Nigerian Musician Sees Music as a Tool : Entertainment: The saxophonist, bandleader and singer has devoted his career to heaping scorn on his nation’s politicians.

Suppose Voltaire, that superstar of the Enlightenment, came back to life to sniff today’s climate of artistic freedom.

The 18th-Century French author is credited with penning one of Liberty and Reason’s all-time greatest hits: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Never one to duck a controversy over the right of free speech and dissent, Voltaire would probably leap into the caldron of issues boiling around 2 Live Crew. The notorious rap group has been banned as obscene on its home turf in South Florida, prompting police and prosecutors in a number of other local jurisdictions to follow suit. Apparently worn down by the furor, and citing the “complete exhaustion” of its leader, Luther Campbell, 2 Live Crew this week postponed the last leg of its beleaguered tour, including a concert that was to have taken place tonight at Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.

Voltaire, celebrated for his wit and elegance of expression, surely would disapprove of rapper Campbell and his Crew, whose every puerile rhyme reeks of brainless scatology and phallic fixation. He would nevertheless defend the rappers’ right not to be prosecuted for what they have to say, however meager its value. As Voltaire knew, being a free-speech idealist means sometimes having to hold your nose.

A far worthier exemplar of embattled artistic freedom is scheduled to arrive in the Southland this weekend--one old Voltaire could defend not only with nose unencumbered, but with a sense of kinship. Like Voltaire, who served time in the Bastille for writing satiric verses attacking the French government, Fela Anikulapo Kuti knows what it is to suffer for speaking one’s mind.

Since the early 1970s, the Nigerian saxophonist and bandleader, now 51, has been among the most stubborn and outspoken protest singers in popular music. Fela, who plays Sunday night at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, has devoted his career to heaping scorn on his country’s political leaders. In between emphatic sax solos, Fela delivers his lyrical broadsides with unconcealed anger and scathing humor. He sets it all to undulating music from a 30-member band that draws upon jazz and funk, as well as African rhythms and call-and-response vocal incantations.

Fela has other facets, though. He has a mystical streak that the rationalist Voltaire would no doubt dismiss, and a propensity for ribaldry and sexual braggadocio that 2 Live Crew would likely hail.

At the core of Fela’s political message is an insistence that African nations must escape their past as European colonies and turn to uniquely African cultural forms. He explores his theme in rambling songs that alternate between broad statements of principle and topical satires that point to specific examples of government blundering and corruption. It’s no surprise that Fela’s message never has played well with authorities in his homeland. Nigeria, with a population of more than 110 million, is a former British colony that has been dominated by military rule through most of its 30 years of independence.

“It is being educated in the English way that makes you a big man (in Nigeria),” Fela said in a recent telephone interview from a tour stop in Chicago. “That is what I disagree with. My message was ‘Think African. Make schools read African history.’ The people listened, but the government did not. That is when my confrontation with the government started.”

That confrontation held harsh consequences. In 1977, according to press reports, a force of soldiers and police attacked the communal enclave where Fela lived with his large entourage. The compound was torched, Fela was beaten, and his elderly mother suffered a broken leg that is said to have contributed to her death soon afterward.

In 1981, Fela says, he suffered another severe beating at the hands of the police.

“I experienced death,” he said. “They beat my head until I found myself leaving my body. When I was enjoying the point of death, something knocked me back into my body.”

In 1984, as he was about to board a plane for his first U.S. appearances since his rise to prominence as one of Africa’s most popular musicians, Fela was arrested on a currency-smuggling charge and later sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Amnesty International designated him a prisoner of conscience and pushed for his release. But Fela served 18 months before a new regime took power in a coup and freed him in the wake of international protest and the sentencing judge’s admission that he had acted under military pressure.

The bitterness of those experiences comes out in “Look and Laugh,” a song from “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,” the 1986 album that Fela recorded after his release from prison. In the terse, pidgin-English verses he customarily uses for song lyrics, Fela lists the attacks he has suffered. To each offense, he offers a mocking, anguished, but ultimately triumphant retort: “I looku and I lafu.”

“When I was singing ‘Look and Laugh,’ I meant looking and laughing at a time when I will be able to correct things,” Fela said. That means bringing reform to Nigeria, he said, not exacting retribution for past wrongs. “When you start to think of revenge, you start to think of hate. I don’t believe in hating people. It’s a retrogressive thing. I know my time is coming when I will be able to deal with the matter spiritually--by spiritual force, by the power of the word.”

In Fela’s mystical sense, spiritual force is something that will one day carry him to power in Nigeria. It is a conviction he has held since 1981, when he fell into a sudden, visionary trance.

“I was told what my purpose was and my condition in this world,” Fela said. “I could see (visions) of the past, from (ancient) Egypt through time. I was shown the history of the world itself--the history and spiritual cost of the slave trade.”

Fela said he learned in the trance that he is the incarnation of an ancient Egyptian god.

“I think I’m going to lead my people one day,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

Fela tried to launch his own political party in 1979, during an interlude when civilian rule prevailed in Nigeria. Now, the current military regime is planning a transition back to democratic decision-making and civilian rule, with elections scheduled for 1992. Fela said he has founded a new political organization, called Movement Against Second Slavery. But he refuses to take part in the current election process.

“Participation would be accepting the corruption” he sees in the way the election is being handled. “Not participating will be much better. What is happening in my country must continue and get to its limit before we can have change. It is a process governed by time and destiny.”

S.B. Osagie, a spokesman for the Nigerian consulate in New York City, sounded amused over the phone when asked about Fela’s contention that he will one day lead the country.

“Life doesn’t work out the way you think that it’s going to work out,” Osagie, the consulate’s librarian and information assistant, said with a chuckle.

Fela may have had problems with past regimes, but he is free under the current government to deliver his satiric punches, Osagie said.

“The present administration was the one that released him. In Nigeria, we have the freedom of speech. Fela has the right to criticize. You have the right to accuse, as long as the accusation has some basis in fact.”

Osagie said he attended Fela’s recent concert in New York. “Some of the things he writes, I don’t think are true. Politically, it’s out of the question. But the music is fantastic. I enjoy it.”

Fela said he got his musical start singing in his school choir. “By the time I finished school, I found out I wasn’t qualified to study anything but music. My (academic) subjects didn’t qualify me to do (anything).”

His well-off family sent him to study at Trinity College of Music in London, where he studied music theory.

The formal study “was good in a way. It taught me how to practice perfection. But it didn’t give me anything in my (musical) expression. Modern jazz gave me the expression of my feelings. I would go out at night and listen to modern jazz.”

After emerging as a bandleader in Nigeria, Fela came to the United States for the first time in 1969, hoping to make a breakthrough with the sound he had dubbed “Afro-beat.” He failed to establish a career foothold in this country, but the visit proved crucial in his political development. Fela made friends in the Black Panther Party, and through them was introduced to radical black thinkers. He cites “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” as a key influence.

“At the time (of the U.S. visit), I was interested in my people, but not politically,” Fela said. “I gained a lot of education in black history (in America), which was not taught in (Nigerian) schools.”

Since then, Fela has seen music as a tool for protest, not for pop’s more typical explorations of relationships.

“For me it’s naive (to write songs about romance), because people who are lost don’t have time for this kind of thing,” he said. “Love--this sort of thing is not important in the African sense. Most African traditional songs don’t sing about love. They sing about happenings in society, about stories in society, about proverbs. These are the kinds of things Africans sing about, not love.”

Fela also ignores most other basic Western pop conventions. His songs stretch over entire album sides. That makes it unlikely that his recordings will receive substantial radio play.

“Even non-commercial stations are befuddled by tracks that long,” said Randall Grass, executive vice president of Shanachie Records, which released Fela’s most recent album, “Beasts of No Nation.” Grass said the album has sold 10,000 to 20,000 copies in the United States.

Fela, who tours with Egypt 80, his 30-member ensemble of singers, players and dancers, also has a policy of never performing a song after he has recorded it--a complete contradiction of the usual pop touring strategy of playing the hits.

“The drive behind my success has been writing new things all the time. It’s like a challenge, facing the audience with new stuff,” Fela said. “It is important for me to have the music spread, but I will not do it commercially.” That means no abridgement of his long opuses to make them more radio-friendly.

“I refuse. I cannot cut my music. It’s impossible for me. I have too much to say.”

Jimmy Cliff and Fela Kuti play Sunday at 6 p.m. at the Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont, Los Angeles. Tickets: $17 to $22. Information: (213) 410-1062 or (714) 634-1300.