FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI & AFRIKA ’70, “KALAKUTA SHOW,” FROM KALAKUTA SHOW (1976)
In 1992, my girlfriend – now my wife – went to Nigeria for six months on a study group. She came back with hundreds of cool pictures and a musical name I hadn’t heard: Fela.
Fela was a musical giant and a political icon in West Africa. You owe it to yourself to learn more about him from people much more qualified than me. Go check out http://www.felaproject.net.
I removed most Fela songs from my Mini iPod because I found that they take up too much space. The average song lasts ten minutes. “Kalakuta Show” has stayed on there, I believe, because it’s so damn funky and has a relaxed, instrumental groove. There’s the classic Fela singing style punctuated by Fela’s wives. In his music, the words are arguably the MOST important parts of a song because they convey his politics. Often times, though, the words distract me from what I want to do, which is to settle into the rich, sonic fabric of guitars and bass weaving in and out of Tony Allen’s drumming.
And so, “Kalakuta Show” rears its head at opportune times, holds my attention for a while, and disappears back where it came from for another few months. I can’t seem to shake it, and I’ve given up.
Fela’s music takes some getting used to. African musical time isn’t like Western musical time. You have to be ready to settle in. It’s like meditation. Thoughts arise one after another. You don’t attempt to stop them. Thoughts float in on the left side of your mind’s screen, and out on the right.
You usually meditate in silence, of course, without guitars, drums, and horns mucking it up.
PART TWO:
A lot of Western music, which generally places too much emphasis on expression, is often not congruent with entering into this kind of state. Compositions are so often thought to be direct expressions of the composer’s imagination. The Composer communicates something to the Listener. It’s intentional and rational. So, if I zone out, it’s like I’m not listening, and that’s akin to being rude.
This is not always the case, of course, and composers and bands will yell and scream if you try to tell them what their music does or does not do or try to pigeonhole them in any way. They hate being labeled as one thing or another. Just try it sometime: go up to a young band in their twenties and tell them exactly what you think they are, or even ask them. They’ll insist, Dude, it’s just MUSIC.
Even jazz and jam-band stuff, which focus on improvisation, include some element of rational, on-the-spot decision-making process. True, when you play improvised music, occasionally the notes fall one after the other without a great deal of intention. They float by, produced by your fingers and the steel and the wood of a guitar amplified through electronic equipment. Pure music, if there is such a thing, doesn’t allow for term limits or alarm clocks. All parts coexist for as long as they will themselves. I’ve always found in such situations that intention should be thrown out the window. Notes and rhythms should be allowed to arise, commingle, and disappear at their own pace and volume. The role of the player, then, is to conjure but without too much emotion, to calmly stir up the sounds like sand on the ocean floor and to listen to them float around for a while and dissipate.
This rarely happens. First of all, not only do you have the audience to entertain, you have guys in your group who don’t all share the same goal. You fill a very short amount of time with some recognizable licks that please your friends and the drunk people not listening to you. This is the art of live bar-band music. On stage, you are also aware that the people you are playing for have certain expectations. There’s a vague feeling that they want you to increase the intensity of what you play gradually until you reach a whiny catharsis on the high registers of the instrument. This is usually what you end up doing. You only have a short amount of time to make an impression. There’s nothing musical about it. It’s purely theatrical, like a circus act.
I’ve always dreamed of having tons and tons of time to sit around and play with a bunch of like-minded, self-indulgent individuals, a bunch of curious musicians stirring up sand just to watch it float back down to the bottom. This could go on for hours and hours, like a musical retreat.
So, that’s why it’s extremely difficult to sit there with headphones on trying to get all meditative. It’s like having someone yakking away in both ears while you’re trying to get blissed out. Music is antipathetic to meditation. That’s why the soundtrack to yoga shows and meditation tapes strikes us as musical Melba toast. It allows you to ignore it, all the while playing the trope in your mind of, Oh, I’m supposed to feel all far-out and spacey here.
“Kalakuta Show” reminds me to sit down, shut up, and pay attention. I hope it does that for you as well.
