My initial experience with “Zombie” was an older guy’s version of the one in the article. In 1980 I was a young classical musician, just starting on a MA in music composition at UC Berkeley. A friend loaned me two African LPs: the original Nigerian pressing of Zombie (with only the title track and “Mr. Follow Follow,” and Ice Cream and Suckers, a compilation of raw South African mpqanga tracks. Both changed my life, and still affect me 45 years later.
Even though I was mired in classical academia, I began obsessively learning African guitar parts from import LPs, Before long I as studying at Cal with C.K. Ladzekpo, the great Ghanian drummer and music scholar. He knew I was a guitarist, and after a while he asked me about trying out with a band he played with — Ashiko, led by Nigerian bandleader and saxophonist O.J. Ekemode, who also performed under his first two names, Orlando Julius. (He had a few hits in Nigeria before coming to the States with Hugh Masakela’s band. Ironically, the forementioned Ice Cream and Suckers compilation includes the TWO songs that Masakela plagiarized and combined into his biggest hit, “Grazin’ in the Grass.”)
Fela wasn’t available on US pressings at the time, except maybe for that Ginger Baker collaboration. I haunted every African record shop I could find, buying those expensive Nigerian imports with their funky covers and sketchy vinyl. I learned a lot of the repertoire, but “Zombie” has always been my favorite. Maybe because it was my first exposure to afrobeat (other than the Talking Heads’s afrobeat-influenced tracks). Or maybe because it’s just so damn good.
At the time, there was an astonishing expat African music scene in Oakland. It included Nigerian and Ghanian musicians who had worked in Africa with major stars like Sunny Ade and Sonny Okusuns. There was Ghanaian percussionist Kwashi “Rocky” Dzidzornu, who had worked in the London session scene for years. You hear him on albums by Nick Drake, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Taj Mahal, and most notably, the Rolling Stones. (That’s him playing congas on “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”) He also played a bit with Hendrix, including the Woodstock show. And I did a few gigs with Fela’s Tunde Williams, who played trumpet on “Zombie” and many other Fela tracks. In Ashiko I was one of three white musicians alongside a dozen or so West Africans and a couple of African-Americans. We played mostly afrobeat and highlife, with a bit of African reggae. (We did a killer version of Fela’s “Water No Get Enemy.”)
Needless to say, it was an astonishing learning experience. I still marvel at my luck nearly a half-century later.
My role was “tenor guitar,” which referred not to the four-stringed instrument of that name, but rather the electric guitar that played afrobeat’s signature mid-register, staccato single-note lines, like the part you hear at the very beginning of “Zombie,” accompanied by claves. (Or “clips,” as the Nigerians called them.) The two-part figure repeats without variation for the duration of the song. (Of course, there are no alternate chorus or bridge parts because the song has no chorus or bridge.) It required discipline and focus — it was like meditation, decades before I discovered meditation. It was never boring, though — in afrobeat, the tenor guitar, claves, and sometimes other instruments played without variation, while all the other drummers continually varied their parts around our static rhythms. It was a bit like how, when you’re on a merry-go-round, it can feel like the world around you is spinning rather than you.
OJ couldn’t have been cooler. He was so kind and patient with me while I got the grooves under my fingers and in my head. Like I said, I was lucky AF.
I dropped out of UCB PhD program and spent the rest of my life playing guitar in bands — initially African-influenced ones, and then a wider range of styles.
A few years later I was an editor at Guitar Player magazine and a late-blooming session musician. I went on to play with Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Tracy Chapman, and many other artists. I seldom played in a literally West African style, but those styles informed a huge percentage of what I play to this day — the reliance on crisp, non-distorted sounds … sometimes embracing repetition over variation … and generally, a more adventurous sense of rhythm than most US guitarist bring to the table.
A few years ago I connected with Orlando Julius on Facebook. He was back in Lagos. I had the chance to thank him for all he taught me.
One amusing/irritating detail about “Mr. Follow Follow,” the flip side of “Zombie”: In the mid-’80s George Clinton quoted that fabulous melody in his great track “Nubian Nut,” crediting Kuti as a co-composer. I always compared that to Michael Jackson’s appropriation of Cameroonian Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” on his hit “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Dibango received no credit.
Sadly I’ve never been to Africa and, unlike a few musician friends, I never got a chance to play with Fela drummer Tony Allen. I did a few albums and shows with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who knew Allen and played with him. (“The nicest man in the world,” Flea said.) Flea told me about his experience going to Lagos and playing a gig at Fela’s club, the Shrine. He said the audience was quite hostile seeing a white American on that storied stage. He told me he spoke directly to the audience, saying something along the lines of “You have your style and I have mine — let’s respect each other.”
ANYWAY … reading your Fela post took me straight back to the shock and awe I felt in 1980 when I met “Zombie” for the first time. Thanks for that.
Hi Joe. Thanks for sharing the great reminiscence. When you mentioned the meditative qualities of the guitar part, it reminded me of Oliver Mtukudzi’s first album, which I’m planning to review soon.
The intricacies of drum parts usually bounce off my ear, for some reason. But on this album the drummer caught my attention because it sounded like he was playing little more than the same cymbal pattern, repeated throughout many of the songs. I thought it must be incredibly boring, but maybe I had it wrong. :)
I was lucky enough to see Fela live, in Los Angeles, in the summer of 1989. I read many years ago that he would perform new material live, but once he recorded a song, he stopped performing it — because it dealt with a particular social issue — and start working on the next thing. My memories of the concert I saw are not that detailed, but I remember what seemed like an extraordinary number of musicians and a whole company of dancers onstage, and the music going on and on like one big two-hour song. (The following year, I got to see King Sunny Ade in New York; he played for **eight** hours, from 8 PM to 4 AM.)
Also look up Paul McCartney’s reminiscence about Fela on YouTube.
Fela had the first 16 track recording facility in Africa because he convinced ginger baker to build it in Lagos, where baker moved. The album Black Man’s Cry features Baker with Tony Allen and Fela and is great.
Fela was both wonderful and a dick. But like so many other wonderful dicks made music that exceeded his bounds. Go check out Tony Allen’s solo work too
I ran across the McCartney thing. I should have included that. On the other hand, Bootsy Collins recalled that Fela and band had high praise for James Brown and his band when they toured in Nigeria.
Oh my god make your life immensely and immediately better and listen RIGHT NOW to Coffin for Head of State, the greatest record of the 20th century. Crank it up, feel the bass, and shake your motherfucking nyash.
My initial experience with “Zombie” was an older guy’s version of the one in the article. In 1980 I was a young classical musician, just starting on a MA in music composition at UC Berkeley. A friend loaned me two African LPs: the original Nigerian pressing of Zombie (with only the title track and “Mr. Follow Follow,” and Ice Cream and Suckers, a compilation of raw South African mpqanga tracks. Both changed my life, and still affect me 45 years later.
Even though I was mired in classical academia, I began obsessively learning African guitar parts from import LPs, Before long I as studying at Cal with C.K. Ladzekpo, the great Ghanian drummer and music scholar. He knew I was a guitarist, and after a while he asked me about trying out with a band he played with — Ashiko, led by Nigerian bandleader and saxophonist O.J. Ekemode, who also performed under his first two names, Orlando Julius. (He had a few hits in Nigeria before coming to the States with Hugh Masakela’s band. Ironically, the forementioned Ice Cream and Suckers compilation includes the TWO songs that Masakela plagiarized and combined into his biggest hit, “Grazin’ in the Grass.”)
Fela wasn’t available on US pressings at the time, except maybe for that Ginger Baker collaboration. I haunted every African record shop I could find, buying those expensive Nigerian imports with their funky covers and sketchy vinyl. I learned a lot of the repertoire, but “Zombie” has always been my favorite. Maybe because it was my first exposure to afrobeat (other than the Talking Heads’s afrobeat-influenced tracks). Or maybe because it’s just so damn good.
At the time, there was an astonishing expat African music scene in Oakland. It included Nigerian and Ghanian musicians who had worked in Africa with major stars like Sunny Ade and Sonny Okusuns. There was Ghanaian percussionist Kwashi “Rocky” Dzidzornu, who had worked in the London session scene for years. You hear him on albums by Nick Drake, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Taj Mahal, and most notably, the Rolling Stones. (That’s him playing congas on “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”) He also played a bit with Hendrix, including the Woodstock show. And I did a few gigs with Fela’s Tunde Williams, who played trumpet on “Zombie” and many other Fela tracks. In Ashiko I was one of three white musicians alongside a dozen or so West Africans and a couple of African-Americans. We played mostly afrobeat and highlife, with a bit of African reggae. (We did a killer version of Fela’s “Water No Get Enemy.”)
Needless to say, it was an astonishing learning experience. I still marvel at my luck nearly a half-century later.
My role was “tenor guitar,” which referred not to the four-stringed instrument of that name, but rather the electric guitar that played afrobeat’s signature mid-register, staccato single-note lines, like the part you hear at the very beginning of “Zombie,” accompanied by claves. (Or “clips,” as the Nigerians called them.) The two-part figure repeats without variation for the duration of the song. (Of course, there are no alternate chorus or bridge parts because the song has no chorus or bridge.) It required discipline and focus — it was like meditation, decades before I discovered meditation. It was never boring, though — in afrobeat, the tenor guitar, claves, and sometimes other instruments played without variation, while all the other drummers continually varied their parts around our static rhythms. It was a bit like how, when you’re on a merry-go-round, it can feel like the world around you is spinning rather than you.
OJ couldn’t have been cooler. He was so kind and patient with me while I got the grooves under my fingers and in my head. Like I said, I was lucky AF.
I dropped out of UCB PhD program and spent the rest of my life playing guitar in bands — initially African-influenced ones, and then a wider range of styles.
A few years later I was an editor at Guitar Player magazine and a late-blooming session musician. I went on to play with Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Tracy Chapman, and many other artists. I seldom played in a literally West African style, but those styles informed a huge percentage of what I play to this day — the reliance on crisp, non-distorted sounds … sometimes embracing repetition over variation … and generally, a more adventurous sense of rhythm than most US guitarist bring to the table.
A few years ago I connected with Orlando Julius on Facebook. He was back in Lagos. I had the chance to thank him for all he taught me.
One amusing/irritating detail about “Mr. Follow Follow,” the flip side of “Zombie”: In the mid-’80s George Clinton quoted that fabulous melody in his great track “Nubian Nut,” crediting Kuti as a co-composer. I always compared that to Michael Jackson’s appropriation of Cameroonian Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” on his hit “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Dibango received no credit.
Sadly I’ve never been to Africa and, unlike a few musician friends, I never got a chance to play with Fela drummer Tony Allen. I did a few albums and shows with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who knew Allen and played with him. (“The nicest man in the world,” Flea said.) Flea told me about his experience going to Lagos and playing a gig at Fela’s club, the Shrine. He said the audience was quite hostile seeing a white American on that storied stage. He told me he spoke directly to the audience, saying something along the lines of “You have your style and I have mine — let’s respect each other.”
ANYWAY … reading your Fela post took me straight back to the shock and awe I felt in 1980 when I met “Zombie” for the first time. Thanks for that.
Hi Joe. Thanks for sharing the great reminiscence. When you mentioned the meditative qualities of the guitar part, it reminded me of Oliver Mtukudzi’s first album, which I’m planning to review soon.
The intricacies of drum parts usually bounce off my ear, for some reason. But on this album the drummer caught my attention because it sounded like he was playing little more than the same cymbal pattern, repeated throughout many of the songs. I thought it must be incredibly boring, but maybe I had it wrong. :)
I was lucky enough to see Fela live, in Los Angeles, in the summer of 1989. I read many years ago that he would perform new material live, but once he recorded a song, he stopped performing it — because it dealt with a particular social issue — and start working on the next thing. My memories of the concert I saw are not that detailed, but I remember what seemed like an extraordinary number of musicians and a whole company of dancers onstage, and the music going on and on like one big two-hour song. (The following year, I got to see King Sunny Ade in New York; he played for **eight** hours, from 8 PM to 4 AM.)
Also look up Paul McCartney’s reminiscence about Fela on YouTube.
Fela had the first 16 track recording facility in Africa because he convinced ginger baker to build it in Lagos, where baker moved. The album Black Man’s Cry features Baker with Tony Allen and Fela and is great.
Fela was both wonderful and a dick. But like so many other wonderful dicks made music that exceeded his bounds. Go check out Tony Allen’s solo work too
I ran across the McCartney thing. I should have included that. On the other hand, Bootsy Collins recalled that Fela and band had high praise for James Brown and his band when they toured in Nigeria.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bootsy-collins-interview-fela-kuti-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-1128823/
Oh my god make your life immensely and immediately better and listen RIGHT NOW to Coffin for Head of State, the greatest record of the 20th century. Crank it up, feel the bass, and shake your motherfucking nyash.
Noted. Thanks. :)