It caught my eye a couple of years ago, and I haven’t got any satisfactory answer as to their accidental or deliberate inclusion in the structure of the song.
Fela is notable for his retention of the classical jazzy style of music from America and a deliberately African(ized) and political lyric form along with heavy beats and horns. Rhyming for him would have been out of the ordinary. But in the song Trouble Sleep, I noticed the following (the rhyming is emphasized):
Tenant lost im job
E sit down for house
E dey think of chop
Mister Landlord come wake am up
He say mister pay me your rent
Wetin e dey find…
…
Mister husband marry for church
E make big party
They e start to spray
because him love im wife
This im wife come run away
Bank manager run come
E say mister pay me your debt
Wetin e dey find…
It looks more like an accidental rhyming, especially since no such structure (if we could call it that) appeared anywhere in the second verse which I omitted in this transcript. Yet, It will be interesting if it turns out that the maestro had deliberately worked rhyming effects into one of his famous ballads. What do you think?
_________
UPDATE:
Fela’s first son -a former band member, and an Afrobeat musician of note in his own right (been nominated twice for the Grammy) – Femi Kuti, responded to my post earlier this evening, on twitter:
I guess that settles that!
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