Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  Ashkar Marof, who had been Guinea’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Diallo Telli, who had helped us form the South African Students Association when he was Guinea’s UN representative in New York, had been summoned home a few years earlier. One morning when the people of Conakry woke up to go to work, these two men, along with seven others, were hanging by their necks in the town’s main square, put to death for collaborating with the enemy. Such drastic measures terrified the populace into realizing that stepping out of line could put one in the graveyard. Sekou Toure and vice-president Lansanah Beyavougi ran the country with an executive council of ministers. It was a tight ship and you didn’t fuck with it. The buck stopped at the president’s office. He cared for all the families whose heads had been executed. Their wives, who were humorously referred to as the “joyous widows” in French, all tried to endear themselves to Toure and Beyavougi if they wished to continue peacefully living in the country. Several folks who were dissatisfied moved to Senegal, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, or Sierra Leone, but many returned because of new obstacles in lands where they knew no one.

  Prêt pour la Révolution (ready for the revolution) was the patriotic greeting everyone used, and it had to be expressed with enthusiasm. It was a regimented life, but it had its consoling pleasures. The president was the executive producer of all performances, and was blown away by my trumpet playing when I performed with Miriam’s group at the People’s Palace. I was assigned to teach music theory to the local band members any way I found possible. The president ordered that I be transferred from the hotel to a chalet next to Miriam’s villa, where for a short time I was furnished with an upright piano. But after a few days, committee members picked it up. I was told the piano was needed for some other purpose. I didn’t question it. Guitarists Sekou and Kemo Kouyate and percussionist Papa Mor Thiam were my most ardent students. They taught me Guinean songs like “Nina,” a love song about a very beautiful girl. It was a national favorite that always brought down the house when I sang it at the Palais de Peuple. The popular music of Guinea was very much like the griot songs of Salif Keita, the world-famous albino singing wonder from neighboring Mali, and one of Sekou Toure’s favorite artists.

  Sekou Kouyate became my best friend. He knew where to find marijuana. Word was that if discovered, the punishment for smoking pot could be brutal, but Sekou assured me that the president knew about musicians and athletes’ smoking habits and turned a blind eye because he was partial toward these communities. Nevertheless, one had to be secretive about it, because flaunting the practice could result in dire consequences.

  Philemon and I shared the chalet. Miriam and I revived our intimacy. This led to many nocturnal visits by her to my chalet. When Stokely returned from his U.S. lecture tour, he began to spend a lot of time with Colonel Kouyate and me, smoking, drinking, philosophizing, and laughing. If Stokely suspected that Miriam and I were sleeping together, he certainly didn’t act as if he did. But then he too was quite a nibbler in that field. Stokely was a power swimmer, and he swam in the ocean every morning. Sometimes I joined him. Villa André was right on the beach.

  I had come to Guinea holding an airline ticket that went as far as Zaire, with Liberia, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon as stopping points. I also had one thousand dollars in traveler’s checks and a couple of thousand in cash. But one could not just leave Guinea. Special permission was needed. With my French still minimal, Miriam explained to the president on my behalf that I wanted to go on a music pilgrimage throughout the continent, starting in Zaire.

  Sekou Toure favored the idea, but insisted I take Sekou Kouyate with me. Sekou spoke perfect English and French, and knew his way around Africa. We left two weeks later.

  On our arrival at Kinshasa International Airport in Zaire, the immigration officials detained us merely because we were coming from Guinea. We spent the whole day sitting on a bench outside their offices without being told why we were being held. Whenever I stood up and asked what the hell was going on, I was shouted down and told to shut the fuck up and sit down. Sekou figured that the reason might be that many Guineans had been deported from Zaire a few weeks earlier for being involved in diamond smuggling.

  Twelve hours later, just before sunset, Sekou recognized an airport officer who was coming on night duty. Three months earlier Sekou had been in Zaire with Miriam when she had performed there. Sekou asked the officer if he could help, and a few minutes later he told us all we needed to do was give the man who had detained us five dollars. We complied, and five minutes later we were given our baggage and were on our way. Sekou felt very stupid that he had not remembered the custom of greasing officials’ palms. But he blamed the oversight on the fact that my argumentative nature had thrown him off. We checked into the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Kinshasa, and hit the spots with Sekou leading the way. First we stopped at the Ange Noir (Black Angel) club, where love balladeer Fonseca sang mostly French love songs with a trio. After supper we hopped taxis to various venues where bands played Congolese music. By eleven o’clock, we were at Tabu Ley Rochereau’s gigantic nightclub, dance garden, and restaurant, on the outskirts of town. Tabu Ley’s drummer, Cheskien, was very tight with Sekou and came with us after their performance to Matonge, where the great “Franco,” Luambo Makiadi, and his TP OK Jazz were holding forth at his famous Un Deux Trois dance paradise. This was the very heart of the Congo’s music soul. The singing, the playing, the dancing, the ambience—everything—was just too delicious. The Congolese women were statuesque and friendly. They wore colorful cloth bustiers or blouses and matching ankle-length cloth skirts, loosely tied at the waist around their ample lower bodies. At the beginning of each song, one could just amble over to any of the ladies and ask her to dance; no introduction was needed. The first parts of the songs were always slow rhumbas where you could talk to your partner and get familiar. The bands timed this part so well that just as you’d gotten familiar with your partner, they would break into a double tempo of furious guitar, bass, drums, percussion, and vocal riffs whose contrapuntal rhythms and interweaving harmonies rendered the revelers on the dance floor and around the tables and bars totally out of control, clapping their hands, cheering the band, singing along, screaming unrehearsed chants in remarkably tight unison. The dancers were lost in a frenzy of hip-swerving bumps and grinds, designed to get the limpest person hornier than a broke-dick dog. As they gyrated, pumping and grinding their asses, the women would unfasten their cloths at the waist, giving their dance partner a quick flash of ample thighs and other merchandise under their skimpy underwear. This is the phenomenon that is the Congo. We danced until dawn and ended up at a roadside café where a band was playing to customers who were having their last drinks before setting off to work. It was shortly before seven in the morning when Sekou Kouyate and I said our good-byes. It was a night to remember; these people lived for music. The bands staggered their performances in traffic-light fashion so that the fans could rush from one venue to another without missing any of the shows—from a couple of hours before midnight until it was time to go to work the next morning.

  Cheskien took us to all kinds of musical happenings—urban, rural, spiritual, and traditional—it was absolutely scary how much music of superlative quality proliferated in the Congo from one end to the other, bubbling and boiling in the midst of a population that had seen exploitation and suffering to equal or surpass any manner of cruelty that had ever been visited upon the human race. And all this great music was exploding in the middle of a period when one of Africa’s most dictatorial despots, Mobutu Sese Seko, was ruling the country with an iron-fisted military machine, and the entire Western industrial complex was supporting his regime and sucking the Congo dry to the bone while Mobutu siphoned his share into banks all over Europe’s wealthiest countries.

  In Zaire I was introduced to Franco, one of the greatest bandleaders in all of Africa, whose guitar licks sent listeners into hysteria. He popularized the music of the Congo and was used by
Mobutu as a conduit into the hearts of the entire Zairean population. Later on, when Mobutu’s stranglehold on the people was secure and he had no more need of Franco’s assistance, he turned against him, driving him into exile, where he eventually died, a lonely man in Belgium.

  Right away Franco took to me. He made a furnished apartment available to us for rent, across the giant circle from his club. Franco also provided us with a rehearsal room with all the equipment I needed to put a band together. Cheskien put a few good musicians together, and with him on drums, Sekou and I began to rehearse a group. But after two weeks of rehearsals we were still struggling with the first song because when it came to music, the musicians could only express themselves in Lingala, one of the most commonly spoken languages in the Congo, which Sekou and I didn’t understand. It was terribly discouraging. But our nights were spent grooving hard, hopping from one garden club to another, and always ending up at Franco’s club, Un, Deux, Trois, with a bevy of fine women following us to the flat. Around lunchtime, those who had frolicked with us would awaken us with a large bowl of local cuisine, which they had gone to their homes to prepare with the “taxi fare” we had given them. After lunch they would request more “taxi fare” and go home to fix another dish for the evening, taking our laundry along to wash and iron as well. But always the matter of “taxi fare” came up. Sekou explained that because the Congolese had been deprived of almost any meaningful education by the colonial Belgians, when the country finally won its independence in 1960, there were only six African doctors in the country. Their leader, Patrice Lumumba, had himself only been a schoolteacher, and the first people to be educated were the male population. As a result, when mass migration to the big cities took hold, the only people who had money were men. The majority of the women were very possessive of their men because that was the most accessible way to the cash. It was not so much prostitution as much as an industry born of their reduced status. A boyfriend, when found, was kept close to the family. And if the dude crossed a woman, the girls would not fight each other. The rivals would gang up on the man and scratch the hell out of him. This explained why Cheskien had such a scratched-up face. He was most instrumental in introducing us to the young ladies we were hanging out with—all siblings or cousins ready to rotate around us as long as no outsider was brought into this inner circle. With endearing smiles and unparalleled loyalty, they nonetheless watched us like hawks.

  Months of endless reveling with different women, dancing into the early morning hours, drinking and smoking pot, and enjoying the people of Zaire and their music became too much. The original intent of putting a group together had failed miserably. The morning we were preparing to leave, there was a knock on our door. Six soldiers toting Uzis entered and ordered Sekou and me to dress. They bundled us into an army van, drove us to their headquarters, placed us in an interrogation room, and told us to wait there. Within a few minutes, Tabu Ley Rochereau entered the room resplendent in an haute couture suit with matching black tie, shirt, and cuff links. His designer moccasins were shining from a recent spit-polish. He sat across the table from us with a gloomy expression on his face and addressed us in high French.

  “There has never been a world-famous celebrity to come into my country without being received and entertained by me. Yet you have come to Zaire and have hobnobbed with a lowly drummer from my band. He is responsible for lowering your status and treating you like just another ordinary visitor. I object vehemently to this state of affairs, and this is why I brought you here. Tonight you will come to my club, where you will be honored properly with wonderful dining, a great performance by my band, the best champagne, and other drinks. But most of all, my other guests will be great people of your caliber. I will send a car for you at seven. Please be on time. Thank you.”

  Rochereau left the room and us with our mouths agape. The soldiers returned us to our flat. That night we were wined and dined and fêted at his garden club until after midnight. It was one of the most wonderful evenings I had spent in my life. A few days later, Sekou and I returned to Guinea, where a reply letter from Fela Kuti had been waiting for me.

  Dear Hugh,

  Just come to Lagos as my guest and we will take care of it from there. Whenever you are ready, you can sit in regularly with my band, and you will meet other musicians from whom you can pick people for your proposed band. I will meet you at the airport when you come.

  Sincerely, Fela

  14

  IN JANUARY 1973, a summit meeting took place in Guinea of all the leaders of ex-Portuguese colonies of Africa. It was attended by Samora Machel of Mozambique, Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Eduardo Dos Santos from Angola, and many other delegates, to discuss the way forward in their liberation campaigns. Sekou Toure was chairman of the conference. Following the talks, a celebration was held at Payotte, the capital’s most famous nightclub, with all of the VIP delegates and their spouses. We were dancing up a storm when word came from the presidential palace that everyone should immediately return to his or her hotel or villa.

  When Philemon, Miriam, and I returned to Villa André, we heard that Amilcar Cabral had just been assassinated in the city. We later learned that a traitor by the name of Innocentia Candia, an agent of the Portuguese colonialists who had infiltrated into the ranks of the government three years earlier, had killed Cabral, who was only forty-nine. Philemon, Miriam, Bongi and her two children Zenzi and Lumumba, and I sat dejectedly in Miriam’s lounge. Samora Machel soon walked in with three members of his delegation. He squatted on the carpet and began to regale us with stories of Frelimo’s success in the Mozambican war against Portugal. Frelimo was the most popular organization fighting for liberation of the Mozambican people, who had been colonized by Portugal for over five hundred years. Machel talked about his beloved late wife and his young fiancée, Graca, who was a top commander of the women’s corps. Before long, he had us singing South African work songs he had learned when he worked in Johannesburg’s mines. Machel ended by singing the South African liberation anthem, “Nkosi Sikelela.”

  By the time he left, just before dawn, our spirits had been lifted, and despite the death of a great African freedom fighter, we were left feeling positive about Africa’s future. For the first time we understood that many freedom fighters would lose their lives before all of Africa would be liberated, and that one fallen hero should not derail our determination to continue our quest regardless of inevitable setbacks.

  By the first week of April, preparations were under way for a national cultural festival that would be taking place all over Conakry. The following week the great singer and composer Aboubacar Demba Camara, one of the most loved and popular performers in West Africa, was killed in a car accident while in Senegal for a series of concerts. Demba’s music was a blend of Mandingo musical traditions and Cuban and Congolese influences. When his body was returned to Conakry, the entire country, already saddened by the news, went into public mourning. Flags flew at half-mast and just about everybody lined the streets from the airport to the city to view his cortége. Women were weeping, and drums thundered everywhere. His body lay in state at the Palais de Peuple, and for two days mourners from all over Guinea came to view Demba, while griot singers took turns singing over his coffin. Demba was given a state funeral, attended by government officials and musicians from all the neighboring countries, including sixteen-year-old Salif Keita from Mali. During and after his funeral, the streets were packed with drummers, dancers, praise-singers, and orchestras—millions turned out to bid him farewell. When I first met and hung out with Demba before going to Zaire, I didn’t realize what a giant he was in the hearts of so many people. His band, Bembeya, didn’t perform for three years following his death. Sadly, Demba had been very keen on us collaborating on recording projects when he returned from Senegal.

  The national cultural festival was a two-week spectacular. As executive director, Sekou Toure had organized the country into fifty federations, each of which had a ballet company,
a theater company, a griot ensemble, a series of bands, traditional drum ensembles, athletes, acrobats, choral groups, children’s groups, poets, and magicians. It was mind-boggling. There were performances around the clock at the Palais de Peuple, in the town squares, along the streets, and in other cities around the country. The president attended many of the events. The country’s top movie director, Gilbert, commissioned me to write the soundtrack for a film he would be making that linked the different events. I wrote several songs that I recorded with a cross-section of Guinean artists.