Nigeria's Graceland - Fela's House to be a Museum

I was invited by Showboy to Egypt 80's rehearsal today at Fela Kuti's old house off Allen Avenue in the Ikeja district of Lagos. This was to be their last rehearsal before I leave for a trip back to Malaysia and Seun Kuti takes the band to Europe for a month-long summer tour.

I arrived at the house at 7 Gbemisola St. to find an industrial generator booming and a jackhammer pounding away. The place was a construction site. The band was inside with their instruments but other than warm-ups no music was being played; it was way too noisy. Showboy was at the keys composing a tune on notebook paper.

Apparently today's start of renovation work was just as much a surprise to the band as to me. The Kuti family has decided to turn Fela's Kalakuta into a museum for the public. Much restoration needs to be done and the work just started. Knowing that construction always takes longer than expected (and in Nigeria things usually take even longer than that), a date for the museum's opening cannot yet be predicted. But soon, Fela's Kalakuta will become Nigeria's Graceland.

Although the rehearsal did not come off as anticipated, I got to meet and exchange stories with the Egypt 80 band members and look through some of the relics left in the house, such as Fela's shoe cabinet (!) and a couple of old Selmer baritone saxes that needed total restoration. These were the Series II baris that Showboy told me about, one of them being the one he used to record his solo on Pangsa Pangsa. I even got to use Fela's facilities.

The house itself was a three-story concrete construction ca.1979. Fela apparently moved in around 1981 upon his release from prison (or should I say one of his releases from prison). It was a big house but didn't really stand out in this urban neighbourhood, and it was a far cry from the Beverly Hillbillies-style mansion you would associate with a big international star. Fela is buried on the grounds; his pyramid-shaped marble mausoleum is sited in the front yard.

Showboy and I went around the corner for lunch at a very local restaurant and sitting across from us at the shared table was a man, a musician, who remembered Showboy from Fela's house in 1974. 38 years ago. Good memory.