FELA
AND THE DECLINE IN PROTEST MUSIC
In
the world of music, Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a legend, Number one musician in
Africa, king and creator of Afro-beat, social critic, and activist. He happens
to be my favourite musician, because all his production are impacting,
scinllating, revolutionary and changing. When he was alive many thought Fela
was crazy, unserious type and he never saw what was good in any government but
now people who criticized him then now agreed that Fela served us very well.
Ten
years after the death of Nigeria’s iconoclastic musician, fela Anikulapo Kuti,
it is disappointing how music, which used to provide a weapon of social change,
has greatly declined in Nigeria music landscape. No one need to look any
further than the illicit liaison between musician and government functionaries
as the reason for this depreciating artistic role.
It
may be understandable that the August 2nd Annniversary of Fela’s
death has been stylishly hijacked by all kinds of events that appeal to no aim
than the pecuniary. It may even be excusable that children, siblings and core
claim of legendary composer and performer, who naturally ought to have led in a
productive commemoration of that anniversary, have all seemingly moved on in
their different lives. But today. It is disagreeable, disappointing and
damaging so, that the core essence that Fela’s music developed in to the last
of his carrer, which intrinsically is an integral function of the arts, has
been left unattended. In a country where sleeze and malfensances have permeated
all nooks and crannies of political, socio-economic and retrogressively
hypocritical religious lives, the musical art as a potent weapon that can be
used to achieve specific goals now does little other than sing praises of
people of questionable valve or simply got consumed with the sensual sleaze
that has become a monstrous, industrial past time.
People
of every nationality are known to have been moved to speech or song by that
which permeates the thoughts or appeals to the emotions in times of political
turbulence. Music and the visionary musicians often performed their part in
inciting lawful actions especially at time when deep commentaries are needed
outside of government and soiled hands of the media.
It
is for this type of valve that was inherently popular in Fela’s music that is
now missing the Nigeria current all type, but little substance music industry.
For who could disagree that for patriotic and even prophetic reasons, Fela’s
reasonably revolutionary stance is described well in songs like Beast of No
Nation, International Thief Thief, overtake Don Overtake, Big Blind Country,
Perambulator, suffer Head and Unknown soldier. He might have constituted
himself as a one-man riot squad and suffer the physical and mental
consequences. But Nigeria has continue to be a luck beneficiary of Fela’s
musical Legacy gloriously apt evergreen musical commentary that details the
atrocities of military dictators in Nigeria, their collaborators in civilian
garb and the villainous looting of the nation’s collective wealth. Evidently,
it is because the social and political necessities of his music one considered
expedient that Fela has continued to remain relevant and is serving as the
benchmark till today. Beyond the recessional sparkles of traditional poetry
that have attempted to name as Fela did without overtly flouting the ethical
requirement in music production, it is almost impossible to find a musician of
national reckoning in Nigeria today brave enough to rouse attention let alone
devotion in the mould of Fela.
All
over the country musician now rely on government patronage for survival. Those
unable to sell records depend on government house wasteful dinners and
functions to survive with their hands soiled, they sing praises of government
and contractors and a dazed public looks on in disbelief. Desperately, the
nation seamless in vain for popular music that can effectively function as a
medium for messages at a time when alarmingly retrogressive developments have
enveloped the nation.
It
is only when the musical arts, like the ethical and conscientious media, hold a
prominent place in the ideological nationalism of this country that Fela’s
death would have been truly commemorated.
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