Fela and Afrika 70
Zombie

THE REVIEW

Zombie no go go

Unless you tell am to go

Zombie no go stop

Unless you tell am to stop

Zombie no go turn

Unless you tell am to turn

Zombie no go think

Unless you tell am to think

The zombies referred to in the text are the Nigerian soldiers, soulless men who do what they are ordered to do, lacking their own conscience.

Fela Ransome (Anikulapo later) Kuti is one of those figures who experienced firsthand the reactions to his music, the pain from the beatings, the real ones.

He had witnessed the Biafra civil war in the second half of the '60s and the coup of Colonel Yakubu Gowon (maneuvered by the C.I.A. to keep the country under US influence). From this came his closeness to the African-American movement of the Black Panther, and the ideologies of black power that would accompany him throughout his career.

The Nigerian multi-instrumentalist boasts an enormous discography, tours around the world, great collaborations, and supporters among the most influential in the music world, yet he is remembered primarily for his role as a political activist.

We are in 1977, the same year, to say, "The Clash", "Never Mind the Bollocks", "Talking Heads: 77", and "Exodus" are released. In Italy, there are strong civil clashes and protests against a government, the Andreotti one, among the worst of the First Republic.

Yet it's "Zombie" that I want to award the prize for the most significant manifesto of musical and social rebellion of that year.

The release of the album represents the last in a series of protest initiatives that Fela Kuti has been carrying out for many years, against a dictatorial regime that uses the power of the army to assert its reasons.

And the government's reaction was not long in coming, the musician's residence (called "Kalakuta Republic") was attacked by Nigerian military, some companions were killed, others arrested, women raped, his seventy-eight-year-old mother thrown out of the window, she would die from her injuries. Fela was dragged by the balls (literally, I'm not kidding!), kicked, humiliated, and only the compassion of an officer would allow him to escape.

The cover portrays him, trumpet in hand, in the act of unleashing all his anger against the zombie-police.

There are only two songs, each about fifteen minutes long, but imbued with an impressive groove that does not allow for any drop in attention. There is the title track, a funk/free-jazz in symbiosis with the warmth of Africa; then the second, Mister Follow Follow, another anti-militarist cry, an attack on Nigerian soldiers who obey orders without opposing them.

The musical influences are numerous: from Frank Sinatra, to Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, funk, and James Brown, which he eagerly devoured as a child. But to the greats of jazz, he mixes traditional rhythms and the feel of the truest Africa, with brass replacing the talking drums, the "talking drums" typical of Yoruba music, the ethnicity from which Fela descends.

This is how afrobeat is born, the genre that makes him famous worldwide.

The rhythmic component is therefore fundamental, ancestral in Nigerian Africa, but with some Caribbean influences. Masterfully directed by Tony Allen, the faithful drummer who accompanies him from the beginning, it becomes "infernal music that forces you to move", as Fela himself would later define it.

In the CD edition, we also find the bonus track Mistake, recorded live at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1978, where you can hear the audience's boos, protesting for a performance perhaps excessively long and for a character too revolutionary even for the time.

Those boos that further galvanized the composer of that exciting music, so alive and rebellious, one hundred percent African.