Everyone into the music we call jazz has a story about how they came to love it. It’s rarely by happenstance. The exposure is usually from a parent, older sibling or relative. Sometimes it’s via school or music lessons. My trajectory was completely different. I didn’t grow up in a jazz household. I didn’t play any instruments, nor did I take any music lessons. The first music I heard growing up in a Nigerian household was Nigerian music. My older sister was a Fela Kuti fan, and by proxy I became a Fela fan. It was through Fela Kuti that I discovered jazz in my early teens. Yes, I got into jazz via afrobeat. That sounds unconventional on paper, but that is how it happened.
Fela had a song called Zombie, and the first 5 minutes of the track is nothing but horns. Unrelenting, powerful horns. I was so enamored with the sound that I went to the library to look up trumpet and saxophone players. From my search, I got musicians like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie first. I would then rush to my local store called Nobody Beats the Wiz, as they had jazz CDs for $4.99. I would buy Blue Note CDs, and then if I liked what I heard, I would buy albums from the sidemen on the disc. So if I bought a Lee Morgan disc and Hank Mobley was a sideman on it, then I would buy Mobley discs, then that led me to Kenny Dorham, which led me to Joe Henderson etc. This was how I discovered jazz. Most of the players were connected. I really learned a tremendous deal about the music this way. Simply by exploring what I liked and didn’t like. And it all started because of Fela Kuti. I was not exposed to jazz directly, but it goes to show you that all music is connected.
Fela Kuti is the man! One of our guitar teachers, Adrian Matte, fell so in love with Fela’s music that he’s started an Afrobeat project here in the city of Ottawa.