Lemi Ghariokwu has seen and done a lot in his life. As a young man in Lagos, Nigeria, he began to teach himself art, and through a chance encounter between a journalist and a portrait of Bruce Lee he had hanging in a pub, inadvertently became connected with one of the most radical and challenging musicians of the 20th Century, Fela Kuti.
Having designed over 25 album covers for Fela in his lifetime, Lemi became a pupil and friend of the musician, privy to jam sessions and the political and social opinions of the divisive activist. Fela strived for his fellow Africans to retain a sense of their Africanism after years of colonial invasion, and was at one point jailed by Nigeria’s government.
I sensed some of this rebellious spirit during our hour long chat, as well as a man driven towards learning, freedom, and artistic expression.
After a brief chat about the similarities between Nigeria and Ireland, both being subjected to imperial invasions with native languages being suppressed, as well as dropping Roddy Doyle’s quote from The Commitments that “the Irish are the Blacks of Europe”, I started into a pleasant and interesting chat with a man who helped put Nigeria on the world stage for musical and artistic output.
Lemi giving a talk at UCLA
When you’re designing artwork for an album cover do you like to take inspiration from the first listen and work from there, or do you immerse yourself in the album over repeated listenings?
For me, it works both ways, but most of the time I have to immerse myself in the music. For my work with Fela it’s a different kettle of fish, because I believe strongly in predestination, that my destiny and Fela’s crossed for the progress of mental liberation for the African people. I am a pan Africanist, just like Fela. That puts us in the same state of mind, the way we think and analyse things. I became very close to Fela, I met him when I was 18 (and he was 35) so I was like a son to him, one of his closest advisors and best friends to him. When he composed those songs I was privy to those compositions. I knew why he was writing a particular tune and lyrics. For that reason it was always fair for me to illustrate from my own perspective. I’ll pick up a first impression and run with that, and when I watched his shows he’d perform a song for months, and when he gets tired of performing, he records. He had this policy, when he is recording an album. If he is playing somewhere and there is a request to perform a song he would say “go and buy the record!”. Fela was in a class of his own.
So at this time he has a night club called the African Shrine, the idea coming from that Europeans brought us Christianity, the Arabs brought us Islam, and he doesn’t want to perform in foreign religions of the colonialists, so he calls this place the shrine. Even though it’s a performance place he does these traditional African religious worship of his own. So whenever he composes a new song, I’ll be privy to the process to perfect it. Then he announces to the Shrine that he has a new song, the audience starts enjoying it, he masters it properly for some months, it becomes part of the repertoire. Then when he had a sense of fulfilment from that performance wise, he goes to the studio and records it and that is all. He doesn’t perform it anymore. So by the time he’s recorded a song, I’ve already heard that song maybe 20, maybe 50 times, so the lyrics are in my head and apart from the first impression of when he was composing the tune, now I get the reaction of the audience, so I put myself in the position of becoming a megaphone, like I can now translate what Fela is trying to say using my art. I didn’t illustrate his album covers literally, sometimes I used elements of his lyrics then I put in my own idea, so it becomes a supplement to the music.
For other artists, it depends, some album covers are simplistic so I didn’t need to crack my head so much. I listen to the song, get a first impression, I’ll just use pictures. My technique is very eclectic, I’ll launch from various sources and various times. A French journalist interviewed me and she said that if you line up all of my album covers for Fela, they have 5 or 6 different styles. So when I design for other artists whose music is not very political, or socially conscious, I just listen to their music and use a photograph, I don’t need to illustrate for them. But for some who have deep lyrics I love to listen. For example, an afrobeat group from New York called Antibalas. In 2002, they come to me to do a cover for them. They emailed me and send me the music as mp3, and I start to research them and find out there is a Nigerian who used to play with Fela in the group. I try to get in tune with their vibes, and weeks go by, and they email me and ask “Lemi, have you done anything yet?” and I said no. After about 6 weeks before I got in tune with what they’re trying to do, I sent them an illustration and they said “Wow, bullseye!”, no corrections, it was perfect.
Lemi’s artwork for Antibalas’ ‘Talkatif”
You mentioned that a journalist said that your work looked like it came from different artists. You use so many different styles, how do you try to stay creatively agile and not end up doing the same thing over and over?
I’ve been recreating myself through the years, and currently I am deeply involved in the visual arts circuit here, so I do large format works and exhibitions. I have an exhibition in November here, and I’m doing about 25 pieces. I use different media, I use different material like aluminium dibond, digital prints, SAV, cut and paste, plywood, vinyl plastic.
As for the covers, I try to use different techniques, but I think it is very interesting that people stay glued to my work in the 70s. Sometimes I do a cover and people say “I want it like Fela’s one” and I say “That was 40 years ago!”.
I just finished a cover for a medical company in France called Music Care. They have a project for music therapy, where they release a record they give to their patients so after surgery they play music to relax and go to sleep. They sent me the music, I listen and listen, and they had lots of ideas. They showed me my cover of JJD, a 1977 Fela cover and they wanted something like that. I tried doing something like that, and in the end it was the hardest job I’ve done in 42 years. When my book is ready I’m going to feature that in my book of covers as the toughest work I’ve done. It took like 5 months, the guy would say “No, I want it like this, it’s too righteous” and I said “You want it like Fela, of course it’s righteous!”. But at the end of the day it was a pain for me. I took up the challenge as a professional, we’re happy now that we’re done.
Lemi’s artwork for Amala & Blum ‘Welikom 2 Lay-Gh-Us!’
It must be difficult working to try and keep everybody happy and still maintain artistic freedom. Having worked in both the realms of fine art and the music industry, are there any parallels between the two worlds? Both revolve around creativity but also big business and industry.
The fact that I worked with the music industry for 30 years really helped me to get to grips with the business of the visual arts. Music and art are show business, sometimes some of us just know about the show, and not about the business, so we suffer, but I know about both. I have agents and a manager I have learned a lot from, so I use them to sell my work.
I came up knowing the way that musicians work with record companies and signing contracts and making demands. If I want to have an exhibition and a gallery is interested, they say to me, “How many works do you want to do for this?”, we agree, they say you go and do the works and I say no. If I want to do the works then I need your financial input, because I’m putting down my intellectual property, so I cannot put both my finances and intellectual property down all on my own, because there won’t be an incentive for you to sell my work. If your money is involved, you’ll definitely find a way to sell my work. Sometimes they say no, other artists just bring their work, and I say no, you have to put some money in.
You have to balance the artist and the businessman within you.
Yes, that’s what I learned from the music industry, and now having worked in the art industry.
Earlier on you mentioned you work with all sorts of media. I wanted to ask how the digital revolution has changed how you create artwork.
In 1992 I bought my first computer and ever since, no looking back. It’s a great advantage for me.
What sort of programs do you use?
I use Correctdraw and Photoshop. It helps me to compose a picture before I trace out and draw by hand, I can balance everything perfectly on a computer before I put it on canvas. But I know a lot of other little tricks, but I don’t tell them, they’re trade secrets!
Lemi’s artwork for Fela’s ‘Before I Jump Like Monkey Give Me Banana’
If you were to change your profession tomorrow, what would you be?
I would be a musician! I recorded this song in 1992…? Or 1993? It was a hit, a collaboration with a ragga artist here. And sometimes people accost me and say “When are you going to do another song?”. I’ve been thinking of calling a guitarist simply for that. Sometimes I may be in the right frame of mind, when I have some funds, I’ll go to the studio and tinker out some ideas.
That was actually my first love, but when art came I became a star immediately by working with Fela, I just forgot about music. But I still crave that indulgence, I wish I was a musician.
Fela was an activist and pushed for societal change. In the west it seems that political music has been in decline. With music being more readily available it seems to have diluted any striving for social change. Is there still a sense of rebellion through music in Nigeria?
Very little. I was on a panel on Sunday discussing “music makes the people…” and we were supposed to finish the sentence. I said that life is like a pendulum that swings high and low, like the tides of the ocean. In the 60s, 70s and part of the 80s was the era when people wanted to express their angst, they used their art forms to express their anger very vividly. There was the Black Panthers, in Europe the hippie flower children, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, during that era it was fashionable for people to protest with anything they had at their disposal. But like life, the pendulum swung backwards, and from the early 90s the revolution went on holiday.
Lemi’s artwork for Fela Kuti’s ‘Zombie’, an album that led to his arrest
In Nigeria the young people are singing about boobs, bums, “I buy you a Ferrari”, “Let’s drink champagne”. And Nigeria is so poor, things are so hard, but none of them are talking about the problems. Rather, they are making people happy by fantasising. “Beautiful girl, I love you, I want to take you to Paris, Dubai, Los Angeles, buy you Gucci shoes and bags”, can you imagine?! So I said the revolution is on holiday, and the second revolution will come very soon, the pendulum will swing up again because the feelings are already starting. There are some elements of protest music, protest lyrics, but they’re like Jamaican rudeboys, like street urchins, they show street credibility on their lyrics, and sometimes taboo lyrics.
Right now the government in Nigeria is so bereft of ideas to move the nation forward. We’re in recession right now, the Nigerian money is almost 500 naira to a dollar. A year and a half ago, the naira was 160 to the dollar. Things are so expensive, people are grumbling. My 24 year old son came in to me and said there is so much poverty he is scared. Driving home, an elderly man waved him down and said “Please take me to the next stop”. So he obliged, he took the man. He stopped at a restaurant and bought some food, put it in his car, and the man grabbed the food and started eating without asking. My son was so shocked, and the man said “I’m so sorry, I haven’t eaten in days, I need to eat this”. That’s how bad it is. In the next couple of years protest music will come by again, I’m telling you.
The last great political album that I heard was Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. I was wondering if you’d heard it, or if you listen to any hip hop yourself?
No, I mainly listen to Nigerian music right now. All the stuff the young people are doing, most of my generation think it’s rubbish. I agree lyrically, but musically they are happy that at long last Nigeria has a musical identity. That was lacking 20, 30 years ago. Now we have afrobeat, inspired by Fela. And the young people are using local dialects in their lyrics, which is beautiful. Because of our colonial experience, when I was in school I was not allowed to speak traditional language, only English. And because of Fela’s influence they are speaking pidgin English in their songs, they speak Yoruba, they speak Igbo, so I’m happy about that.
Right now when you tune to our radio stations some stations play 100% Nigerian music. In the 80s it was 80% American music, 20% Nigerian. I never thought this would happen in my time, so sometimes I look to the sky and say “Fela, come and see what is happening”.
Hip hop, I was never interested in, even though I hear that lyrically they can be very political, very rebellious, like Tupac Shakur. My problem is the fact that I feel a very big disconnect between Americans of African descent, and Africans in Africa. It upsets me in a way, they lead this superficial life in America even though they are so suppressed and repressed. When they make money they don’t invest it back in Africa. The Chinese, Lebanese, British are in Africa investing and making so much money, but our African American brothers making money in football, music, entertainment, they never invest in Africa. Rather, they spend money and show off, so I feel put off hip hop.
Lastly, you mention on your website that you’re an avid reader. What book did you last read and what book last made an impact on you?
Ah, that’s a deep question. I’m reading two Nigerian books right now. One is called For Sam by Jimi Odumosu, the other is called Words of Wisdom, the writer was 80 years old, he died recently. His daughter is a friend of mine, a general manager of a radio station in Lagos. It has a lot of witty African proverbs. Recently I finished reading a book by a young lady, she’s 21, she manages my website, Twitter, and Instagram account. She wrote a book on time management called the Diamond of Life, and it is very revealing for a 21 year old Nigerian to write about time management, so I really love that book.
Talking about books, I studied metaphysics in the 70s and 80s, I analyse from a metaphysical perspective a lot of times. I make my decisions based on meditation, so I’ve read the complete set of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa books, all 19 of them. I read a lot, I love information. But as a policy I don’t buy newspapers. If I see a newspaper I’ll read it, but I won’t buy it!
That’s great Lemi, thanks for taking the time out to talk to me!
Lemi Ghariokwu has reimagining an album cover for the Fantasy 12 exhibition at The Copper House, Synge Street. For more information click here.