Afrobeat superstar, Femi Kuti, and his son Made were guests of Ebuka Obi-Uchendu on Channels TV’s Rubbin’ Minds last Sunday. In this absolutely rare appearance, father and son spoke about their musical career and how the Anikulapo-Kuti legacy affects their everyday life.
Excerpts...
We are already having a good time here in the studio, and we are joined by two amazing artistes, a father and son duo -Made and Femi. When I said Anikulapo Kuti royalty is going to be joining me, why did you have a problem with the word ‘Royalty’?
Femi: That is too much hailing. I like to be very simple and straight forward, all that hailing gets on my nerves. I took after my mother in that regard.
Ebuka: But you can’t run away from a surname like …
Femi: Yes, we are in the limelight, where everybody is talking. I like to have frank conversations with people, not people over respecting. I like to be friendly, and I like to be down to earth. So, but you know, when you are walking and people are shouting King! There’s a problem. There is this guy that used to call me king in my house, my granny hated the guy so much because of that. You will hear her say ‘will he stop that rubbish in this house?’
Made: Even Fela too didn’t like it. During his time, people hailed him a lot, and it wasn’t pleasant to him. The thing is after a while it naturally gets on your nerves.
Ebuka: So, is the name a burden to you?
Made: Not really for me…
Femi: Basically, we just want to be simple and have a normal life, but you can’t do anything without being criticised or praised when you are ordinarily just going about your daily business. People see every member of the family as a Kuti, hence the comparison. For instance, at the beginning of my career, people were always comparing me to my father, and I couldn’t understand. Why are you comparing me to him? This is my father. I didn’t see a competition but everybody wanted me to compete with him. Then, I would be like -why are people thinking like this? This is my father. I love him, respect him, and adore him. I didn’t see competition, but fortunately, unfortunately, this is the side of this profession I’ve decided to take, and the truth is, even if I had become a doctor, they will still criticise my choice.
Ebuka: It’s almost inevitable. I mean, you are a musician, and you are toeing the line your father toed, your father was such a legend …
Femi: That’s why it is called music. Like I tweeted the other day somebody was asking me if young people were in competition with me? Music is not sporting. We’re not running relay that’s why it’s called music. It is not sport; it is not boxing.
Do you feel the same way your father feel being pressured by people to be like Fela?
Made: My father is not the same kind of father Fela was. I had a very liberating childhood; in the sense that, I could do almost anything. When I was a child, my father was always looking for me. Imaging an eight-year-old will be somewhere without the knowledge of his parents, that was the experience for me when I was little. I think I had that kind of intensity of the burden on the legacy, the pressure from behind. But I lost it when I was 13, and I’ve since been comfortable.
I am here with a lot of pressure. I mean, the Kuti legacy is so heavy on so many levels. So, it’s almost like getting tied to that name comes with some level of expectations.
Ebuka: Talking about the pressure, does it help you?
Made: The life I live is what I will call ‘manage life’. It just happens that what I do is in tune with the Kuti legacy. I don’t think of the name of a kind of heavy responsibility, because if I did, then my values and ethics will be built from that name, not from what I believe. And my dad has always told me about finding my own in order to establish my own profound reason for living. It just so happens that it’s in line with the Kuti, you know, the Kuti traits. Yeah. I live my life so far so good.
Ebuka: You look at your dad with such admiration, and I have to say that, so that he can hear. When did you find out this was going to happen with him and music? And how did you feel about it?
Femi: I will say my elder sister, Yeni, found this out on a tour bus. During the tour, my friend came along with a trumpet. He picked it up and played it. It was unusual for a child to pick up a trumpet. The Trumpet is probably the most difficult instrument to play, it is not like the saxophone, which you can just put it on the mouth and get some sound. The Trumpet is like the only instrument that is practically impossible to produce a sound, but Made did.
After that time, I got him a teacher since he has showed me what he wants to do. And he was just 3, and then decides to study trumpets and the piano. He opened the Shrine in 2000. He was 5 then when he was first to perform at the New African Shrine, so he joined my band at the age of 8 going 9, and he decided to tour with me. At some point, I noticed it was affecting his studies, and I had to agree that he needed to face his studies.
Ebuka: How do you deal with that?
Femi: He truly has a complete liberty to be himself, to do whatever he wants to do. As a father I can only guide him. I can only let him know what I have experienced. I often tell him the mistakes I’ve made on the streets. I’ve made several mistakes, and I expose him to them for him to take caution. A father should always be a father by guiding, you tell your child “if you put your hand here, it is going to burn you, if you want to get burnt and feel what pain feels like, then go ahead”. I have experienced a lot and like they say -experience is a good teacher. So, I give him all the pros and cons. But he makes the final decision.
Was that how Fela was with you?
Femi: Fela wasn’t the conventional father at all; the kind of liberty I had as a child was extreme. Like I was driving a car at the age of 12, and smoking cigarettes at 12. I was completely free. Imagine, at 16, going to nightclubs became a thing for me. I was driving civilian buses at 15. I was doing incredible things, and the police were chasing me around the town.
Then, I used to put a pillow in the car seat to drive, it was hip. I’ll just drive into Baptist Academy for instance, which was my second school, everybody will say Femi has brought a Range Rover to school and I thought that was life.
Everybody wanted me to be like my father; they wanted me to take over. I refused and told him, I cannot be you, which caused a big fight between us. And you know, in the African culture, you must be your father and if you are going to tow that line, you are expected to look like him and dressed like him.
At some point, it dawned on me that I was already dressing like, wearing the same shoes, and the same clothes. I was like a puppet that was protesting inside, but I could not show it because it was taboo. You can’t fight Fela.
Interestingly, I eventually got the courage, and when that happened, everybody started saying this boy is a useless son. I mean everybody went totally against me, but I think it was the best decision I made to find myself make my name find my own style of music.
Made: Yeah. It’s interesting, and about the smoking thing, I think I was about 13 when I asked you if I could smoke, and you said I should wait till I was 18 and decide for myself, but when I turned 18, I didn’t and never did till now.
Ebuka: So, he actually did say you could?
Femi: It would have been his decision, trust me. But I would tell him that it would affect his lungs. And for that reason, he doesn’t need to smoke, doesn’t need to take alcohol.
Made: It may surprise you that I don’t drink alcohol, but that’s the truth.
Femi: I honestly do not have any regrets. Maybe if I had not done all this, my music would have been boring. I have a reason to be alive to do some certain things, God knows why, we just have to fight through these battles to find that reason and make the best out of that situation.
So, my street training in kalakuta brought that kind of music, there are so many of my tracks that you would listen to and think it is Fela that sang, but it is my composition, this was because I was really living that life. He (Made) can do things on the computer that I cannot do when I was his age, maybe I escaped getting away with those things, he will not escape them in his own time.
My problem was that I had to double my practice, I had to double everything, I was working like a mad man to just find my sound on the sax, the piano, the trumpet, but now he is. He has that street mentality, he has education, which I think it is very important for him.
Ebuka: I am actually interested in how you are coping in being in a band like this, and the culture or the perception of what happens at the shrine, and you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, how do you cope? Do you feel any pressure to be that way? Or is this all a myth that we think?
Made: To be like what people expect a shrine musician?
Femi: Most of your artistes today are all drinking and smoking and they are not even from shrine.
Made: It really depends on what you consider, even in the shrine, people do not even know there is a no smoking area, there is a place for people that do not want to smoke, not everybody that comes there smokes, I know that for a fact.
Femi: Most of the people in my band do not even smoke, I just think one of them do, and not weed, just cigarettes.
Made: If you’ve been to the shrine, you would notice that there are all kinds of people there.
Femi: Even many of our fans don’t smoke, it is because of that Fela mentality, once you get there you would be smoking. One day, I was driving in VI, at a club, I saw some people smoking Indian hemp, and there was a police car nearby. I asked them, so you smoke marijuana, and they said yes, and I said, you see, if it was the shrine, they would give it a bad name, but look at them smoking and the police are right there.
Made: We went to Eko Hotel one day; we were there, nobody was smoking in our room. I stepped out and the entire hall was filed with smoke, but they would blame us, artistes’ culture. I actually placed myself more, because I am an educated musician.
There is a social responsibility I carry, which is to present myself in certain ways that can be forward-thinking to a generation that is coming after me. That is why I do the things I do, because I do want to teach, and I practice and learn a lot, and I want to pass that on.
Ebuka: Will you call yourself an Afro-beat artiste?
Made: First and foremost, I consider myself a musician, and a musician have to understand music, need to have understanding of music theory. If he plays an instrument, he has to practice well, he has to practice hard, he has to know that music is tedious, and it requires hourly practice every day.
You also need to understand that there are people that are better than you all over the world; so, you have to find your own voice, you are not just practicing to sound like people, and all. These things take a lot of time, and I spend about seven hours a day practicing about five different instruments, and I know what the levels are. I study composition alternative; I still consider myself a musician before being an afrobeat artiste. When I produce my own music, I make it with Afro-beat because the genre is the most fundamental musical elements of everything.
Ebuka: I want to talk about the Grammy. You have had 5 nominations between 2002, 2009, 2011, 2013 and then this one, are these things important to you?
Femi: In the beginning, it was important because nobody gave me the opportunity to be successful. But before the Grammys, there was Kora that was very big in Nigeria at that time, and I won the Kora then, and the World Music Award These are mighty awards in those days, and after I won the World Music, I was like so, it didn’t make the whole Nigeria better, we didn’t still have electricity, there was poverty, everything was getting worse, I was still Femi Kuti, even if people were over hailing, I didn’t see the effect personally, nothing changed, it probably left a kind of sour taste. I joined music with the aim of being a good musician and as good as I can be.
I think awards are secondary, and when it dawned on me that there are so many great musicians that never won awards, that I respect so much, my father for instance never won any of these mighty awards, same for Bob Marley, my thinking changed. You can name so many of them, I freed my mind of the worries of awards. If they recognise me, it feels good. Because of it, I will drink my champagne, but will not let it get to my head.