Detroit, Michigan: the sprawling, northern city on the southern shore of Lake Erie, once home to the United States auto industry and a music scene more potent than anywhere else in the world. By 1986, the Motor City’s industrial heartland was crumbling, Motown Records had decamped to Los Angeles and the drug-fuelled creativity that had once rendered the music of George Clinton’s Parliament, the MC5 and The Stooges so radical was already ancient history.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s spiritual and political leanings were not far removed from those that inspired these bands: in a 1986 interview with Roger Steffens in Los Angeles he professed “that science that people could not decipher in the Egyptian pyramids would be revealed in the Age of Aquarius.” Beyond such hazy philosophising, Fela’s proclamations tended to possess a genuine urgency due to his run-ins with Nigeria’s military rulers. Having formed his own political party, the Movement Of The People, in 1979 and having fearlessly denounced Nigeria’s ruling generals and their lackeys from the stage and in polemical columns in newspapers, Fela had encountered the junta’s wrath: several periods of imprisonment, beatings and harassment. Such punishment would have destroyed a lesser man but Fela never relented and the citizens of Lagos celebrated him for his bravery, music and cynical wit.

By the mid-1980s Kuti’s music had won him an international following and he (and fellow Nigerian musician King Sunny Ade) had signed Western recording deals. Yet, when attempting to leave Nigeria to tour the US in 1984, Fela was arrested on trumped up charges of ”currency trafficking” and was sentenced to five years in jail. Amnesty International adopted Fela as a Prisoner Of Conscience and their campaign helped free him from incarceration in April 1986. Two months later he was a featured artist on the Amnesty International “Conspiracy Of Hope” tour of the USA, appearing on stage alongside the likes of U2, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and Joan Baez. He remained outspoken in the US, attacking President Reagan and his administration for their support of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Fela had spent time in the US during the late-1960s. It was there that the young Nigerian from a prominent family had immersed himself in the wild jazz-funk-rock sounds pouring forth and had met Sandra Smith (now Sandra Isidore), an African-American woman who radicalised Fela’s thinking by challenging him with Black Power’s philosophy as to the majesty of African culture and the inferiority of the racist European outlook. Upon returning to Nigeria in 1971, Fela would begin making the music that became known as “Afro-beat”. He would change his surname from the “slave name” of Ransome to Anikulapo (meaning “one who has death in his pocket”). Much musical brilliance, political conflict and craziness would follow – Fela’s 1978 marriage to 28 women in one traditional ceremony, his all night performances at his Lagos compound club The Shrine, the air thick with marijuana smoke, while the likes of Ginger Baker, Paul
McCartney and Roy Ayers all traveled to Lagos to either record with or hang with Fela. Meanwhile his chanted/sung lyrics – in pidgin English – attacked Nigeria’s powerful ruling elite, winning him the widespread support of the people.

Forming part of Fela’s debut US tour with his Egypt 80 band, the Detroit concert proves that time in prison had not blunted his or Egypt 80’s musical power: the four numbers performed find Fela on confident form, teasing the audience and leading his magnificent band into epic jams that explore an African/American musical dialogue that first began when he was a jazz-loving youth and now took perfect form in Afro-beat’s magnificent hybrid. With Fela directing the band on keyboard and vocals, each song stretches out into a beautifully fluid African jazz epic. ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’ was the title track from Fela’s new album that year, aiming a swipe at the oyinbos (white men) forcing sham versions of democracy on Africa and allowing \”democratic\” rulers to line their own pockets at the expense of the people while foreign-owned multi-nationals are allowed to freely strip the continent of its natural resources.

‘Beasts Of No Nation’ would be the title of Fela’s next album (in 1989 – a long layoff for a artist who released nine albums in 1977 alone) and showcases Fela at his fiercest dealing with his recent court case and imprisonment, flaying Nigeria’s leaders and railing against Apartheid and the hypocrisy of Western leaders. ‘Confusion Break Bones’, comparing the present African situation to a permanent traffic jam at a town centre crossroads, finds Fela and Egypt 80 at their most fluid, their beautifully expressive interplay, sensational brass and percussion solos opening the song to the cosmos. ‘Just Like That’ begins with Fela relaxed and addressing the audience, “In my country things happen. Just like that. You go your way, mind your business, don’t do nothing, mind your shit. Next you know you’re in prison. Just like that. Then you want to drink water. And you turn on the tap. And there no water. Just like that.” Egypt 80 spin an extremely supple Afro-beat groove and Fela streches out on sax before encouraging his fans to chant along.

Fela in Detroit: oh, what a night of music this was! Having come to the US in the 1960s as a student he returned almost two decades later as a teacher – his radical blending of funk and jazz and rock elements with distinctive Nigerian and Ghanian musical flavours matching any of the revolutionary music the Motor City ever produced. ‘Live In Detroit’ is an essential document of Fela’s later period, finally available here on record for the first time.