\u2018There were flames everywhere. Soldiers with bayoneted rifles were dragging people out into the streets, staggering, naked and bleeding. Nobody knew if Fela was still inside the burning building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemi Ghariokwu pauses. For much of our video-call, the 70-year-old artist has joyfully revisited his years as friend and confidant of Fela An\u00edk\u00fal\u00e1p\u00f3 Kuti, the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer whose legacy has been celebrated recently by both a high-profile podcast produced by the Obamas and a career-spanning box-set, The Best of the Black President, designed by Ghariokwu.<\/p>\n
I will electrify my fence. The next time they come, they will get a shock and think: ‘This man is crazy!’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
His mood darkens, however, as he recalls the authorities\u2019 assault on Kuti\u2019s Lagos HQ, the Kalakuta Republic, on 18 February 1977<\/a>. For years, tensions had simmered between Kuti and Nigeria\u2019s military junta, as the singer\/bandleader chronicled injustice and corruption on records including Zombie, Expensive Shit and No Agreement. But the razing of Kalakuta marked a tragic inflection point in Kuti\u2019s struggle against the government. It also initiated the unravelling of his friendship with Ghariokwu.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ideas were just flooding my brain\u2019 \u2026 Ghariokwu.<\/p>\n
Ghariokwu had first crossed Kalakuta\u2019s threshold three years earlier as an 18-year-old engineering student, accompanied by Kuti\u2019s journalist friend Babatunde Harrison, who\u2019d spotted Ghariokwu\u2019s portrait of Bruce Lee hanging in a Lagos bar and deemed him skilled enough to illustrate the musician\u2019s album sleeves. As he awaited his audience with the Black President, then mid-siesta, Ghariokwu absorbed his surroundings. Kuti had been gifted Kalakuta by his mother, revered pan-African activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, restyling it as a fiefdom-cum-commune for his followers, complete with recording studio and swimming pool. \u201cKalakuta was already notorious, because of Fela\u2019s lifestyle; young people from all over the neighbourhood had eloped to live there. There were skimpily dressed women everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Kuti finally awoke, Ghariokwu handed over the portrait of him that Harrison had requested. \u201cFela was groggy, his eyes were bloodshot, he was dressed only in his briefs, which hung down so his whole pubic hair was exposed. I was intimidated. He looked at the portrait and said, \u2018Wow. Goddammit.\u2019 He wrote me a cheque for 120 naira, four times what I\u2019d charge for a portrait. But my spirit told me, \u2018Don\u2019t take the money.\u2019 I told him it was a gift from the bottom of my heart, and he smiled, writing me a gate pass to visit Kalakuta whenever I wanted. It was the ticket to my destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I cashed the cheque this time\u2019 \u2026 Alagbon Close. Photograph: Lemi Ghariokwu<\/p>\n
They met again a fortnight later, after Kalakuta had been raided by police for the first time and Kuti was hospitalised with a head-wound. \u201cThe room was crowded,\u201d remembers Ghariokwu. If their previous meeting had acquainted him with the star, he now saw the steel beneath the playboy glamour. \u201cWith a police guard at the door, Fela spoke loudly about how the authorities had found it too easy to gain entry to Kalakuta. \u2018I will electrify the fence, so next time they\u2019ll get a shock and think, \u201cThis man is crazy!\u201d And I\u2019m going to write a song to lampoon the police.\u2019 Then he saw me and called for me. \u2018The artist!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Kuti commissioned Ghariokwu to paint the sleeve for his next release, Alagbon Close, which railed against the regime\u2019s dehumanisation of Nigeria\u2019s people. \u201cAlagbon Close was where Fela became a revolutionary against the system,\u201d says Ghariokwu. \u201cI didn\u2019t simply illustrate the lyrics \u2013 my painting was more metaphysical. I depicted Fela breaking out of jail, in a celebratory stance, chains broken, the victory sign painted on the wall of Kalakuta because he\u2019d triumphed over the evil police. When Fela saw it, again he said: \u2018Wow. Goddammit.\u2019 But I cashed the cheque this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the 80 people living in Kalakuta were employed simply to roll spliffs<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Kuti took the artist under his wing. \u201cI was already a pan-Africanist,\u201d Ghariokwu says. \u201cBut Fela taught me so much. He gave me books about African history, George GM James\u2019s Stolen Legacy, Yosef ben-Jochannon\u2019s Africa: Mother of Western Civilisation, the Autobiography of Malcolm X. His other graphic designers didn\u2019t care about what he was preaching. I did, and that put me in a very advantageous position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kuti also wanted to open Ghariokwu\u2019s mind to the powers of marijuana, but the teetotal artist was reluctant. \u201cSome of the 80 or so people living in Kalakuta were employed simply to roll spliffs,\u201d he remembers. \u201cBut I always refused. I took Fanta instead.\u201d However, when Ghariokwu was assigned his second album cover, 1975\u2019s No Bread, Kuti said: \u201cHow can my artist be drinking Fanta? You have to smoke igb\u00f3, to make your head correct.\u201d Ghariokwu adds: \u201cHe was such a hero to me, a demi-god, I said, \u2018OK\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018His marijuana was very potent\u2019 \u2026 1975\u2019s No Bread. Photograph: Lemi Ghariokwu<\/p>\n
Kuti would get his chefs to heat marijuana until it yielded its oil, bottling and storing it in his bedroom. \u201cIt was very potent. He put a drop on the end of a spoon, for me to lick. Within 30 minutes, I felt very hungry and I had this floating feeling. I went to the bathroom, and I could see my alimentary canal like the plumbing of a house, my urine travelling through pipes inside my body. I told Fela and his friends, and they all laughed at me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that day, Kuti realised that Ghariokwu needed to go home. \u201cHe drove us in his Range Rover, and when we got to my parents\u2019 place, kids in the street were shouting, \u2018Fela! Fela!\u2019 As I got out of the car, he hissed, \u2018When you get inside, don\u2019t talk to your parents, don\u2019t answer any questions \u2013 just say \u201cgoodnight\u201d and go to sleep. But when you sleep, meditate about the artwork.\u2019 I awoke at noon the next day. Ideas were just flooding my brain. I forced in as many as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sleeve for No Bread presented a dizzying overload of images and metaphors: men fighting over food and money, women presenting their breasts, rats in sunglasses, empty petrol pumps, a balloon reading \u201cMr Inflation is in town\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Fela saw it, he jumped for joy, shouting, \u2018You see?\u2019 like I should always have been smoking marijuana. But I can\u2019t handle intoxicants. So I analysed the inspiration I got from that high and used it as my style of composition from then on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acid satire \u2026 Ikoyi Blindness. Photograph: Lemi Ghariokwu<\/p>\n
Ghariokwu remained teetotal, but his work continued to evolve over the next several years. On acidly satirical sleeves such as Ikoyi Blindness (lampooning a lawyer from the affluent Ikoyi neighbourhood), Yellow Fever (naked African women apply skin bleacher), Upside Down (colonial developers invade as children starve), Ghariokwu created a visual identity as unique as Pedro Bell\u2019s work for Funkadelic<\/a>. \u201cFela treated me like one of his children, always receiving my work with \u2018Wow. Goddammit.\u2019 And, if he was particularly impressed, \u2018MOTHERFUCKER.\u2019 I was his youngest adviser, his comrade-in-arms. With two other friends, I formed the political youth wing of Kalakuta, Young African Pioneers. Fela could no longer use public transport, so we told him what was happening in the city, and that inspired his songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ghariokwu was at home when a neighbour told him Kalakuta was on fire. He raced to the compound. \u201cThe raid was already in full swing. The police had grabbed Fela\u2019s mum. I didn\u2019t see her fall from the window.\u201d Suspecting Kuti was hiding in a nearby warehouse, soldiers apprehended the owner. \u201cThey chopped his finger off with a machete, and he confessed immediately. Soon, they dragged Fela out into the street, naked and bleeding. They slashed his bodyguard\u2019s stomach open with bayonets, so his intestines came out. Fela saw me and whispered, \u2018Get my lawyer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n