YELLOW FEVER: THE MAN WHO DESIGNED FELA’S ALBUM COVERS

On June 16 1976, students living under apartheid flood the streets of Soweto to protest being forced to learn Afrikaans in schools. They marched through towns with linked arms singing “We shall overcome” increasing exponentially in number as they went along. It isn’t long however before the riot police arrive. Kids are beaten near death by baton wielding officers, and are almost ripped to shreds by dogs, as a crowd of white South Africans cheer them on. “Kill the fucking black bastards” they say.

On June 16 1976, the Kalakuta republic is strangely melancholic. It’s Femi Kuti’s birthday and the celebration that was brewing is punctuated abruptly by the 9pm news. Fela and several of his cohorts sit in his living room and watch in a mixture of anger and disbelief as news footage from Soweto is being shown to them. Interviews with locals are devastating to sit through, as they recount stories from the day through swollen lips and eyes red from tear gas. They don’t cry though, they don’t even seem to have given up hope. “Next time we wreck their fucking schools” they say “We’re not afraid to die”. For the rest of the week this is all Fela can think about. This is all anyone at Kalakuta can talk about. The images shown to Fela and his posse that day has always been the kind of thing that’s driven them, and the angry conversations and rigorous debates would end only with the writing and recording of Sorrow: Tears And Blood (1977). One of Fela’s most acclaimed songs.

But this isn’t entirely about Fela, not much else can be said about the man that hasn’t been said already. We shift our focus however to someone else present that day. Lemi Ghariokwu.

Lemi is the person responsible for designing the bulk of Fela’s album covers. At this point in our story he’s been doing it for two years. He’s a painter who went from drawing Chevrolet cars he couldn’t afford in the sands of Fadeyi, to doing paintings for Sunny Okposo before he’s even turned 18. By the time he does turn 18 a journalist for Punch newspaper at the time takes him to meet Fela and an instant bond is formed between the two. He’s making daily commutes to Kalakuta and spending the whole day there, captivated by the energy.

He’s thrust full speed into Kuti’s Rastafarian esque carnival lifestyle and loves every second of it. He bonds with Fela over teachings of spiritualism from Tuesday Lobsang Rampa and black empowerment from Malcom X. He becomes an important part of the music making process, dealing with the visual side of things as eloquently and as intelligently as Fela did with his music, never failing to capture the soul and radical nature of the music as it was being perfected in front of him. Lemi isn’t a radical though, or to put it more accurately his radicalism and dedication to the cause pales in comparison to that of Fela (Lemi is only 22 at this point). And when he has to visit Fela multiple times in the hospital after violent run-ins with the police, he starts having second thoughts about the whole thing. But Fela had become a father, adviser and friend, and he knew he owed him loyalty. There’s a lot of pain in their future as a duo.

At some point in 1974 Fela is attacked and brutally beaten by the Nigerian police over subtle jabs at the establishment present in his songs. He’s sent to the hospital with a shattered skull and needs 17 stitches to put everything back together. Ironically, and maybe as a testament to the kind of man Fela was, It is at this point that he decides he’s going to attack the establishment directly. It is also at this point that he employs the services of Lemi for the first time. The song this event would go on to inspire is called Alagbon Close and the cover features Fela dancing on a capsized police boat. The song is Fela at his most angry up until that point, and the cover is Lemi at his most humorous and satirical.

The attacks on the Nigerian government don’t stop with Alagbon close, matter of fact they get worse. Everyone inside and outside of Kalakuta is starting to fear for Fela’s life, not sure if he’d survived another shattered skull. Fela doesn’t let down though, releasing Fear Not For Man (1977) reaffirming his position as an unflinching political agitator and convincing the Nigerian public that there’s not an ounce of fear in his body. He drops Zombie (1977) not too long after that simultaneously creating his one of his most iconic songs and his most scathing slight against, this time, the Nigerian military. Attacking their complacency with being ordered by the government to do heinous crimes at the drop of a hat against anyone the government deems a threat to its sovereignty. He calls them Zombies and for a few weeks the Nigerian military is the laughing stock of the Nigerian public. Lemi can smell blood in the water before the song even drops; he’s felt some type of way about the whole thing for a while now and is almost certain this is where everything starts to fall apart. He’s right.

In the early hours of February 1977, a 1000 soldiers storm the compounds of the Kalakuta. They attack anyone they set their eyes on as they beeline for Fela’s room. They beat him in worse ways than they ever have, before taking his mother and throwing her off the balcony, effectively killing her. Onlookers can’t believe what they’re seeing; Fela’s almost lifeless body is dragged outside the republic as the entire thing is set on fire.

Lemi leaves the encounter relatively unscathed, but he’s had the pleasure of seeing his friends get their teeth kicked in by military boots and his mentor beaten within an inch of his life as he watches his mother gets abused and subsequently killed. This marks the beginning of the end for their friendship and a major turning point in both their lives.

The cover Lemi presents for Sorrow: Tears and Blood (1977) is filled to the brim with albeit very subtle references to the day the Kalakuta burned. Fela wants something different though, and he isn’t asking for it kindly. He wants a picture of the republic on fire. Lemi thinks it’s too much too soon for a deeply traumatic event that’s already a year behind them. Fela calls him weak and Lemi leaves vowing to never come back.

It seems counter intuitive to only start talking about Lemi’s art at this point in an article about him, but context is much needed. It’s hard to understand the biting, yet humorous satire present in his work without first understanding the dense socio political climate they were made in. Their vibrant colours and vivid depictions of violence, nudity and black suffering being a reflection of everything Lemi was surrounded by at the time, essentially creating the handbook for a myriad of Nigerian contemporary artists who grew up around his work.

Lemi, after his split with Fela goes on to make album covers for the likes of Osita Osadebe, James Iroha, Bob Marley, Kris Okotie, Lucky Dube, Gilles Peterson, Miriam Makeba and about a hundred other musicians across the globe. He spends most of the 80s as the cover art consultant for Polygram records, and the 90s pioneering a major shift in Nigerian pop culture with his work for Kennis music (the label responsible for 2face, Lagbaja, Kenny St Brown and Sound Sultan). His influence is seen heavily in the visual language employed by the US conscious hip hop scene. The romanticisation of western culture made fun of on the cover of JJD (1977) and the colourism made satirized on the cover of Yellow Fever (1977) are conversation that we’re still having to this day and one of the men featured on the cover of Beast Of No Nation (1989) is now serving a second presidential term. His art remains relevant even decades after they were first made.