Fela se Kind

One half (or is that the root?) of PSquare

Having arrived late on Friday night (a pleasant flight with an entire middle row to myself) I woke up on Saturday morning and headed straight out to a TV shoot with Roddy. The TVC features PSquare – identical twins Peter and Paul - one of Nigeria’s hottest young hip-hop acts. As it turns out, very nice guys who busted their asses all day in front of the camera without a murmur of complaint.

Koga studios are in Ikeja on the mainland, a good 40 minutes’ drive from the agency, so after we wrapped around 7pm, Mordi and I joined the Glo producer Ororo and some of his colleagues for some drinks at a joint a few blocks away, right next to the famous Afrika Shrine. A sideplate of inkwobi (cow’s leg) was ordered as a snack. I tried a piece – it’s cooked in a tasty, hot sauce – but was not pleasantly surprised. It was pretty much a piece of gristle, one step away from an actual bone. I ground away manfully on the same piece for about 5 minutes before removing it into a serviette. Then we decided to visit the Afrika Shrine. This time I was pleasantly surprised. Squeezing through a crowded entrance into a dark yard, it opened up into a large, high roofed music venue (about the size of Bassline in Newtown, Jozi). The “shrine” is nothing like the dingy museum I anticipated – the whole place is a living, drinking, music thumping, dope smoking memorial to Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997). 

L-R: Ororo, Mordi and accomplice at the actual shrine inside the Shrine

Poster boy for mayhem

With plastic tables and chairs occupying the broad space between a high stage at one end and a bar at the other, and pool tables down the one side, it put me in mind of the Tandoor in Yeoville in the early 90’s. The familiar smell of Igbo (weed, vigorously endorsed by the late Fela) reinforced my impression.  We grabbed a table and a few more beers and I was regaled with stories of the legendary musician, bigamist (he married 27 women one day) and human freedom activist. 

Afterwards we went outside onto the busy sidewalk and squeezed onto one of the narrow wooden benches for an al fresco ABF.  I was offered a sip of Ogidiga – foul tasting bitters that smelt a bit like jelly beans mixed with ethanol. This elicited much mirth of the “nudge nudge wink wink” variety; Apparently this demon piss is reputed to give men the staying power of door-to-door Viagra salesmen. So, if you can keep it down, you can keep it up all night... I declined after the first taste, so we’ll never know

 
 Postscript: Liner notes attest that Fela changed his name in 1976 from Fela Ransome Kuti to Fela Anikulapo Kuta which, according to him, means “The One Who Emanates Greatness, Who carries Death in His Quiver and Who cannot be killed by Human Entity.” This was prescient; He finally succumbed to a heart condition complicated by AIDS/HIV.