Customer Reviews

Fela: This Bitch of a Life

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the better biography's I've read about an Afrakan.This book talk's to the people who knew Fela. Who lived in the Kalakuta Republic house. I actually read this book may be twenty years ago, because of my interest in Fela and his music. My original copy got ripped off, and this is a "must have" book to try and understand this great musician and human being. Hrw

FELA is a biography of the Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti, originally published in 1982. The Cuban ethnologist Carlos Moore spent hours interviewing Fela and produced an overview of Fela's life and values that Fela authorized. Generally the biography proceeds in the first person, a sign that it was transcribed from interviews.

Moore's biography doesn't speak much of Fela's music, but rather Fela's life and times, especially his numerous run-ins with Nigeria's military regime. There is some good coverage of his formative years, namely his early studies in England, his 1960s doldrums, and his trip to the United States that changed everything.

The term "authorized biography" might lead on to expect that sordid and risque details are left out, but Fela was so sexually flamboyant that he insisted Moore cover his relationships with women in depth. The singer believed in free love and would bed any groupie who came to his compound, usually enjoying multiple women a day. A few years before, Fela had infamously married 27 female members of his entourage and he invited Moore to interview the 15 "queens" who now remained with him. While Fela's lack of restraint and misogynism are appalling, one does have to admire the tenacity of these women who stayed with their man through parental disapproval, beatings by police and soldiers and imprisonment.

The 1982 text has been left unchanged, but Moore has added a poignant epilogue that describes Fela's deterioration over the 1980s and 1990s. First, Fela became increasingly paranoid, believing that spirits were talking to him and that close friends were CIA agents out to get him. Some of his longtime associates left him at this point, and his musicianship suffered, though ironically this is when he was in the greatest demand by international music labels. Then, multiple imprisonments, the regime of Sani Abacha and AIDS managed to silence him over his last years. In compiling a Fela discography and reading critical commentary, I had been puzzled by the obscurity of his late career, and Moore's biography explains why Fela's Seventies achievements form the core of his output.

All in all, as a Fela Kuti fan, I found Moore's biography informative and enjoyable. It could have used more discussion of Fela's music (there's nothing here about his relationship with his band members or stylistic evolution), but it was certainly still worthwhile.

This was a down to earth book....

I enjoyed it very much, and have been a fan of Fela's music for at least 20 years..

A good book about an outstanding Artist......behind the scenes of the problems in Nigeria and how

Fela's life and the times, influenced his music....

My sister is "hooked" on FELA. She's seen the play twice and will be seeing it again for the third time, sometimes in December or January, (whenever it comes back to the Washington, DC area. She's purchased his t-shirt, CD and wanted his book. I purchased the book just before her birthday and it arrived on time. Well, needless to say, "she's a happy camper." Thanks!

This autobiography by Fela was very touching and at the same time interesting. it combines a lot of things. fela as a musicia, fela as an activist, fela growing up. Fela may be dead but his legacy will never die

As someone who grew up listening to Fela Kuti and has close to 100 of his songs on my ipod, which are mostly extended versions, I give this book a 1. Thanks to the author of this book I learnt some interesting things about Fela, i.e., Fela thought, concerning the Biafran war, that the Nigerian government was wrong. He thought the Biafrans (my group at the time) were right to secede. His logic is that we were right to secede because secession is what could have brought Africa together at that time. From secession we could come together again. But by not seceding, we are put together by force, which makes sense to me. I also learnt other interesting things about Fela, but I am giving this book a 1 because of his misogynistic- and homophobic views. If you read the section on women in this book you'll find that he is possibly the greatest misogynist that ever lived. In his words, women like to be slept with (not everyone...we are not all sluts). The summary is that he spent too much time demonizing women and homosexuals, but particularly women (he writes about homosexuals briefly). He was also against singing and writing love songs to women (I believe his only attempt was My Lady Fustration, and in my opinion it was horrible...if anyone is wondering it's not on my ipod). He believes that equality between male and female can never be because the man must dominate. He believes that women should be passive and this passiveness will help her to take care of the house. It's part of the natural order for women to be submissive to men. He doesn't believe in women's liberation because he feels we don't do men's jobs like building roads. He feels women should be housewives: keep the home smooth, the children happy, and the husband happy. In addition, between the christian woman and the muslim woman he feels the muslim African woman is much more together because they don't argue in the house. To them, the man is always right. Why should the man always be right?! He is completely against women's liberation because he thinks it's against the natural order of the world. He said it comes from European religions, which didn't teach them properly because they teach that man and woman are equal in the house, for better or worse. He's against monogamy. In this book, he says that a man with many wives is natural while the reverse is not. About homosexuality, he believes that the only kind of sexuality that's against nature is homosexuality because it doesn't create life. In addition, he believes the cause of homosexuality is pollution, environment, and religion. He also thinks it's caused by too many chemical foods, not enough natural foods, and pollution. While I am not a homosexual, I do not think it's fair to put down anyone unless they deserve it. I really don't know how I could have tolerated someone like Fela Kuti as long as I did. Honestly, as an African who wants to decolonize from European culture completely and quickly, I love that he sang against European cultural imperialism, but maybe I didn't have enough self-love to have kept such a misogynistic and homophobic person. It is only fitting that his wives contributed to his final exit, but R.I.P Fela Kuti many of the things he sang about in terms of what we currently face in Africa today he was able to see way ahead of time. He definitely deserves recognition for this and for inventing a very beautiful and original genre called Afrobeat and yes, I still love his songs, especially since they deal with cultural-, social-, political-, and historical issues in Africa. I just listen with an angry face. One more thing, there are instances of Fela beating his wives when they were not ready to rehearse. Some of them actually said this, but they still loved him regardless.