‘Coffin For Head of State’: The song that saw Fela Kuti declare war with the Nigerian Military
The beat writer William S. Burroughs once said, “Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.” I’m sure he didn’t have Fela Kuti and his wild ways in mind when he proclaimed that in his prose, but despite his manic constitution, few artists in history have exercised a more directed political flex than the Afrobeat pioneer. This is the tale of how he went to war with Nigeria and the tragic price he paid.
Born in the Western region of Nigeria among the countries elite in 1938, he ventured away from the blue skies of home to the rather grey climes of London in the mid-1950s to be trained up as a doctor. He was already musically inclined when he arrived in the capital, but soon he’d be so intoxicated by the spirit of American Jazz that he was essentially unfit to attend school. He downed his scalpel, picked up his shaker, and entered the Trinity College of Music.
Given the unusual path that led him to this position, his music had a keen edge of social consciousness at its core. He coupled this with invigorating and astoundingly different mix of of West African rhythms, American jazz and a whiff of rock ‘n’ roll to create the Afrobeat sensation that soon swept the world. His masterstroke in Nigeria, however, was welcoming upwards of 50 musicians to his melee of sound and putting on all-night parties that brought huge crowds were his vision of liberation was taking hold. Thus, back in his native land, he was a constant thorn in the side of corrupt authorities.
He was jailed a whopping 200+ times and on each of those occasions, he left 27 wives at home sorely missing his company (all of which he would later divorce). Eventually, he grew so tired of the law and the lack of equality that he set up what was essentially his own separatist state on the outskirts of Lagos. With 27 wives, their extended families, a legion of fans, and many converts to his trailblazing ways amid the dispossessed masses of Nigeria and beyond, his little Kuti-dom turned out to be quite a big one. The stuffy authorities now had a raving problem on their hands.
“Music can be an instrument of enjoyment,” he once said. “But in my environment, my society is under-developing because of an alien system on our people now. So there’s no music for enjoyment. There’s nothing like love. There’s a struggle for people’s existence. So as an artist, politically, artistically, your whole idea about your environment must be represented in the music. As far as Africa is concerned, music must not be for enjoyment. Music must be for revolution.”
So, in the centre of his outlaw realm, which he declared the Kalakuti Republic and named himself president, was a recording studio where he voiced the sound of revolution. Naturally, this bohemian principality was one that the government were quick to attempt to snuff out. However, it wasn’t all that easy. He had a growing following and an international standing that they couldn’t just snuff out without any backlash. But with the release of his record Zombie, which likened the military to the brainless undead following orders without thinking, he pushed them a bit too far.
His private utopia was raided by the Nigerian Military. On previous raids, they had exercised caution and proceeded more in warning than anything else, but this time they brutally tore Kalakuti to bits, allegedly raping as they went along. They beat Kuti mercilessly, almost killing him, and threw his elderly mother out of a window to her death. In response, Kuti regained his strength, refused to put his mother’s coffin in the ground at her funeral, sent it to the military headquarters, and eternalised the whole thing in the song ‘Coffin For Head of State’. The track is a 22-minute long celebration of protest number akin to the drawn-out nuclear reversal of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.
”Them burn my house too/Them kill my mama,” he wails in a falsetto that could haunt an empty house. Then at the climax of this wall of vitalised sound, he declares: “We go Obalende, we go Dodan barracks, We reach them gate o, We put the coffin down.” This was a stark declaration from Kuti. The barracks turned his gesture away, but it was witnessed by enough people to enter the modern folklore in the area and serve as a defiant sign of rebellion. From then on, the voice of the people only grew in volume.
