“This is so African.” Fela Kuti manages to turn this ultimate cliché of phrase into one of the most refined acts of defiance. And it is perhaps not accidental that this particular show takes place in one of the most important capitals of Europe, namely Berlin.
Watching Fela Kuti’s band jumping around, dancing, and acting in silly ways, a Western spectator is likely to identify certain images, sounds, movements, and behaviours that have been perverted by a certain kind of distorted “ethnographic” films and accounts (the “happy-African-people-doing-their-happy-African-dances”-type-of-thing). Images, sounds, movements, and behaviours that one is tempted to deem as “so African”, in an equation where such a phrase is steeped in colonial connotations and works as a testimony of one’s ignorance. All these elements have something to do with Africa indeed. The issue here is that they are not seen for what they truly are, but through the lens of a system which uprooted and confiscated them, of a society which does not understand them, which warps, misrepresents, and simplifies them as a form of oppression.
Through his work Kuti questions and deconstructs these clichés and deformations (see also his unique of use of language in his lyrics) and ultimately restores the full glory of these elements, their true meaning, and puts them back in their rightful place. “This is so African” is no longer a form of attitudinal colonialism. Liberated from its parasitic meanings and narratives, it becomes an exclamation of freedom.
Whatever “so African” means, one has the chance to see it anew, perhaps for the first time ever. Or, to quite Fela’s words from the beginning of the concert: “I want to present myself as an African. I want you to look at me as something new, that you do not have any knowledge about – because most, 99.9% of the information you get about Africa is wrong.”
What one sees in Kuti’s show is not the harmless, naive Africa portrayed by the above-mentioned “ethnographic” approach. This Africa is dignified, self-aware, and massively badass, in an act of elegant and fiery assertion of one’s true identity.
(Photo credits: excerpt from the youtube video above)