Fela Kuti’s Black consciousness: African cosmology and the re-configuration of Blackness in ‘colonial mentality’

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent times in African development, attentions have now been shifted to Eurocentric apologetics in Africa and some colonially obsessed people who used the instruments of power to subjugate the masses. They have also attempted to suppress the phenomenon of Black consciousness, therefore making it oblivion and superfluous to the development of African cosmology. This scenario has inadvertently created a lacuna of ignorance among people who could not strive assiduously to situate their freedom and ensure the exigency arising from the fact that African cultural idiosyncratic norms should be held with sacrosanct. On this backdrop, Fela Anikulapo Kuti in this study uses his highly spiritual and satiric song, ‘colonial mentality’ to pour derision and castigate the opprobrious terms of Euro-centrism among Africans for a drastic change of negative orientation to that which entrenches the consciousness of the African soul. This revolutionary song was poised to valorize the concept of freedom and to re-advocate the newness of Blackness in all ramifications in order to apparently subjugate exacerbated ambiguity propelled by controversial and treacherous notions of Euro-centrism orchestrated by the subjugation of Black consciousness. The study avidly relies on Derrida’s theory of deconstruction that epitomizes the need for the binaries to be re-constructed and re-versed in order to bring about newness that encapsulates multiplicities of meanings. It also borrows a leave from the Fanonian theory of liberation that visualizes the need for the Black person to be totally free from all forms of foreign subjugation. Also, this study lends axiomatic credence on decolonial theory that probes assiduously on the need to break away from some shackles of foreign hegemony and epistemology so that the native’s thoughts as envisaged in Fela’s songs could be a reality and a total embodiment of African’s reflection that is dependent on the promotion of Black philosophy and the elevation of Afrocentric concepts that contributes to the overarching development of Africans in all ramifications.