The Ikoyi Man
“With my music, I create change…I am using my music as a weapon”.
This quote by Fela Kuti is one of his most famous and it exemplifies what Fela’s mentality was when he made music during the heights of his career. Fela knew that his words were sharp, and he wielded them strongly as he constantly spoke out against the corrupt leadership of post-colonial Africa. However, when Fela first started to make music he did not have any clear intentions or desires to be political. In fact, early in his career as a musician his music hardly touched on these subjects(Barrett,2).
Before he ever started to make Afrobeat music, he initially was playing jazz and highlife music. Both of these forms of music were catered to the taste of the more affluent Africans(Stewart,102). Jazz was a cultural import from the west and it was very difficult for poor Nigerians of the time to have access to that type of music. Highlife, on the other hand, was a form of African music from Ghana that was typically played with the more expensive western instruments and played almost exclusively at the social gatherings of the African aristocracy. This type of music was extremely saccharine and focused on luxury and the easy lifestyles of the rich Africans. It never dealt with the social and political issues of the day(Stewart,100). In many ways, it can be considered the antithesis of the highly political music that Fela made later in his career.
How can a man who had become the vocal opposition to the rich, powerful, and corrupt of Africa start his career playing the music that personified the inequalities that their lifestyles proliferated in post-colonial Nigeria and Africa as a whole? When looking at Fela’s upbringing and family background it becomes quite clear.
Fela was born into a relatively wealthy and highly connected upper-middle-class family in Nigeria(Labinjoh,122). His father was an Anglican priest, which was a very privileged position for an African to have during the times of colonialism. He also helped to form one of the first teacher’s unions in Nigeria. His mother during her lifetime was definitely the most powerful and well-connected woman in Nigeria and possibly the whole continent of Africa. Not only was she one of the leading forces in the women’s rights movement of Nigeria and a staunch anti-colonialist, but she also received the title of chief and was the first woman to drive a car in Nigeria. Both of Fela’s brothers went abroad to Europe to study medicine. Fela himself attended colonial grammar schools through his childhood and initially went to Europe to study medicine or law before he decided that he would study his passion, music.
The accomplishments of Fela and his family were amazing, but it also shows just how well connected and affluent they truly were. Through their education, as well as, their political and social connections Fela’s family would be able to thrive within the system of colonial Africa. As an adolescent, Fela would not have been subjected to the inherent inequality of the (post)colonial system, because he was a part of the elite class of Africans who were benefiting from it.
In 1971 Fela released a song titled “Ikoyi Mentality vs. Mushin Mentality”. In this song, Fela highlights the drastic inequality within the city of Lagos in Nigeria. In the first verse of this song Fela sings:
Ikoyi man, dey travel
Him travel all over the world
Him bring civilization for us
Civilization we no understand
Mushin man, dey for home
Him never travel anywhere at all
Him understand de people language
De language of Africa
Both Ikoyi and Mushin are residential neighborhoods in Lagos, but they are drastically different. Ikoyi is located on Lagos Island and is mostly inhabited by the very wealthy and worldly African Aristocracy. Mushin is located on the mainland of Lagos and is heavily congested, impoverished, and underdeveloped. Throughout this song, Fela expresses his beliefs that the poor Mushin man is more in touch with Africa because he understands the struggles and hardship that the African man has to face every day as a result of the inequality within (post)colonial Africa. Fela does not believe the Ikoyi man is capable of understanding African ideas or concepts because they are too occupied with learning the ways of white Europeans.
In many ways, Fela’s upbringing was markedly an “Ikoyi” upbringing. He was subjected to the colonial mentality as a youth, but because of his family’s affluence and influence, he was shielded from the negative aspects of that lifestyle. In his music, Fela did not speak like a Ikoyi man yet as an adolescent that is the only lifestyle that he knew. In order to understand the plight and struggle of the Mushin man in Nigeria, he had to completely rid himself of the Ikoyi mentality, which had him in pursuit of European values instead of ideas rooted in Africaness, which became the lifeblood of his Afrobeat music.
Frantz Fanon explains how privilege within the colonial system can distort colonized individuals understanding of their roll especially in relation to their colonial masters. In a passage from the first chapter of “Black Skin, White Mask” he talks about the role of black officers within the French colonial army:
The black officers serve first of all as interpreters. They are used to convey the master’s orders to their fellows, and they too enjoy a certain position of honor. (Fanon,9)
Despite the black officer holding a respected and semi-powerful position within the army, they still lacked real control. They were simply tools for the colonial masters to implement their will on the general body of African Soldiers. When this is paralleled with Fela’s upbringing and his family background we are able to create a more critical understanding.
Fela did experience a great deal of privilege within the colonial context because of his family’s reputation and affluence, but he was still following a path that was laid by colonial masters. Their influence and prominence in Nigeria did not allow Fela to think more highly of African culture and it especially did not teach him an African way of thinking. Just like the black officers in the army Fela was on the path to become a tool for colonial masters to continue implement European/Western ideas in Africa. It was normal for members of wealthy African families to go study in the West, just to come back to Africa and continue to uphold and implement western systems of government, religion, and social/political thought. At first this seemed to be Fela’s path, however, Fela leaving Nigeria to study abroad ultimately became the first step needed for him to diverge from this path and the cycle of colonial control .
