FEMI & MADE KUTI | INTERVIEW

 

A father-son musical force whose joint double album Legacy+ was recently released to acclaim, Femi and Made are also part of one of music’s greatest ever dynasties, respectively son and grandson of the late great Nigerian icon Fela Kuti. Carl Marsh got himself a hotline between Glamorgan and Lagos.

 

How is it for you both in Nigeria at the moment?

Femi Kuti: Tough! We can’t perform. And the economy is getting worse. It’s very difficult for everybody right now.

 

One positive, though, is your new joint album, Legacy+. Would I be correct in saying that it’s an album merging the past, via Femi, with Made bringing the music into the future?

Femi: Yes. [laughs]

Made Kuti: For me, yes. [more laughter] The original idea was that we had two albums that were going to be released in 2020. And it was my dad’s idea that if we’re releasing two separate albums, why don’t we think of putting a project together? He doesn’t think a parent and child has ever released a dual release album of this kind. We didn’t quite work out the logistics between us – we left that to others on our team – but the idea itself was wonderful, so we spoke to Delphine [Desane], who did the cover art. And she thought she wanted to portray the message of the music and what we represent, which was wonderful. We just wanted people to be inspired by the love we share in music, how passionate we are about it, and how important the messages are.

 

You both sing a lot about what’s going on in Nigeria, and Africa more broadly, but it could relate to anywhere in the world where injustice still goes on. How important is it that you stick to the protest song?

Femi: You know, I really don’t like those words, because they make them sound so negative. OK, I think there are topics that we are very concerned about, like: stop the hate, to free your mind, to think independently, and not to be brainwashed. This is just our idea of how things should be to make a better world. I think the opposition always likes to bring all these terms – activist, protests – to show that you are against them or trying to be difficult with what you are saying. You are bringing a logic that doesn’t make sense; those words sound like that to me.

We’re very passionate about poverty: the poverty level is disgusting. Climate change is important. And so these things taught us and hurt us. We see it on the news; we will leave it here. And we get to travel, and we see other parts of the world, and we see it’s not as rosy as sometimes people make it out to be. We sing about things that we are passionate or concerned about.

 

So it is just raising awareness of the injustice that goes on. I’d like to apologise for using the word ‘protest’!

Femi: No, everybody does. It’s okay! [laughs]

 

On a personal level, my brother lived in Nigeria for three or four years, and often told me the roads in Abuja, where he lived, would always be very well maintained. But as soon as you left Abuja – the capital city – the roads were atrocious. Made’s song Different Streets suggests that we can laugh, but it also makes you want to cry because the roads are even worse, aren’t they?

Made: It’s one of the most basic and one of the oldest forms of construction to connect people, and with [Lagos] being one of the [world’s] biggest and most populated cities, the roads are terrible. Just outside here, it takes us about 10 minutes to drive a one-minute road. And if you have a car, that’s no wonder the car is getting scratched, and you have to keep going to get it repaired.

It’s just a vicious cycle that affects the average Nigerian’s mental health, having to face that unnecessary challenge every day just get to work or come back from school. And from someone that resided in London for seven years, the contrast is so evident that you couldn’t escape out of your proximity. And it just hit you every time. Why is it so? Why is it so? Why does it have to be? You can go back to bad, bad leadership, governance, corruption, savings.

 

 

This has all been going on for decades, this corruption and bad governance; Femi, do you think this will ever change in Nigeria?

Femi: It will change. I think we have to understand the historical facts of the world and that change is inevitable, whether we like it or not. But for Africa, if you don’t understand the history of 1000 years of slavery, colonisation, or bad African governments, if you think it will change in just 10 or 20 years, then we are kidding ourselves. We have to be grateful for people like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, my father, great people like this. And men and women, we don’t even know their names who have fought for them as well. And also Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley.

When we look at it globally, I mean, Europeans have fought for a better life. And so we have to understand that it’s probably going to be a continuous fight forever because evil will always show its ugly head, and we always have to cut it off.

 

[At this moment, there is a power cut in Nigeria – just as Femi said “cut it off”! – 15 seconds later, the video call resumes. Strangely, Made’s link didn’t go offline…]

 

Femi: I think when we appreciate this history, then we understand where we are. And we know what we have to do, to emancipate ourselves from this evil and it will probably be always a continuous fight in this world. Because there will always be evil, and we still have to fight to make life better and more comfortable for everybody.

Made: Education in Nigeria keeps us uninformed. I had no access to history in high school – when I went to take it as a subject, it wasn’t offered. Not learning about pre-colonial Africa, at least, is like having no knowledge of how everything has happened the way it has been till today. And going as far back as ancient Africa to know the simplest things of human development, our cultural groups, and how we migrated from here and there, how the particular ethnicities in Nigeria came to be in this particular region. We are totally in the dark. If you don’t graduate and go out of your way to search for books, usually out of Lagos, then you don’t have access to any of this information, but now there is the internet.

 

That’s alarming to hear. Meanwhile, currently you’ve got all the police corruption going on, and riots and so forth. You guys are there; you’ll get to see and hear things. How is the situation now?

Femi: There are different problems right now. There are ethnic problems where they are killing people. I think two days ago, the western people and the northern people were in a very big battle, and a lot of people were killed, and lots of property was burnt down. There’s a lot of kidnapping, and security is at its highest peak. We still have Boko Haram, and we still have police brutality. You just don’t know what will happen next.

People are just completely fed up. Nothing works. Healthcare doesn’t work. Education is a failure, bad roads, electricity… as you have seen, we keep getting cut off from the internet because electricity keeps going. Some people don’t even have electricity for weeks or months. It’s not possible to live like this. And it’s been the same story since the 70s. My father spoke about it all his life. I’ve been talking about it for over three decades, and now my son is talking about the same issues.

Made: It’s exactly what my dad said. There’s no public sector in Nigeria. I sat down and tried to find one. I couldn’t find a single one.

 

Do you both not fear living there, as people with a voice for these things?

Femi: Some 15 boys waited for me outside my house to try to kill me four years ago. I wouldn’t say it’s fair, but I think we know what could happen. So we are quite careful. We can’t run away from what we believe in. We are not saying anything that is a lie; we are not trying to exaggerate an issue or put anybody in a bad light.

For instance, if you look at the track Na Bigmanism Spoil Government, we’re not criticising because we just want to criticise, we are criticising because we want good change, and this change will benefit everybody. If we have good health and transportation, everybody will be happy. There’ll be nothing to agitate. The agitation will be very less and minimal. As you know – as your brother told you – this has been going on for decades, and there’s no sign of any change.

 

 

Amazingly, you’re still fighting for this – I hope the change will come sooner rather than later.

Femi: Not in my lifetime. I’m not going to trick myself. [laughs]

 

Well, hopefully in your lifetime, Made…

Made: I feel like the generation I am in had access to be more informed, and learned from our past generation. Many of us are trying to divert away from the [old] path, but we are following exactly what they did, in the sense that the average Nigerian goal is success: how many cars you have, how many houses you own. It also says you can own a private jet. Then, these Instagram influencers tell all the young girls that if you want to sell your body for money, that’s the best way to make money. It’s not about your ethics, or your skill.

We have a generation that I think has been overexposed, and we have not yet been taught how to handle all that information – that access to a lot of negativity. So I think if any change does happen, I think it will be after my generation. We might make crucial steps, but I don’t think we will reach any clear goals.

 

Even now, you can walk down a street in Lagos, you’ll find maybe 40 churches within a mile, and the pastor or the priest will have a $10,000 suit on, have lots of flash cars, will have the most luxurious holidays whilst his congregation will be poor people, living in extreme poverty. It’s these people that give him their money! People in the West can’t and don’t comprehend this.

Femi: It’s the effect of colonisation and slavery and bad African governments: it’s not going to just end in one day. It shows you the mindset of the African today; what brainwashing has done; what keeping the mind locked in prison is doing. Religion is one of the main tools for this. Like Made pointed out, education – when education doesn’t inform you and prepare you for dealing with your life, what do we expect? There are a lot of people that will complain. But many people will say: “Oh, don’t worry, Jesus will solve the problem”. I mean, what kind of stupidity is that? There are so many people who still believe that Jesus Christ will come and solve the problems here.

Made: Something amusing happened that shows the mentality of the average Nigerian. My dad has a white friend, and he has this long hair and is the proper depiction of what Jesus Christ looks like. He was in a car, with my aunt and mum, that broke down on a very famous bridge in Lagos. My aunt and mum said, let’s have a joke and pretend you are the Saviour that has just come up on the bridge to help us. And the amount of cars that were stopping in total amazement! [laughing] Everyone was just starstruck. And I just thought, it’s because we are fed so many lies from so many people and so many angles. In my school, if you didn’t sing or pray, you’d get punished.

 

It’s indoctrination, isn’t it? From an early age. 

Femi: You see, the West doesn’t even have to do anything. The West knew that they were leaving Africa; Europe and America knew they were leaving Africa in a mess. They just have to sit back.

We [Africans] don’t agree on any topic. We just fight. We fight on the simplest issue that is so obvious that it needs change. And we fight. We fight every problem. We just keep arguing. We argue on so many pointless issues that one just wonders so that this fight will go on for a while. Europe and America just have to sit back and say, “Well, leave them to it”. And the people in Africa will still go and vote for the same people that we all criticise.

My father was against [former Nigerian president and head of state General Olusegun] Obasanjo all of his life, and he won two elections. People still ask me, “What would he do now if he was still alive?” or “How would he feel?” And I respond by saying, “How can you ask me such a stupid question!” You know that this man [Fela] fought; you all claim you love this man, you support this man. Then what did they all do but go and vote for this man that my father had warned them against! Everyone said they listened to the songs, but they voted another politician – who my dad sang about – into power.

As I said, I don’t think in my lifetime, but we just have to keep on trying to enlighten as many minds as possible and keep on forging ahead.

 

The Legacy+ double album (Femi Kuti’s Stop The Hate and Made Kuti’s For(e)ward) is out now on Partisan Records. Info: here

words CARL MARSH photos OPTIMUS DAMMY / SEAN THOMAS