Not yet. Heard good things about it, though." [I've since heard it; here's one of the tracks Yinka features on, "Losun"]

"So what's the deal, then? What can I help you with?"

I told her that I was a filmmaker and I was looking for music for my movie. I told her about seeing her video at 5 a.m. and I hoped that I didn't sound like a crazy person.

She was quiet for a moment and then she said "Why don't you come over and see me today?"

I was quite pleased.. If she's actually inviting me over to her home, that means that I didn't sound crazy, right?

Or maybe it just meant that I did sound crazy, but that she recognized a kindred spirit.


(to be concluded)
___________________________________________________

* The “area boy” is the Naija equivalent of the “rudeboy” or “gangsta” or “generally thugged-out individual that you don’t want to mess with”