Finding Fela’ finds Atlantan Sahr Ngaujah back in iconic role

• Finding Fela LLC
• Fela Kuti

When Finding Fela opens tonight for a weeklong Atlanta run, the documentary will serve as the culmination of a six-year-long celebration of the Nigerian legend and iconoclast. The documentary not only a looks at the complex life and legacy of the father of Afrobeat, it does so through the lens of the Fela phenomenon resurrected in part by the Bill T. Jones-directed Broadway musical Fela!, starring Sahr Ngaujah in the lead role. The Atlanta-trained actor so embodied the spirit of Fela in his iconic performance that he was wholly embraced in Lagos when the musical traveled to Fela’s Nigerian hometown three years ago to play the New Africa Shrine — the venue rebuilt by Fela’s children as an homage to their father’s original Shrine nightclub, which was leveled by the Nigerian military. Before returning to Atlanta this Friday — for a Q&A following the 7 p.m. Finding Fela screening at Landmark Midtown Arts Cinema and an afterparty at Sound Table, where he’ll guest DJ from 10-11 p.m. — Ngaujah talked by phone about the impact the role has had on his career, his thoughts on non-traditional Broadway musicals like Fela and Holler If Ya Hear Me, and the dividing line between his portrayal of Fela and the man himself. The following is a condensed version of that conversation.

How does it feel to have played such a big role in bringing Fela to life for a new generation?

Kind of fascinating, really. When we started it, of course Fela is popular all over the world, but popular with a select few. And when we were making the piece, one of our challenges was to figure out how to create something that would be satisfying for people who know and love Fela and respect him, but also make something that is accessible to people who have never heard of Afrobeat or have any connection whatsoever to not just Fela but Africa for that matter.

It was a very challenging process figuring all of that out. And when we opened the show, we weren’t sure if we actually hit it or not. But over time we began to see that it was resonating. So in that way it was very satisfying and really beautiful.

How did this role change or challenge you, as a man and as a performer?

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On all of those different points, there are very long conversations that can be had. But it’s abstract. Even just playing on Broadway, which I’d never done before — prior to Fela it was something that I wasn’t really interested in. I was more into avant-garde than the Broadway formula, so to speak. So working on Fela, a piece that ended up going to Broadway with a bit of an unorthodox form, was really interesting. It really gave me a deeper appreciation of the Broadway world than I had at that time in my life.

Spiritually, as a man, there’s so much to be said about it. Ultimately, confronting a challenge of any sort can have the possibility of bringing out the best in a person. And playing Fela, not just on Broadway but all over the world, definitely pushed me to go deep inside myself and bring out the best I had to offer.

Not to shift the conversation too much, but in terms of that contrast between this being a musical that was both accessible to newcomers and traditional Broadway audiences, but also carried the cultural significance of Fela’s legacy, it makes me think about the Tupac musical Holler If Ya Hear Me that recently ended abruptly. In a lot of ways, they had the same struggle but a very different outcome.

A work like Holler If Ya Hear Me, which is steeped in a musical tradition that is not common for the Broadway stage, demands a different type of outreach trajectory. I don’t know to what degree it was a challenge for Holler If Ya Hear Me, but I know it was a challenge for them as it was a challenge for Fela when it was on Broadway. How do you make sense of following the protocol necessary to promote a piece in the most practical terms for the industry of Broadway? How do you reach the grandmas from Missouri who are just on a night in New York City for the weekend and want to see a Broadway show? That’s the problem that every Broadway producer and marketing team has. The music itself doesn’t necessarily adhere to what people are used to when they go to see a Broadway show, so how do you coax them in to experience something completely new and different?

That’s the challenge, and it takes a lot of energy and a keen marketing mind. But then, how do you attract an audience that may love the music that you’re presenting but have no connection whatsoever to that form or that presentational style, which is, in this case, a Broadway musical? How do you then package that and get that out to these vastly different, almost polar-opposite demographics? That’s a challenge.

• Finding Fela LLC

The thing that Tupac and Fela kind of have in common is that they were both considered countercultural figures for the time, right. Do you think Fela! was easier for audiences to swallow because so much more time has passed? What do you think made these diverse audiences embrace Fela so?

I think on the one hand Fela’s music, though very specific being that it was a form of music he created, was the type of music that could have resonance with many different types of people.

In the documentary Finding Fela, there’s a comment about what Fela said when some record execs asked him to cut his tunes to three minutes. He said, “If you listen to Beethoven or Rachmaninoff or Mozart, you don’t ask them to cut their tunes. The composition is the composition.” To put Fela into a pop context, if he would’ve cut his tunes, they would probably know Fela in America as well as they know Bob Marley.

Now with Tupac, his music has a global appeal. But it’s not world music like Fela’s; it’s hip-hop. And I think it’s easier to push world music across demographics than it is hip-hop. With hip-hop, I think people appreciate it or they don’t. And in America, that’s part of the reality. In terms of people coming to see the show, the way the show was made was very innovative. And the form matched the innovation of Fela’s music.

We can call Fela the most important modern composer in modern history from Africa. Not just because of what he was talking about. He danced that line also between virtue and treachery, depending on who you are and how you look at his content, but as a composer he completely innovated African music in a way that still is resonating in Africa and all over the world.

So many European artists were coming there, from the Beatles to whomever, to spend time with him and see what he was doing, as well as the American artists, from Stevie Wonder to James Brown to Roy Ayers, because of his innovation. And I think that made Bill T. Jones, very well matched as the director of the piece, because he’s also very much involved in pushing form, pushing boundaries. I think had a lot to do with the success of that piece, not just in America but around the world.

• Monique Carboni
• Atlanta-trained Sahr Ngaujah as Fela

His music and magnetism seems so consuming, I imagine it might be hard to turn off a character like that. Did you find yourself just living as Fela for awhile?

Well, no, I didn’t find myself living as Fela. I definitely found myself living within the context of executing that role with a very grueling schedule, be it on Broadway or be it on tour. Because Fela was a musician, there are similarities in the lifestyle. So maybe it’s possible to draw parallels between what the day-to-day is — not just me but the whole stage: how we prepare, how we execute, and how we download after we have executed. But there are also parallels I think that could be drawn easily for anybody in this type of industry. In terms of the character itself, there was always a very clear distinction between me and Fela. Now granted, everybody didn’t always see it like that. And I respected the fact that for some people maybe sometimes it was easier for them to just look at me as that person — whether on- or off-stage. And sometimes I would play into it for the sake of helping somebody have a great encounter with a guy they appreciate. But in my own mind, there was never a lack of distinction between my reality and Fela.

And also, there’s a very big distinction between what we offered people in that show and Fela’s real life. What we showed was a fraction of what his real life encompassed. Even watching the documentary, it gives a deeper look into it. The reality of Fela’s life is vastly more profound.

Have you found such a dream role to be as rewarding in terms of going forward and getting other roles, or have you found that people have so associated you with Fela that they can’t imagine you for anything else?

The benefits of participating on this project and playing this character are more than I can quantify right now. So on that side it was a pure blessing, you know. I only have thanks and gratefulness for that. But on the other side, when I came from New York I came straight from Europe. I’d already been living in Europe for almost ten years. Every once in awhile, I’d come home to Atlanta. But I didn’t have any life in New York until the whole thing started. As a result, I was not a part of this industry on any level. So when I came to this town with that show, for all intents and purposes I was an import, even though my formative years were spent in the U.S.; I was born in America. By the time Fela! was ending, I would go on auditions and people considering me for a role — whether they were asking me to play an African or an American — their first question was “So, what is your Visa status? Do you have a green card?” So, there were definitely many hurdles to cross after that. And even now, when people think of me the first thing they think about is me playing an African character. Which is just fine; I’m known for Fela right now. There are worse things to be known for. And for me, personally, I don’t have any lack of confidence in my own capacity as an actor to encompass different types of characters. I’m not so much concerned about that. It will all reveal itself in time.

Well, we look forward to seeing you as Fela again, but in the documentary this time.

Yeah, I think you’re going to enjoy it. I haven’t heard from anybody that hasn’t. But it’s a documentary, so on one level there’s the formal way to look at it and consider it. And on the other side, there are the lives that are being examined, which are quite interesting. As Bill T. Jones would say, “We are ordinary people living extraordinary lives,” and in this case we have one under the microscope. So I hope people can not only watch it and enjoy it as something to pass the time, but hopefully as something that, on a social or philosophical level, opens doors of thought that may not have been opened or visited in awhile.