Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Performance as African Carnivalesque Aesthetics

In view of (occasional) problems encountered in relating to the aesthetics of primarily oral texts like the ones under study here, I have deliberately tried to give a hint of the general direction of the essay from the outset. The choice of the word "carnivalesque" in the title is therefore geared towards this end; it is meant to embrace the total performance implicit in "carnivalisation,"1 in strict Bakhtinian sense, among others. The overall strategy of the essay is to locate these aesthetic experiences as transpositional, a sort of ruptured cultural continuum from folk to popular aesthetic practices of urban and city life. The study suggests that Fela recodes rituals and archetypes in three principal ways: mask-performance, divination and possession trance. Beyond this, it further explores Fela’s lyrics arid motifs, suggesting that' they have been put in the service of an alternative discourse. At about 10 p.m. on Saturdays, Pepple Street, l’keja, Lagos (Nigeria) takes on an eerie mood. Pepple is demarcated from the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters by a slim fence. Contour-lined faces betray the anxiety of the unstated. Women with lip stick-coated mouths strut, men wearing base ball caps, fez caps, corduroy, and denim Jeans swagger by. Christian Dior, Alicia Alonso (irreverent perfumes) make efforts to impact on the whiff, but they are wafted off by a teenager’s single puff of marijuana.