Felabration

As you all know we are big music fans and especially fans of live music and concerts. One of our brands in Nigeria is Legend. Legend is a Stout brand. Stout is very dark and has an acquired taste. You can compare the first Stout of the evening with drinking fluid concrete. My experience is that the 2nd stout always taste magnificent and the 3rd one even better. Legend is sponsoring the Shrine of Africa in Lagos. The Shrine is the home of Fela Kuti, as you all know the biggest artist ever of Africa. When you are in the Shrine there's a real shrine in the honour of Fella. When we went there we had a view on some of his followers with big joints smoking happily. Unfortunately we have never had the honour to see a concert of Fela Kuti but one week per year the Felabration week is celebrated. Our Marketing Chief Emmanuel had told me that I should go there to get a real taste of our consumers. So Viv, Mathilde and Guido first went for dinner close to the shrine in Ikeja. We ended up in a Indian bar/restaurant named Harzoyka and when we walked in the first thing we saw was an Boerboel, aka a Giant African Mastiff . Robin our daughter would not have said when she would have seen him ‘ooh what a sweet doggie’. This was a huge dog drooling with the build of a pittbull on steroids and the size of a Bernese mountain dog. His owner was Belgian with the remarkable name Kristof Dom. The food was really good and for the locals we can recommend it. Also customers were very friendly and welcoming.

And then we went to Fela. Arriving at the location we were amazed. There were thousands of people all around the venue outside. We contacted Kennedy who would accompany us inside. We were clearly VIPs. However the concept of VIP in Nigeria is different than in Europe. In Nigeria you do not get a wristband. There is also no special entrance. Hosts are also not awaiting you with beer or champagne. In Nigeria it goes as follows: You are accompanied by somebody that behaves that he knows everybody who takes you to the entrance or exit. Then the guards tell you that you can not go in. Then our Kennedy said it was ok for us to go in. The guards say no, but Kennedy tells us to keep on moving in. The guards again say it is not possible and Kennedy just closes the line and we are all in. He gave us a tour of the place and it is really cool to be there. Atmosphere is fantastic and the audience as well. Music is as always very loud in Nigeria but everybody is having a good time. After the tour they arranged for us seating on the VIP seats. To get there we were accompanied by now 5 or 6 Nigerian Breweries people that make way for us on the staircases up. Here we went through the same process. We were not allowed in but our hosts were saying it was ok. The guards said no again and we simply kept on climbing the stairs.

Viv was first in the line behind Kennedy, he kept he hand tight and pulled her and the rest through the crowd. On the top floor we had a great view on the arena. The people sitting there were informed that they should evacuate their plastic chairs. To make it perfect we even got our own table, a beercrate on its side. We were clearly in the right place. Everybody was extremely happy that we came and proud to show us the event and Shrine.

Some small facts to add to the flavour. In Nigeria power cuts are on a daily base and always unexpected. So can you imagine to be a musician playing live with your band and the power is cut. What do you do? Of course simply keep on playing as if nothing happened and if the power comes back and people can hear the music again, you might already be in the next song…..

We had a fun night. When we wanted to leave we were brought outside. When we came outside the amount of people queing and waiting to go in had grown siginificantly. The organisation send some additional guards to escort us to our car. Guido and I were asked to hand in our phones to make sure that they would not disappear. When we were at the corner there was a small collision / argument at the entrance. No problem at all, we only needed to get out of the way of 7 soldiers with Kalashnikovs in their hands running in to sort out the misunderstanding. Never a dull moment in Lagos. Long live Fela!

* Fela Anikulapo Kuti (15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997), also professionally known as Fela Kuti, or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre and human rights activist. He has been called "superstar, singer, musician, Panafricanist, polygamist, mystic, legend." At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers."