HEY – it’s the IVth! We should be totally bunking off but Soror Amy was tickled by this Dangerous Minds article about long ago shennanigans put on by the great African band leader, musical innovator Fela Kuti. At one point he did a tour with part of the stage show being his personal sorcerer Professor Hindu killing somone on stage, burying them and then resurrecting them two days later. Of course we’re looking at classic Haitian zombification tech which is more about chemical lobomotization and reprogramming than actually raising someone from the dead. And it’s not surprising that THAT tradition would stem from earlier African practices. Here’s an excerpt
“Fela’s death and resurrection show made its debut at his Lagos club, the Shrine, in May of ‘81. According to Michael E. Veal’s Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, during Professor Hindu’s first engagement at the Shrine, the magician “reportedly hacked open one man’s throat and fatally shot another.” In both instances, the victims were revived after apparently spending days and nights buried in the ground. Veal reproduces the text of an ad Fela took out in the Nigerian newspaper Punch, trumpeting Hindu’s powers:
‘On Wednesday 6th of May 1981 (at) 10 P.M., Professor [Kwaku] Addaie [a/k/a Professor Hindu] shot and killed a man at the Shrine. The body is buried right in the Shrine, you can go there and see; the body is still in the tomb. At 7 P.M. today Friday the 8th of May, 1981, the body will be resurrected by Professor Addaie himself. We hereby invite all press, doctors, Police, C.I.D. [Central Intelligence Division], N.S.O. [National Security Organization], Presidential Guards, etc. to come and see true Afrikan powers with their own two eyes. With this, there is no Jesus—THERE IS AFRIKA.'”
ANYWAY – read and enjoy.
Meanwhile – keep in mind that Kuti created a body of strikingly original, viscerally enrapturing music that synthesized elements of funk and jazz and tradition African music that is one of the great canons extant. So check out this site:
and give a listen:
