By Jennifer DeMeritt
Depending on your opinion of the genre, you might think a musical is a lousy tribute for an artist as charismatic, influential, and flat-out funky as Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Nigerian political activist and father of Afrobeat. Me? I’ve always hated musicals, which typically seem like boring songs in service of a boring story for a leg-gnawer of a show (a leg-gnawer being a performance so painful that, like an animal in a fur trap, I would chew my own limbs off to escape).
But the musical “Fela!,” in spite of that cheesy exclamation point, is an intelligent and electrifying theatrical experience, as befits the man who inspired it. For starters, the music of “Fela!” is the music of Fela: His original ass-shaking compositions make this the best score you’ll hear on Broadway this year, or any year. Since much of his music was politically motivated, it’s the perfect vehicle for the story of his struggles against the government of Nigeria. And it embodies the story of his experimentation with jazz, funk, and African drumming to create Afrobeat, the hybrid that made Fela an international star in the 1970s.
All the music in “Fela!” is played by Antibalas, a first-rate Afrobeat band that’s been burning up the scene in Brooklyn for years. Their performance alone—with driving rhythms and blistering horn solos—is an event worth celebrating. Add in the dancing by Bill T. Jones’s dance company, with their powerful legs and epic posteriors (one wonders if there’s really that much booty shaking in Nigeria), and “Fela!” gratifies the eyes as fully as the ears. And then there is the character of Fela himself, played by the dynamic Sahr Ngaujah. Where did they find this guy? He sings, he dances, he speechifies, and he looks fantastic in tight pants. I’ve heard some whispering about whether Ngaujah actually plays his saxophone during solos or mimes it, but seriously, who cares? That man is doing plenty already. He’s on stage for almost the entire show, and he commands our attention for all of that time.
Still, the music and dancing in “Fela!”—no matter how captivating—can’t do all the heavy lifting of narrative, and the writers did some cherry picking when they chose which facts to include and which to leave out. Fela was a complicated man, and the version on stage is defanged. When I saw the beta version of the show Off Broadway last year, Fela’s egomania and self-indulgence were on display, especially in a long, hazy sequence in the second act that showed the man reclining with his beloved reefer and soliloquizing like only a pothead can. In the new Broadway version, which has been tightened up (hurrah!) and slightly sanitized (boo), we still see a little wacky tobacky, but not enough to tarnish the character’s heroic luster.
He also gets a free pass on polygamy. This isn’t surprising considering the challenges of reaching a mainstream audience with anything remotely controversial. But imagine if the controversy were celebrated instead of minimized. For some of Fela’s diehard fans his, ahem, alternative lifestyle is a selling point—to wit, the legions of pussy-whipped pseudo-intellectual fanboys who say “And he had 27 wives!” while panting with awe in spite of, or because of, their own kowtowing to feminist pieties. But hey, Fela loved his mother, and that’s all we need to know, right? Well, maybe.
Fela’s mother, Funmilayo, a feminist activist in a time and place where that was immensely challenging, is portrayed as his polestar, and her tragic death at the hands of government heavies gives the show much of its dramatic ballast. The dream sequence (yes, a dream sequence; shut up, you’ll love it) where Fela visits her in the spirit world makes for a stunning convergence of dance, music, and stagecraft—an all-encompassing spectacle that melts your mind and pierces your heart.
Since it opened a few weeks ago, “Fela!” has received uniformly great reviews, with the notable exception of the Village Voice, which ripped the show for its factual omissions. The Voice’s rigor is commendable, as is their reluctance to mindlessly genuflect before the New Hot Thing; but it’s a sad sign of what sourpusses they’ve become that they so grudgingly acknowledge the show’s beauty and power.
Less a biography of this icon than a joyous riff on his life and music, “Fela!” delivers a caliber of pure entertainment rarely presented on Broadway, or anywhere else. Go see it.
Last 5 posts by Jennifer DeMeritt
- Is the Perfect Man really a Chest Hair Model? - April 14th, 2009
- Dirty Fusion Whore - April 9th, 2009
- Old Age and Treachery - March 28th, 2009
