One of my major patron activists is Fella Kuti. His Afro Beat music is a significant inspiration behind my cuisine, Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine. Kuti embodies the quintessential rebel spirit necessary to break the chains of oppression without any prerequisites except originality and a consistency in unencumbered freedom of thought. I can’t think of a better reason for me to be traveling to University of California, Santa Barbara to speak of Food Literacy and African self-liberation. California, specifically Oakland, was the bedrock of the Black Panthers Party during the haydays of the Civil Rights movement. It is therefore no accident that Fela Kuti started his self awareness on the same stomping grounds as the BPP during a visit there to see Sandra, his girlfriend at the time.
At the time of his visit, Fela Kuti was studying in England at the time and was already playing in a band. The impact of his visit and his awareness about the work of the BPP would change Fela Kuti, his music and mission for the rest of his life. The product of his California trip is evident is the prolific music that touched many people across the world.
I was a young boy when my oldest brother brought a Fela Kuti which he would play all the time. My first memories of Fela's song was of a song entitled"Gentleman". I couldn't understand the message from the song and I wasn't sure whether my love for the song is solely based on its musical merits or just familiarity due to the fact that my brother played it so many times until instinctively the song became an a part of my memories of home. The influence of Afro Beat would follow me to the U.S, where it become the background music during my college years in the U.S. I was surprised to learn just how popular the music of my childhood was globally.
It made all the difference that I could now understand some of the message, thanks to some of my college friends who helped explain a lot of nuances in the message that I could not have possibly understood in my younger days. If Fela Kuti's music was the philosophical anthem, professor Ngugi Wa Thiong'o was the intellectual fire rod that ignited my desire for both activism and intellectual pursuits. I read every single book by Ngugi that I could lay my hands on. It was an interesting coincidence that I would later meet Ngugi for the first time in California.
My favorite Gìkuyu play of all time is “Ngahika Ndenda", later translated to the English into "I will Marry When I Want" by Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The play was unconventional as it was led by a university professor but using the peasant farmers as the cast. I remember my brother talking about the play but the government quickly shut it down and detained the veritable author. As I drove in a taxi on my way to Ngugi's office, I wondered if Fela had read Ngugi's play and if that had anything to do with his decision to marry all the women in his band, There were few conventions about Fela, at least as I know him. All this could just be nostalgia, but in any case, my brother would be the first to argue that my life has mirrored Fela's song "Gentleman" spirit to a letter.
As if to give credence to that theory, food features very prominently, followed by fashion. Fella Kuti makes mockery of Africa's neo colonial mentality in dressing and in eating habits all in a bid to be considered a gentleman. Fela Kuti denounces such behaviors and boldly states that his stand is to be an original African. To this day, those are two areas that continue to plague Africa in its bid to liberate itself.
I first went to California back in 2003 and it was during this visit that I met my intellectual Kenyan hero elder Ngùgì wa Thiong'o. It was a memorable meeting and the most remarkable statement he made had a lot to do with self liberation. Professor Ngùgi told me that a classical way to view our situation as previously colonized people is that of a mother that gives birth to a child but suckles another woman's child instead of her own. That powerful imagery couldn't be easily forgotten.
I have those two towering giant elders and Chef Bryant Terry, my college mate and colleague who resides in Oakland, on my mind as I head to California. Fela is an ancestor and it is only right that I serve him an original course of culinary tribute.