The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is hosting the extraordinary story of legendary Afrobeat recording artist Fela Kuti in the Tony Award-winning musical “FELA!” March 20-25 at the Academy of Music.
Directed by acclaimed out choreographer Bill T. Jones, “FELA!” debuted off-Broadway in 2008 and has earned numerous accolades, including Tony Awards in 2010 for Best Choreography, Best Costume Design and Best Sound Design.
Jones said that even though the show made a splash on Broadway, at first it was a challenge to sell The Great White Way on a show like “FELA!”
“‘FELA!’ was an unknown quantity in the popular music world of Broadway,” he said. “He is very well known to a certain generation like myself. In the 1970s, we were very interested in his story. We knew his music. But he isn’t exactly what you would call Broadway-friendly. So in the first half-hour of the piece we have to introduce who he was. We have to convince the audience that the music is worth their time. Then we have to learn something about the world that made him who he was and that is a challenge.”
Fortunately the show and Kuti himself had high-profile fans in celebrities Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who signed on as producers of the musical.
“Everything helps,” Jones said when asked if celebrity support was key to the show’s success. “Maybe it got the attention of certain people because they look to those folks as tastemakers. Fela Kuti is often sampled by hip-hop. One of our biggest fans was [Amir] Questlove [Thompson] from The Roots. Questlove was the one that got Jay-Z there and Jay-Z got Will Smith there.”
Jones said he didn’t expect the acclaim the show has garnered. The awards and word of mouth are now bringing a new wave of theater-goers to see “FELA!”
“I was gratified when it happened,” he said. “Stunned, actually. All modesty aside, it is an exceptional show and Broadway has never seen anything like it before. So I was glad that there was the recognition for the show. I think now there are a lot of people that are going because they heard of the show. Initially, the off-Broadway audience knew him but now we’re in another phase of things. I would think they are coming now because of the show itself. They heard about the fabulous dancers and the general energy and innovation of the piece.”
Of course the dancing is going to be fabulous if the world-renowned Jones is overseeing the choreography. Jones said he drew from a number of influences for the dance routine in “FELA!”
“The whole show is an act of imagination,” he said. “It’s taking the reality of Fela’s show and in some ways upping the ante. There are African-inspired movements but it’s kind of Pan-African. It’s not necessarily only Nigerian. We have included some modern-dance vocabulary. There’s also tap dancing in it, something that was never on Fela’s stage, but I think it’s a natural for Afrobeat.”
Underneath all the pounding rhythms, colorful fashions and excellent choreography is the story of a controversial artist and political activist who used incendiary lyrics to openly attack the corrupt and oppressive military dictatorships that ruled Nigeria and much of Africa.
“I think it does a good job of talking about the world he was born into, his mother’s world of post-independence Nigeria,” Jones said. “He does talk a great deal about the oppressive military regime and he talks about how his music was informed by the struggles in the United States at the time, the Black Power struggles of the 1960s and how he adapted that for his own purpose, which led him to have problems with the military dictatorship. He makes a lot of fun of the ‘mosquitoes,’ the slang term for soldiers. We have a lot of fun in the show with that play on the word. When you come into the theater, there are newspaper clippings from Nigeria and there’s a lot of translations that need to happen. Fela only wrote in Pidgin English. Therefore, we had to translate those lyrics and we had to sometimes translate and restate them in a language that makes sense to our ears instead of Nigerian ears.”
When asked if American audiences will relate to the idea of music as a weapon against oppression and corruption, Jones said the show isn’t putting any ideas out there that haven’t been around for a long time.
“I don’t know, what was Bob Dylan about?” he asked. “What was the 1960s about with this notion of protest music? Is that the same thing as doing protest songs on Broadway? I’m not sure. They tell me ‘South Pacific’ was a protest against racism. Was ‘Hair’ a protest against the mores of the 1960s? So there are already precedents for this way of thinking. Fela comes from a culture where all the stakes are higher. I won’t say what Africa lacks in terms of democracy. Let’s just put it this way: When he stands up and criticizes the government, it’s not that his record sales will fall off. Literally, he could find himself in jail for 10 years. And he was arrested 200 times and he had most of the bones in his body broken. His hands were broken at one point. But still the man would get up on stage and do this peculiar music that sounds like dance music. He said he was speaking for the people who couldn’t speak for themselves. He was an entertainer and activist of a very high order.”
Messages aside, Jones said the show’s main goal is to be entertaining and that there is something in the production of “FELA!” for everyone, especially theatergoers from the LGBT community.
“I was told when we were on Broadway that many people — and the man that told me was a Broadway regular and a white gay man — thought it was an African dance concert and [theatergoers] are interested in traditional musicals,” he said. “And it was the gay community I thought he was speaking for and [he] didn’t think the show was for them. However when gay people go to the show and see how much style is in the show and how sexy it is and how beautifully it is designed, they are convinced. But they have it in their mind that they are not so interested in an ethnic performer like Fela and they don’t want anything that is too political.
“When people come to the show I’d like for them to come into a party. We’re not there to lecture them. We’re not there to do anything more than expose them to a very fascinating character who will be vivid in everything he does, from his sexuality to his use of marijuana to his take on justice and injustice. We don’t want people thinking they are going to come in to a lesson. It’s a rollicking good time but it has a serious heart.”
The Kimmel Center presents “FELA!” March 20-25 at Kimmel’s Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St. For more information or tickets, www.kimmelcenter.org or call 215-790-5800.