4 stars (out of 5)
Prolific documentary producer/director Alex Gibney’s study of Fela Kuti (1938 – 1997), Nigerian musician, Afrobeat creator, human rights campaigner, political revolutionary and a force of nature, is too long but that seems appropriate, as Kuti’s epic songs often built audiences to a fever pitch of raunchy excitement over more than half an hour – and then actually began.
Allowing the Fela newcomer an entrance point into understanding the guy by contrasting his chaotic life with the development of the Broadway musical Fela!, this offers interviews with its stage director Bill T Jones, who talks of the difficulty of trying to get a handle on everything Fela was about. Gibney travels back to reveal that our subject was born rich and elite and studied hard, and while he journeyed to London in 1958 to study medicine he was nevertheless bitten with the music bug and, later, discovered that his celebrity meant that he wielded much political power. And while archival footage shows Fela onstage and criticising the police, the army and the Nigerian government (at a time when it could have got him killed), there’s also much here about what a contradiction he was, with his ‘Kalakuta Republic’ compound home in Lagos housing many of his 27 ‘wives’, all of whom he treated very badly while at the same time proclaiming himself a feminist.
Enjoyably rambling, this doesn’t seek to excuse Fela for his sins but shows how inspirationally trouble-making he could be, with sequences of him in concert (and with the musical filling in some blanks) demonstrating that he was an extraordinary performer, and Paul McCartney briefly turning up to say that when he saw Fela and Afrika 70 at The Shrine in Lagos in the ‘70s they were amongst the greatest live acts he’s ever seen. And they certainly look amazing – and just try and stop your booty shaking.
I Wake Up Screening 