Why Black Man Dey Suffer – LP (1971)
Listen to Sir Paul McCartney remembering this song played live at the Shrine.

On 1 January 1971, Fela changes his band’s name from Nigeria 70 to Africa 70. It is a breakthrough year for the group, which will remain the hottest attraction in Nigeria (and elsewhere in West Africa) into the 1980s. Fela stops playing trumpet, saying it is damaging his lips, and switches to electric keyboards. Africa 70’s growing popularity leads to a move from the Afro-Spot to a bigger venue, the Surulere Night Club, which Fela renames the Afro-Spot.
The band makes its first British visit and Fela reconnects with Ginger Baker, who records with Africa 70 in London. Three albums are released, which show Fela’s style rapidly developing towards fully fledged Afrobeat. He records his first overtly political song, “Why Black Man Dey Suffer,” which EMI Nigeria refuses to release.
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Featuring Ginger Baker, the title track is among Fela’s first overtly political lyrics. His political perspective had evolved during the 1969 / 1970 tour of the US, largely through his friendship with the black-rights activist Sandra Izsadore, who introduced him to the writings of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and other revolutionary thinkers. By the time Fela wrote “Why Black Man Dey Suffer,” his songwriting and public statements were becoming increasingly critical of the power structure in Nigeria and throughout post-colonial Africa. The album was actually recorded for EMI, but wary of the title, the label refused to release it.

Why Black Man Dey Suffer, recorded in 1971, was originally deemed too controversial for release by EMI, his label at the time. Having recently been schooled in the American black power movement and having taken on a new Pan-African worldview, this album served as one of Fela’s first musical soapboxes on which he challenged the colonial injustices and corruption of the ruling elites of his time. The title track “Why Black Man Dey Suffer” is a history lesson on the oppression of the African man. It details the litany of abuses the black man has suffered — from being taken as slaves, to having an alien people impose a new culture upon them, take their land, fight them, and set them against one another. The following track, “Ikoyi Mentality”, firmly expresses Fela’s identification with the downtrodden masses and his rejection of the ways of the ruling class inhabitants of the Ikoyi neighborhood in Lagos.

See also: Original Sufferhead with Ginger Baker