User:Senorflow

I grew up in a little village in Eastern Nigeria. My father was a Christian pastor, so I grew up with the ideal of loving your brother as you love yourself. I got into music through my Grandmother’s influence. She used to have this group of women — singers and dancers in the village — and they always came to the compound in the evenings everyday. They’d play the cowbells and sing and dance around this fireplace. So that music came into me from that. I was playing congas in my father’s church, and when the piano player left, I was asked to learn piano. But my Dad saw how much time I spent at the piano and thought it was hurting my education. That’s how the music first came into my life. I realized when I was very little that by being an artist, I am the unconscious mind of my race. Because I saw how powerful music was — how powerful creativity is — I wanted to use this with all that was happening in my life, with my country at war with itself. When I really started to find myself, everything was rough and bad and you didn’t want to be here. That era really shaped who I wanted to be. I always knew it was good for everybody to be free and wondered why some are free and some not free: why some are eating and some not. My mind was always inquisitive and my thoughts, global, never thinking of just myself, but always as a servant to the community. My people have used the music to elevate every moment of their lives. From when we were under European rule, we used music to give us hope that tomorrow will be better. My Grandmother’s fireside circle was my everything. They took the milestones of our community, like when kids were born and elders passed, and translated them into songs and dance. They even created special songs to pass the time it took to cook our meals from start to finish. I was still in primary school when Fela Kuti came from London and started his band, "Africa ‘70". My house to his house was less than fifty yards away, so I saw him everyday. Fela’s music was awesomely wonderful; it was a spiritual experience, it gave us a lot of power and it made us hold our heads up high. I was there when Fela was writing a new song, and he would call for rehearsal; we’d hang out at the Shrine and he’d rehearse that great band. I stayed there many times to see how Fela worked; he was a machine. Throughout the 70’s, I was there when the army tore down his commune and threw his Mom to her death from a high window; I saw the Movement of the People Party he founded, and when he was falsely jailed. I loved Fela like I loved God, because he was what I wanted to be and said it the way it should be said. He challenged the government in a way that’s never been done and that was wonderful. In 1984, after I finished recording "Aura" with King Sunny Ade, Sonny Okosuns was going on an American tour and wanted me to play bass. My first experience of the diaspora was stepping off the plane in New York… and when that cold hit my skin, I wanted to go back to Africa right there and then! I didn’t want anything to do with America! But someone lent me their jacket and they forced me out of that plane. When I hit the ground, what first seized me was that every block had a church. I said to myself, “Wow, this is where God lives!” Then, after each church I saw a liquor store nearby. That really blew my mind. Coming from Africa, we have such a different way of life and upbringing. From the first day I came, I started to see that the love and the commonality I knew back in Africa — the idea that the child gets brought up by the whole village — wasn’t here in America. It affected me deeply to find myself in this culture which seemed only to care about itself. What brought me peace was how blessed Americans are with Diversity: to have every nation in this country, it means that every bit of creativity God has given to each nation on its own, America has in its power. America is the place God has used to get all those languages loosed at the Tower of Babel back together in one country. All those ideas together have made America great; its diversity, not its arsenal, is what makes it a superpower. The Afrobeat sound that I’m doing today on "Illegal Alien", I had from the very beginning, but couldn’t find a home at a major label or a public hungry for reggae. Thank God for Paul Simon’s "Graceland", because that sound was exactly what I’d brought in ‘84. "Illegal Alien" marks the return of a prodigal son who wants to make inroads back into Africa, to continue what Fela has done with the hope that others will pick up on it— that one day the people will understand and come together. Music is a very powerful thing. I’ve always said Music is the one thing God doesn’t do by Himself, but lets we musicians sit down and entertain Him. It’s just so beautiful that along the way in this country, I’ve met wonderful human beings in the spirit of music and creativity. I couldn’t have asked for a greater gift.