Fela Kuti  He Miss Road (1975) |
Fela Kuti — He Miss Road
Birth name: Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti
Also known as: Fela Anikulapo Kuti; Fela Ransome-Kuti
Born: 15 October 1938, Abeokuta, Nigeria
Died: 2 August 1997
Genres: Afrobeat, Highlife
Album release: 1975
Record Label: Editions Makossa
Duration: 39:38
Tracks:
1. He Miss Road 10:47
2. Monday Morning In Lagos 11:15
3. It's No Possible 17:37
Personnel:
→ Fela Ransome Kuti (vocals, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano)
→ Oghene Kologbo (tenor guitar)
→ Christopher Uwaifor (tenor saxophone)
→ Lekan Animashaun (baritone saxophone)
→ Stephen Ukem, Tunde Williams (trumpet)
→ Franco Aboddy (bass guitar)
→ Tony Alen (drums)
→ Henry Kofi, Nicholas Addo (congas)
Review by Thom Jurek
→ He Miss Road was produced by none other than Ginger Baker, who was a semi-regular jamming partner of Fela Kuti's as well as a close friend. And the tunes Fela wrote for this platter are wild, cosmic, sexy as hell, and deeply saturated in funk a la James Brown. The B-3 solo at the beginning of the title track is simply a device for inviting the band in. The B-3 is way up in the mix, supercharged. The echo effects Baker used on the organ and the horns add a nice touch and create a different textural quality, one that is spacious, to be sure, but still rooted in the shamanic repetition as the riff goes on forever no matter what instruments enter or leave the mix. The vocals show up midway through as everything gets tense and explodes. → "Monday Morning in Lagos" is deep, dark, swirling Afro-funk. It's moody, spooky, and its organ line just stitches the whole groove together. The final cut, "It's No Promise," is pure Nigerian trance music. The longest track here, it's also the most abstract. It's held together by Tony Allen's drumming and the popping bassline by Franco Aboddy. This is one of Fela's cookers, an album from his most creative period, and it reigns among the best in his extensive catalog.
---------------------------------------------------
Biography by John Dougan
→ It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an unredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac. His death on August 3, 1997 of complications from AIDS deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a musical and sociopolitical voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced. A press release from the United Democratic Front of Nigeria on the occasion of Fela's death noted: "Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa." This is as succinct a summation of Fela's political agenda as one is likely to find.
→ Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938, Fela's family was firmly middle class as well as politically active. His father was a pastor (and talented pianist), his mother active in the anti-colonial, anti-military, Nigerian home rule movement. So at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in 1958 for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music. Tired of studying European composers, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown-style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional high life and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.
→ In 1969, Fela brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L.A. that Fela hooked up with a friend, Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver (and by extension the Black Panthers), and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide. After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L.A. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela's career. Afrobeat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars, all wrapped up in a smoldering groove (in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen) that could last nearly an hour, was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough.
→ Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine. It was during this time that he dropped his given middle name of "Ransome" which he said was a slave name, and took the name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch") . Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa. His biggest fan base, however, was Nigeria's poor. Because his music addressed issues important to the Nigerian underclass (specifically a military government that profited from political exploitation and disenfranchisement), Fela was more than a simply a pop star; like Bob Marley in Jamaica, he was the voice of Nigeria's have-nots, a cultural rebel. This was something Nigeria's military junta tried to nip in the bud, and from almost the moment he came back to Nigeria up until his death, Fela was hounded, jailed, harassed, and nearly killed by a government determined to silence him. In one of the most egregious acts of violence committed against him, 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked his Kalakuta compound in 1977 (the second government-sanctioned attack). → Fela suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments were destroyed.
→ After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. In 1979 he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People), and at the start of the new decade renamed his band Egypt 80. From 1980-1983, Nigeria was under civilian rule, and it was a relatively peaceful period for Fela, who recorded and toured non-stop. Military rule returned in 1983, and in 1984 Fela was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of currency smuggling. With help from Amnesty International, he was freed in 1985.
→ As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government, as well as broadsides aimed at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (most abrasively on the album Beasts of No Nation). Never what you would call progressive when it came to relationships with women or patriarchy in general (the fact was that he was sexist in the extreme, which is ironic when you consider that his mother was one of Nigeria's early feminists), he was coming around to the struggles faced by African women, but only just barely. Stylistically speaking, Fela's music didn't change much during this time, and much of what he recorded, while good, was not as blistering as some of the amazing music he made in the '70s. Still, when a Fela record appeared, it was always worth a listen. He was unusually quiet in the '90s, which may have had something to do with how ill he was; very little new music appeared, but in as great a series of reissues as the planet has ever seen, the London-based Stern's Africa label re-released some of his long unavailable records (including The '69 Los Angeles Sessions), and the seminal works of this remarkable musician were again filling up CD bins. He never broke big in the U.S. market, and it's hard to imagine him having the same kind of posthumous profile that Marley does, but Fela's 50-something releases offer up plenty of remarkable music, and a musical legacy that lives on in the person of his talented son Femi. → Around the turn of the millennium, Universal began remastering and reissuing a goodly portion of Fela's many recordings, finally making some of his most important work widely available to American listeners.
Discography:
1963/69 Lagos Baby 1963-1969 Vampisoul
1969 The '69 Los Angeles Sessions Wrasse Records
1971 Why Black Man Dey Suffer Wrasse Records, Knitting Factory Records
1971 Live! (with Ginger Baker) Barclay Records, MCA Records, Wrasse Records
1972 Stratavarious (with Ginger Baker) Polydor Records
1972 Na Poi Barclay Records
1972 Open & Close Barclay Records
1972 Shakara Barclay Records
1972 Roforofo Fight Barclay Records
1973 Afrodisiac Barclay Records
1973 Gentleman Barclay Records
1974 Alagbon Close Barclay Records
1975 Noise for Vendor Mouth Barclay Records
1975 Confusion Barclay Records
1975 Everything Scatter Barclay Records
1975 He Miss Road Barclay Records
1975 Expensive Shit Barclay Records
1976 No Bread EMI Nigeria
1976 Kalakuta Show Barclay Records
1976 Upside Down Barclay Records
1976 Ikoyi Blindness Barclay Records
1976 Before I Jump Like Monkey Give Me Banana Barclay Records
1976 Excuse O Barclay Records
1977 Zombie Barclay Records
1976 Yellow Fever Barclay Records
1977 Opposite People Barclay Records
1977 Fear Not For Man Barclay Records
1977 Stalemate Barclay Records
1977 Observation No Crime EMI Nigeria
1977 Johnny Just Drop (J.J.D Live!! at Kalakuta Republic) Barclay Records
1977 I Go Shout Plenty EMI Nigeria
1977 No Agreement Barclay Records
1977 Sorrow, Tears, and Blood Barclay Records
1978 Shuffering and Shmiling Barclay Records
1979 Unknown Soldier Barclay Records
1979 V.I.P. (Vagabonds in Power) Live in Berlin Barclay Records
1980 Coffin for Head of State Barclay Records
1980 I.T.T. (International Thief Thief) Barclay Records
1980 Music of Many Colours (with Roy Ayers) Barclay Records
1980 Authority Stealing Barclay Records
1981 Black President EMI Nigeria
1981 Original Suffer-Head Barclay Records
1983 Perambulator Barclay Records
1983 Live in Amsterdam Barclay Records
1985 Army Arrangement Barclay Records
1986 Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense Barclay Records
1989 Beasts of No Nation Barclay Records
1989 O.D.O.O. (Overtake Don Overtake Overtake) Barclay Records
1992 U.S. (Underground System) Barclay Records
1996 Buy America Movie Play Gold
2000 The Best of the Black President Barclay/MCA Records/Wrasse Records (2002)/Knitting Factory Records (2009)
2004 The Underground Spiritual Game Quannum Projects
2012 Live in Detroit, 1986 Knitting Factory Records, Strut Records
Musical style:
♣ The musical style performed by Fela Kuti is called Afrobeat, which is a complex fusion of Jazz, Funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian High-life, psychedelic rock, and traditional West African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native "tinker pan" African-style percussion that Kuti acquired while studying in Ghana with Hugh Masekela, under the uncanny Hedzoleh Soundz. The importance of the input of Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) in the creation of Afrobeat cannot be overstated. Fela once famously stated that "without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat".
→ Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals, and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. The "endless groove" is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar, and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer to an astonishing melodic and polyrhythmic complexity. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes. 
© Melvin Baker; Abeokuta, Nigeria, from the top of Olumo Rock
© The "Rock of Abeokuta", as drawn c.1892
© Melvin "Buddy" Baker; Kuto Road in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria
| Fela Kuti He Miss Road (1975) |
| Fela Kuti He Miss Road (1975) |
| Fela Kuti He Miss Road (1975) |
Fela Kuti — He Miss Road
© Melvin Baker; Abeokuta, Nigeria, from the top of Olumo Rock
© The "Rock of Abeokuta", as drawn c.1892
© Melvin "Buddy" Baker; Kuto Road in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria
Birth name: Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti
Also known as: Fela Anikulapo Kuti; Fela Ransome-Kuti
Born: 15 October 1938, Abeokuta, Nigeria
Died: 2 August 1997
Genres: Afrobeat, Highlife
Album release: 1975
Record Label: Editions Makossa
Duration: 39:38
Tracks:
1. He Miss Road 10:47
2. Monday Morning In Lagos 11:15
3. It's No Possible 17:37
Personnel:
→ Fela Ransome Kuti (vocals, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano)
→ Oghene Kologbo (tenor guitar)
→ Christopher Uwaifor (tenor saxophone)
→ Lekan Animashaun (baritone saxophone)
→ Stephen Ukem, Tunde Williams (trumpet)
→ Franco Aboddy (bass guitar)
→ Tony Alen (drums)
→ Henry Kofi, Nicholas Addo (congas)
Review by Thom Jurek
→ He Miss Road was produced by none other than Ginger Baker, who was a semi-regular jamming partner of Fela Kuti's as well as a close friend. And the tunes Fela wrote for this platter are wild, cosmic, sexy as hell, and deeply saturated in funk a la James Brown. The B-3 solo at the beginning of the title track is simply a device for inviting the band in. The B-3 is way up in the mix, supercharged. The echo effects Baker used on the organ and the horns add a nice touch and create a different textural quality, one that is spacious, to be sure, but still rooted in the shamanic repetition as the riff goes on forever no matter what instruments enter or leave the mix. The vocals show up midway through as everything gets tense and explodes. → "Monday Morning in Lagos" is deep, dark, swirling Afro-funk. It's moody, spooky, and its organ line just stitches the whole groove together. The final cut, "It's No Promise," is pure Nigerian trance music. The longest track here, it's also the most abstract. It's held together by Tony Allen's drumming and the popping bassline by Franco Aboddy. This is one of Fela's cookers, an album from his most creative period, and it reigns among the best in his extensive catalog.
---------------------------------------------------
Biography by John Dougan
→ It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti (or just Fela as he's more commonly known) to the global musical village: producer, arranger, musician, political radical, outlaw. He was all that, as well as showman par excellence, inventor of Afro-beat, an unredeemable sexist, and a moody megalomaniac. His death on August 3, 1997 of complications from AIDS deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a musical and sociopolitical voice on a par with Bob Marley was silenced. A press release from the United Democratic Front of Nigeria on the occasion of Fela's death noted: "Those who knew you well were insistent that you could never compromise with the evil you had fought all your life. Even though made weak by time and fate, you remained strong in will and never abandoned your goal of a free, democratic, socialist Africa." This is as succinct a summation of Fela's political agenda as one is likely to find.
→ Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938, Fela's family was firmly middle class as well as politically active. His father was a pastor (and talented pianist), his mother active in the anti-colonial, anti-military, Nigerian home rule movement. So at an early age, Fela experienced politics and music in a seamless combination. His parents, however, were less interested in his becoming a musician and more interested in his becoming a doctor, so they packed him off to London in 1958 for what they assumed would be a medical education; instead, Fela registered at Trinity College's school of music. Tired of studying European composers, Fela formed his first band, Koola Lobitos, in 1961, and quickly became a fixture on the London club scene. He returned to Nigeria in 1963 and started another version of Koola Lobitos that was more influenced by the James Brown-style singing of Geraldo Pina from Sierra Leone. Combining this with elements of traditional high life and jazz, Fela dubbed this intensely rhythmic hybrid "Afro-beat," partly as critique of African performers whom he felt had turned their backs on their African musical roots in order to emulate current American pop music trends.
→ In 1969, Fela brought Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles to tour and record. They toured America for about eight months using Los Angeles as a home base. It was while in L.A. that Fela hooked up with a friend, Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver (and by extension the Black Panthers), and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism. Impressed at what he read, Fela was politically revivified and decided that some changes were in order: first, the name of the band, as Koola Lobitos became Nigeria 70; second, the music would become more politically explicit and critical of the oppression of the powerless worldwide. After a disagreement with an unscrupulous promoter who turned them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Fela and band were charged with working without work permits. Realizing that time was short before they were sent back to Nigeria, they were able to scrape together some money to record some new songs in L.A. What came to be known as the '69 Los Angeles Sessions were remarkable, an indication of a maturing sound and of the raucous, propulsive music that was to mark Fela's career. Afrobeat's combination of blaring horn sections, antiphonal vocals, Fela's quasi-rapping pidgin English, and percolating guitars, all wrapped up in a smoldering groove (in the early days driven by the band's brilliant drummer Tony Allen) that could last nearly an hour, was an intoxicating sound. Once hooked, it was impossible to get enough.
→ Upon returning to Nigeria, Fela founded a communal compound-cum-recording studio and rehearsal space he called the Kalakuta Republic, and a nightclub, the Shrine. It was during this time that he dropped his given middle name of "Ransome" which he said was a slave name, and took the name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch") . Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa. His biggest fan base, however, was Nigeria's poor. Because his music addressed issues important to the Nigerian underclass (specifically a military government that profited from political exploitation and disenfranchisement), Fela was more than a simply a pop star; like Bob Marley in Jamaica, he was the voice of Nigeria's have-nots, a cultural rebel. This was something Nigeria's military junta tried to nip in the bud, and from almost the moment he came back to Nigeria up until his death, Fela was hounded, jailed, harassed, and nearly killed by a government determined to silence him. In one of the most egregious acts of violence committed against him, 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked his Kalakuta compound in 1977 (the second government-sanctioned attack). → Fela suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments were destroyed.
→ After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. In 1979 he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People), and at the start of the new decade renamed his band Egypt 80. From 1980-1983, Nigeria was under civilian rule, and it was a relatively peaceful period for Fela, who recorded and toured non-stop. Military rule returned in 1983, and in 1984 Fela was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of currency smuggling. With help from Amnesty International, he was freed in 1985.
→ As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government, as well as broadsides aimed at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (most abrasively on the album Beasts of No Nation). Never what you would call progressive when it came to relationships with women or patriarchy in general (the fact was that he was sexist in the extreme, which is ironic when you consider that his mother was one of Nigeria's early feminists), he was coming around to the struggles faced by African women, but only just barely. Stylistically speaking, Fela's music didn't change much during this time, and much of what he recorded, while good, was not as blistering as some of the amazing music he made in the '70s. Still, when a Fela record appeared, it was always worth a listen. He was unusually quiet in the '90s, which may have had something to do with how ill he was; very little new music appeared, but in as great a series of reissues as the planet has ever seen, the London-based Stern's Africa label re-released some of his long unavailable records (including The '69 Los Angeles Sessions), and the seminal works of this remarkable musician were again filling up CD bins. He never broke big in the U.S. market, and it's hard to imagine him having the same kind of posthumous profile that Marley does, but Fela's 50-something releases offer up plenty of remarkable music, and a musical legacy that lives on in the person of his talented son Femi. → Around the turn of the millennium, Universal began remastering and reissuing a goodly portion of Fela's many recordings, finally making some of his most important work widely available to American listeners.
Discography:
1963/69 Lagos Baby 1963-1969 Vampisoul
1969 The '69 Los Angeles Sessions Wrasse Records
1971 Why Black Man Dey Suffer Wrasse Records, Knitting Factory Records
1971 Live! (with Ginger Baker) Barclay Records, MCA Records, Wrasse Records
1972 Stratavarious (with Ginger Baker) Polydor Records
1972 Na Poi Barclay Records
1972 Open & Close Barclay Records
1972 Shakara Barclay Records
1972 Roforofo Fight Barclay Records
1973 Afrodisiac Barclay Records
1973 Gentleman Barclay Records
1974 Alagbon Close Barclay Records
1975 Noise for Vendor Mouth Barclay Records
1975 Confusion Barclay Records
1975 Everything Scatter Barclay Records
1975 He Miss Road Barclay Records
1975 Expensive Shit Barclay Records
1976 No Bread EMI Nigeria
1976 Kalakuta Show Barclay Records
1976 Upside Down Barclay Records
1976 Ikoyi Blindness Barclay Records
1976 Before I Jump Like Monkey Give Me Banana Barclay Records
1976 Excuse O Barclay Records
1977 Zombie Barclay Records
1976 Yellow Fever Barclay Records
1977 Opposite People Barclay Records
1977 Fear Not For Man Barclay Records
1977 Stalemate Barclay Records
1977 Observation No Crime EMI Nigeria
1977 Johnny Just Drop (J.J.D Live!! at Kalakuta Republic) Barclay Records
1977 I Go Shout Plenty EMI Nigeria
1977 No Agreement Barclay Records
1977 Sorrow, Tears, and Blood Barclay Records
1978 Shuffering and Shmiling Barclay Records
1979 Unknown Soldier Barclay Records
1979 V.I.P. (Vagabonds in Power) Live in Berlin Barclay Records
1980 Coffin for Head of State Barclay Records
1980 I.T.T. (International Thief Thief) Barclay Records
1980 Music of Many Colours (with Roy Ayers) Barclay Records
1980 Authority Stealing Barclay Records
1981 Black President EMI Nigeria
1981 Original Suffer-Head Barclay Records
1983 Perambulator Barclay Records
1983 Live in Amsterdam Barclay Records
1985 Army Arrangement Barclay Records
1986 Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense Barclay Records
1989 Beasts of No Nation Barclay Records
1989 O.D.O.O. (Overtake Don Overtake Overtake) Barclay Records
1992 U.S. (Underground System) Barclay Records
1996 Buy America Movie Play Gold
2000 The Best of the Black President Barclay/MCA Records/Wrasse Records (2002)/Knitting Factory Records (2009)
2004 The Underground Spiritual Game Quannum Projects
2012 Live in Detroit, 1986 Knitting Factory Records, Strut Records
Musical style:
♣ The musical style performed by Fela Kuti is called Afrobeat, which is a complex fusion of Jazz, Funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian High-life, psychedelic rock, and traditional West African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native "tinker pan" African-style percussion that Kuti acquired while studying in Ghana with Hugh Masekela, under the uncanny Hedzoleh Soundz. The importance of the input of Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) in the creation of Afrobeat cannot be overstated. Fela once famously stated that "without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat".
→ Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals, and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. The "endless groove" is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar, and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer to an astonishing melodic and polyrhythmic complexity. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes.