Femi Kuti Interview 19991201

Where does the name ’Anikulapo’ come from?

It means: ’I have death in my pocket.’

And ’Kuti’ means?

I cannot die.

So, this needs to be together, “Anikulapi Kuti“, is that right?

Yes.

And “Ransome“?

That’s a colonial name.

I wondered why Fela had changed his name from “Ransome“ to “Anikulapo“?

Because it was a colonial name. And he said every African man should barter his name, because that is what history teaches us: Mike Tyson for instance, if he would have been died in a hundred years, one would not know who he was or where he was from. But if Fela Anikulapo Kuti died in a hundred years they would say “OK he was from Nigeria“. This is important. An African man makes an achievement, we do not know where he is from, because he has made an achievement under a German name, French name, an English or an American name. So the credit goes to any of the other people. And there are many great African men making achievements watch the achievement going to other countries. So Africa is suffering because there is no intellectual achievement institution.

You changed your name again on the album it’s “Femi Kuti“ instead of “Femi Anikulapo Kuti”

I’ve not changed my name, that’s the stage name. When you look in the album you still see “Femi Anikulapo Kuti”. And where I find, I insist sometimes I want my name in a certain place. You have to understand the market in Europe. It’s very complicated, music is very complicated now. I’m coming from Nigeria and I want Europeans to listen to me. Now if I’m going to complicate ...

The name is too long?

It’s not too long. For the purpose it is too long. But the name is not too long.

For the purpose to sell records it’s better.

But my name is “Femi Anikulapo Kuti”.

How about new CDs. Are you planning on a new project?

Yes, from next year (2000) on, starting January.

Will it be a live project?

No, similar to this. But more improved, we’re moving forward, I don’t know. Different numbers. I’m excited. As the next one, I’m interested, too. You see, the excitement of “Live“ is so different from the excitement of the studio. Cause all the numbers are ready, most of them are ready, but when you take them to the studio, it’s so different. And when it sounds good “Live“, you just feel the richness of this. You know, it’s like smelling a nice soup, thinking: wow, what is it going to taste like? And you’re starving, yes that’s how I feel. When we go “Live“ we just package a show, we package a format we’re going to use to play, true selection of numbers, we might go backward and forward, or whatever. Sometimes I include my father, on this store we did not include my father’s number. Last store we included one of his numbers. So it depends on planning, it depends on what we feel the tour is like. This store was meant to promote this album, so what we have done, is taking more numbers from the album, cause we are already bored, we have been playing these numbers for too long already. We want to move forward and we’ve got so many new numbers we want to play, we took some of the new numbers and added it just on our own free will.