I was in London last week, for a reason totally unrelated to the topic of this blog entry. Dr. Johnson famously observed that, if you are tired of London, you are tired of life. I tend to agree. Part of not being tired of life means, for me, savoring the rich offerings of the London theater scene. I saw a superb rendering of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”. I also attended a performance of the musical “Fela!” at (no less than) the National Theatre. I had no further reflections about the Wilde play except the recollection that this was the last play he wrote before his arrest and barbaric imprisonment, and his transformation from clever if superficial satirist to (in my opinion fully justified) icon of homosexual martyrdom. My reflections about the musical were more complicated, and perhaps worth continuing here.
Fela Anikupalo-Kuti (1938-1997) was a Nigerian composer, musical performer and political activist, commonly just called by his first name. He came from a prominent Yoruba family. His father was a Protestant minister and first president of the Nigerian teachers’ union, his mother a feminist and anti-colonial activist. He was a first cousin of the writer Wole Soyinka. Fela studied music in London, and then lived for a while in America, where he was influenced by the Black Power movement.He identified increasingly with traditional African religion. Upon his return to Nigeria, Fela became active as a critic of the military regime there and of elites throughout Africa, which he saw as agents of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism. He founded a commune called the Kalakuta Republic, supposedly independent of the Nigerian state. The latter, not surprisingly, disagreed. The commune was attacked by the military with great violence, in the course of which Fela’s mother was thrown out of a window, sustaining injuries from which she died. Fela himself spent a period in prison. He became well known both for his turbulent music and politics. His personal life was as turbulent. His female dancers, whom he called the Queens, constituted a sort of choreographed harem. At one point, in a self-created ceremony, he married twenty-seven of them. He died of AIDS, leaving behind several children and twelve remaining wives. An estimated million people attended his funeral in Lagos.
Fela invented the musical genre he called Afrobeat. It is an ingenious blend of rock, Caribbean calypso, so-called Nigerian “high life”, and traditional West African music and chants. I claim no musicological sophistication. but to my ears Afrobeat is a powerful antiphony of drums and modern instruments (notably the saxophone). The music is interspersed with songs and speeches by Fela himself, rendered in Pidgin English so as to be understood by people speaking a variety of African languages. For the last ten years or so there has been an international Fela revival, managed by his eldest son Femi. Many recordings have been re-released and the musical was produced, which has been a great success both in New York and in London. By now there are over fifty Afrobeat bands playing worldwide.
The stage in London (the same, I understand, as the one in New York) was made to look like Fela’s nightclub in Lagos. It had been called The Shrine. The part of Fela was played brilliantly by Sahr Ngaujah, originally from Sierra Leone but with an acting career in the Netherlands. The physical setting, the music and the speeches are intended to reflect faithfully the 1970s locale of Fela’s early career—successfully, as far as I can tell. The music and the choreography are very powerful indeed. The audience is drawn into the setting, with dancers periodically coming off the stage to perform among the seats, and films of Fela and Nigerian life being shown on both sides of the auditorium. What strongly impressed me was the raw anger in Fela’s speeches, as replicated by Ngaujah. They were pure 1970s: a blend of Black Power, pan-Africanist and Third Worldist ideologies.
My own reaction to all this fell into two sharply divided periods. It was very positive during the first part of the program. I liked it. This is hardly my kind of music, but I resonated with it, and with its choreographic expression. Both are aesthetically powerful. One individual in our group found the overt sexuality of the Queens rather objectionable, but I did not share this opinion. As to the angry rhetoric, of course I did not agree with its ideology, but I could appreciate it as an accurate rendition of the sentiments that inspired Fela at the time. So far, so very good. But then came what I experienced as a rupture: the program became interactive.
The Fela character stepped to the front of the stage and, in a peremptory fashion, ordered the audience to stand up. As far as I could tell, almost everyone around me did. Since I remained sitting, I could not look farther back, but I was told that people mostly stood up elsewhere. Then the standing congregation was ordered to go through a series of dance steps, gryrating in place to an Afrobeat rhythm. Again as far as I could tell, most obeyed. The instructions contained some disparaging comments on white people’s difficulties with rhythm.The row in front of my seat contained a group of young white individuals, evidently English.They obeyed, rather awkwardly, the instructions from the stage. One young man had a sheepish grin on his face. My own reaction was immediate and sharp: This is disgusting!
I have been reflecting about the experience and my reactions to it, both with some in my group at the National Theatre and also with a colleague who saw the performance in New York. Now, I am well aware of the fact that I dislike collective enthusiasms of any kind and that I am strongly inclined to disobey orders to participate in a group—one reason I hated the time I spent in basic training in the U.S. Army. One of my earliest memories relates to this. The scene was in kindergarten in Vienna, so I could not have been older than five. We were in some kind of play. I was made to wear a top hat and was placed on top of an armoire. I had some very simple lines to say (I cannot remember what they were). When the time came, the teacher signaled me to speak my lines. I shook my head. Though she repeated her signal, I refused to do my part. I remember being satisfied with myself for having refused. Let it be stipulated, then, that there is a psychological predisposition behind my failure to obey the instructions of the Fela character. But this does not explain my disgust at the actions of the others in the theater. That explanation hinges on how these actions are interpreted.
There is a harmless interpretation, and one less harmless (mine). Many people in the audience were blacks. Some may have been homesick Nigerians, who enjoyed being temporarily transported back to their youthful exuberance. As to the whites, some may have known that this interaction would occur when they decided to attend the show, and they were just having fun – as they might have while attending a rock concert. Maybe. I am open to the possibility that I may have misinterpreted the gryrations of my neighbors. My instantaneous interpretation, and the reason for my disgust: These actions are a manifestation of decadence.
I have speculated about this term before.The term “decadence” is usually employed in a pejorative way, both with regard to individuals and to collectivities. It then implies a moral failure.But I think that one can also use the term in a purely descriptive, normatively neutral way: Decadence occurs when the moral tradition of a society has lost its authority and has become an object of amusement. Whether one then looks on such a situation pejoratively or approvingly will depend on how one views the moral tradition in question. I for one would welcome the decadence of a society based, for example, on morally legitimated slavery. I do not welcome the decadence of Western civilization today, if such indeed occurs. As to Western civilization in general and England in particular, I would hesitate an overall description under the rubric of decadence. There is a good deal of vitality left in the societies on the two sides of the North Atlantic. However, there are instances of decadence. An important instance is the ideology of so-called “multiculturalism” – once described pithily as a deep respect for every culture, except one’s own.This has a strongly masochistic component, as when whites, explicitly or implicitly, accept anti-white ridicule or hate speech.
Here is how I interpreted the actions of the young people in front of my seat at the theater: here, I surmised, were individuals whose inherited cultural fabric was badly frayed, hollowed out. They were seeking to strengthen their sense of self by, as it were, imbibing the cultural vitality of someone else. “The Other” becomes a source of identity, at least for the moment. This is a project that is unlikely to succeed. Hence the sheepish grin on the face of my young neighbor.
I wish that I had left before the Fela character decided to order us about. The only recollection would then have been of a very satisfying, if slightly startling aesthetic experience.