This talk of Lagos and the Shrine has set everyone on edge. Going to Nigeria is the one thing every white person we know in the States told us not to do. It feels as if we are here with Viggo Mortenson and Ian Mclellen plotting a direct assault on Mordor itself. In the States we tour by the seat of our pants, sometime making things up as we go along. We are no doubt looked at as idiots, with perhaps a bit of grudging admiration thrown in, by the jam bands we rub elbows with on the summer festival circuit who are much better endowed financially and, let's face it, smarter with their money than we are. But our problems in the States seem like a white American crying over a lost water bottle in a village full of African children excited that today they get to eat a handful of rice. We have booking agency, a schedule, a bus that usually gets us where we need to go. But now we are messing with a different beast, one that may spin our world into areas we cannot control. We are in a different land, a different culture, one that we know essentially nothing about. We are bold, yes, and as Annas told me with tears in his eyes at the Africa Unite Festival when we found out we would not perform, we have heart. But there is a fine line between bold and stupid, and we are four days from finding out where that line lies.
And yet, the honey being waved in our faces is too sweet to turn down. Never mind the imaginary headlines that blare in our heads ("White Afro-Beat Band With Elephant Balls Travels to Lagos, Worships at Birthplace of Afro Beat"), the clubs packed to the rafters with curious Americans, Europeans, and Japanese come to see exactly who these crazy motherfuckers from San Francisco are that they've heard about. We are going for the chance to swim in our music, to pay homage in a way few if any white people would dare to do. Fela Kuti was Martin Luther King, Daniel Shays, Harriett Tubman and James Brown rolled into one- a courageous leader hell bent on delivering for his and her people, roadblocks be damned. Fela's son Femi, keeper of his legacy and a direct link to royalty no weaker than Queen Elizabeth, has invited us to pay our respects at ground zero for our music and who we are as people. We are going.