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53 f
fter he stowed away on a ship, his despairing mother
A
placed him in a ‘welfare’ institution at the age of
around 19. During his detention, he learned a new
trade as a sign writer (which included drawing pic-
tures), but the job gave him little pleasure. He pre-
ferred music as a creative outlet and by the late 1940s, he was
playing percussion in the kokoma bands that were popular at the
time. When this vogue faded, he began to play agidigbo, an
older folk style then undergoing a resurgence; only to be
replaced by a renewed fashion for juju, another style that had its
roots in the early 20th century.
Frustrated with working on jobs such as in the Lagos dry dock,
he eventually found a place playing agidigbo in the band led by
Ishola Willie Payne, which in turn led to him joining J.O. Araba’s
band in 1953. Although this was quite a high profile gig, which
involved playing live on the radio for the Nigeria Broadcasting
Corporation, the prevailing culture of the time meant the money
all went to the bandleader, and the band saw little.
Fatai’s response was to begin teaching himself to play guitar
in 1955, using an instruction manual. By 1957 he had formed his
own band, Fatai Rolling Dollar & His African Rhythm Band. They
were soon recording prolifically for Phillips West Africa Records,
and the federal government booked them to perform at the offi-
cial celebrations for Nigerian Independence in 1960.
One of the musicians who had joined Fatai’s band in 1958 was
Ebenezer Obey, who would eventually become a juju star to rival
King Sunny Ade. He left Fatai’s band with six other members in
1963, but Fatai soon drafted in deputies. They continued to be
active (as the new Millennium band) throughout the 1960s.
By the end of the decade, though, Fatai found his star eclipsed
by the aforementioned young juju upstarts. To make ends meet,
he set up a business hiring out musical instruments, in the suburb
of Moshalashi, very close to Fela Kuti’s ‘Kalakuta Republic’. The
two musicians were on good terms, having met while working in
radio in the 1960s, and Fela even once played trumpet in Fatai’s
band during the Biafran war.
owever, disaster struck in 1977, when government sol-
H
diers sacked Fela’s compound. In the ensuing chaos,
Fatai lost all his instruments to looters. With his liveli-
hood gone, he was forced to move to a tiny one-bed-
room flat in the suburb of Mushin, and his long spell
in the wilderness began. Having fathered 15 children to four
women, he now lost five of them and their mother to poverty-
related ailments. Depressed and disenfranchised, he drifted from
one dire living situation to another. For several years he worked
as a security guard at a football stadium, but after being seriously
assaulted by robbers who put him in hospital, he quit.
In another later attempt to make his living through music, he
worked for a pittance as a guitarist in one of the many Christian
churches that have mushroomed in Nigeria in recent years. But fit-
ting in wasn’t easy. “They say …when they are closing eye in the
church, I don’t close my own eye! I said ‘Yes, ‘cos when Jesus Christ
is coming, I want to be the first man to take what he is bringing
along!” he recalls.
The church also took a dim view of the fact that he smoked,
had relations with women outside marriage and took breaks to go
to a local mosque, being a Muslim.
It wasn’t until 2002 that Fatai’s luck turned and he was ‘redis-
covered’ by Steve Rhodes, a musicologist and former manager of
Fela’s. He gave Fatai his first well-paid gig in decades and helped
him on the road to recovery, which eventually saw him tour and
record with Tony Allen, and release three albums of his own mate-
rial outside Nigeria. There was even a plan to record with Allen,
Damon Albarn and Nigerian highlife veteran Ambrose Campbell,
but in a further blow, Campbell died just as they were about to
start in 2006.
Having wondered whether ill-health might have played a part
in Fatai’s recent no-shows, it was great seeing him come to life on
stage, losing himself in music like someone many years younger.
And so I asked him: How on earth does he do it?
“My secret? It’s between me and almighty Allah!”
Fatai Rolling Dollar and his band will appear at The Taberna-
cle, Notting Hill Gate, London on 25th September. Vampisoul will
be releasing a ‘Best Of’ CD in October. F
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