MASTER DRUMMER OF AFROBEAT - Duke University Press

In the old days, I always preferred to go for the normal English suit,
without the tie. And after a while, even the suit itself became a big problem
for me, because it was becoming too heavy in the climate. It was like
punishment for me in that climate. You know what I mean? I felt like
I couldn’t handle that. That’s why back in the ’70s, I was dressing with
the jeans with the short cutoff vest. Sometimes I would come into Fela’s
house and he would look at me and say, “Allenko, you know what you
look like? You look like those ones in the North that drive the cows. Like
a cowboy! It’s the cowboys that dress like this.” He was trying to tell me
that I looked “bush.” And I would tell him, “Well, as long as it looks nice
on me, I don’t care. I love it like this!” It’s just that I always had my own
outlook, even before I got into music. That’s my basic personality. I like
to be myself. And I wouldn’t have made my own way in life if I wasn’t
like that.
I grew up fast because I was the oldest one. I took care of all my brothers
and sisters, especially the two right behind me. My mother let me do that
from the age of about eight. Sometimes I used to sit in the kitchen with
her and the other housewives from the neighborhood, and I would cook
right along with them. The other housewives were a little jealous of that.
They always used to tell my mother that she was spoiling me and that I
wouldn’t respect women in the future if I could do their work for them.
But it was good for me because I’ve always been a good cook and have
always been able to take care of myself. I wasn’t really brought up with
Nigerian cooking, because I was brought up by a Ghanaian mother. On
the other hand, my father was a Nigerian, a Yoruba guy from Abeokuta,
and he had his own way of eating, which he could have preferred. But my
mother did the cooking, and she had to satisfy my father. He must be able
to enjoy his dinner, and I never heard him complain a day in his life. That
tells you something about my mother’s cooking! And that’s why for me, I
am cooking more on the Ghanaian side than the Nigerian side. The Ghanaians
have their own approach to recipes, which is different from the
Nigerians. Different ingredients. So if I say I want to cook African food,
you’ll really be having two things in one—part Nigerian, part Ghanaian.
When I was eighteen, my mother left and went to Ghana for a while,
and took Jumoke and Olukunmi with her. That left me to take care of
the house and the rest of the kids. I was cooking for everybody, even my
father. He used to go to work and leave money for me to buy food, because
he couldn’t even fry an egg! So I did everything around the house
for a year and a half, until my mother came back.
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