50 years on, Fela's legendary 'Zombie' album still resonates in Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria -- When in 1976 teenager Yunusa Yau and his friends grew tired of Nigerian soldiers’ high-handedness in their school, they turned to a satirical song — “Zombie,” by Fela Kuti, the title track of his album released that year.

By then, the military had been in power for a decade, following a coup. A brutal civil war killed at least three million people, rocking the fledgling democracy of the resource-rich nation after independence from Britain in 1960.

The military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo, had sent soldiers to high schools across the country to enforce discipline, a measure of how successive juntas ruled the country. Fela was constantly sparring with the authorities, through open-air sessions of searing commentary at his clubhouse, subversive lyrics and confrontation with officers.

But with the release of “Zombie,” the gloves were off.

“Zombie no go turn, unless you tell ’em to turn (Zombie) / Zombie no go think, unless you tell ’em to think,” he sang over his signature polyrhythmic composition, mimicking a martial parade with commands to march, salute and fire.

The stage was set for a showdown between him and the junta.

“In a way, we saw him as a symbol of our own nascent attempt to protect our limited horizon of freedom,” Yau, now 66 and an Abuja-based political activist, told The Associated Press.

Yau said the song’s lyrics became a protest not only against soldiers but against teachers whom the students did not love in their school in the northwestern part of Nigeria.

Born in 1938, under colonial rule, Fela is arguably one of Nigeria’s greatest artists. His musical career spanned more than four decades, from the late 1950s to the 1990s. Fela, who died in 1997, was posthumously honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards in February.

Afrobeat was the brainchild of Fela and the legendary drummer Tony Allen. It was an instrument-driven genre that blended West African traditional rhythms with Black American sounds such as jazz and funk.

As much as he was an artist, Fela was the ultimate chronicler of life under Nigeria’s military leadership. From 1966 onward, one coup followed another, with only brief intervals of civilian rule, until the return to democracy in 1999.

“Zombie” was originally released as a two-track album with a duration of 25 minutes and 24 seconds. Music critics say it stands out as the most distinctive among Fela’s political releases. The other track, “Mister Follow Follow,” is another song about blind obedience to authority and the status quo.

“It was his definitive album. It was one of his boldest moments on record,” Lemi Ghariokwu, a long-term Fela collaborator who designed the album cover, told the AP. “He was very much vexed by the actions of the military government. When he was composing the song, we asked him if it was going to be a direct attack song, and he said yes.”

Now a fixture of global popular culture, the zombie comes originally from West and Central African mythology, a figure helplessly inhabited by the spirits of the dead and under their influence. In 1982, Michael Jackson drew on zombie imagery for the choreography of his video for “Thriller.”

When Nigeria gained independence in 1960, expectations were high, especially since the discovery of some of the world’s biggest oil deposits, mainly in the Niger Delta. For most people, though, the oil boom did little to improve their economic prospects.

The military rulers who seized power in 1966 would use that failure as a pretext to maintain their hold on power, accusing the civilian government of corruption and squandering the nation’s wealth.

Fifty years later, little has changed, analysts say. The military looms large in Nigerian public life. Six people, including soldiers and police officers, are currently charged with an attempt to overthrow President Bola Tinubu’s government.

Even after military rule had ended, it left a legacy of an overly powerful political class and a lack of development, which Fela railed against.

According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, 63% of Nigerians now live in what is called multidimensional poverty — not only cash-poor but lacking access to basic amenities, with a high youth unemployment rate. The nation currently faces a complex security crisis from Islamic militant and criminal groups that carry out widespread killings and kidnappings.

“Fela was actually ahead of his time, because he seemed to have foreseen the kind of rot and decay that the military class would leave Nigeria in,” music critic Dami Ajayi said. “Fela was already saying to everyone that these guys who are here are going to ruin your country; you cannot allow a zombie to be in charge of everything around you.”

The release of “Zombie” brought swift and brutal consequences for Fela. The military government sent 1,000 soldiers to his residence, a compound that he had declared independent from Nigeria and not subject to the country’s laws, and burned it down.

His mother, Funmi Ransome-Kuti, a prominent activist, sustained injuries in the raid that led to her death, and the artist himself was also badly hurt.

“Zombie” was banned from the airwaves, and there were reports of arrests for people who defied the junta by playing it in public, at parties or clubs or on a speaker.

Other Nigerian artists have attempted to criticize the government’s excesses, in genres including reggae, fuji and pop, but critics say none of them have provoked the same level of confrontation. Fela’s gripes are still present, but Nigeria’s storied musical tradition leaves little room for protest to reach mainstream and commercial success.

Fifty years on, the impact of “Zombie” is hard to overstate.

“The consequences of that record are well-documented, and I don’t think anybody is that brave to critically criticize the government like that,” Ayomide Tayo, a Nigerian music and pop culture critic, said. “The epic scale at which Fela did it has not been replicated.”