Mádé Kuti Asks the Difficult Questions on ‘Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?’

“Everybody goes through some kind of existential crisis at some point, where they’re wondering the meaning of life,” he says about the album title, Where Does Happiness Come From? “Some people have the answer in religion, and for some people like me, who don’t have that religious basis, there’s a lot more uncertainty. So you’re questioning the value of life, your life. And you’re really trying to figure out where you should place value in your life. Biologically, the thing that we’re driven to do as humans is survival. But there’s something more,” he tells OkayAfrica.

For Mádé Kuti, that “something more” comes from vivid engagement with loved ones and art — a soulful antithesis to the fast, drab life that today’s world upholds. “I just thought that there were so many different things that were contrary to what a capitalist society teaches,” he says. “[There] the more money you have, the happier you are. Then you look at certain people with success, suffering from depression, and committing suicide. Even with financial stability, they don’t find true happiness. It was just sort of me wondering.”

That lingering search for meaning urged him to look home. “In Nigeria, we’re struggling beyond reasonable doubt, yet we’re in many ways complacent with the hand that we’ve been dealt,” Mádé explains. “How is it that Nigeria has not burst up in flames of revolution in the past sixty years? It was very strange to me how people can get by no matter how ridiculous their conditions are.”

Where Does Happiness Come From? wields all of these critical, urgent questions with revelatory precision. A combustive project with inventive rhythms, in 13 songs, Mádé and his band — The Movement — soundtrack the deeper thoughts of the artist. From the early tracks like “Take It All In Before The Lights Go Out” and “Find My Way,” one perceives upbeat drum arrangements as a tool of cohesion, uniting the variant themes with seamless mastery and patience.

“Pray,” like many of the songs on the album, is written from an intergenerational perspective, shining purposeful light on the travails of the Nigerian people. “Won Na Pa” infuses the added gravitas of the bata drum to bear on the modern percussion. With subtle tributes to drama culture, the songs play like a never-ending presentation, bronzed in pomp and pragmatism. It’s telling that the album’s sole feature is Mádé’s father, Femi Kuti, who’s a frequent collaborator stretching back to Mádé’s childhood. On their new joint track, “Story,” they put forward a series of illuminating questions: “Face all the ugly and the dirty / face it once and for all and think / are you better than the people that you judge / are you better than the people corrupt?” The first time Mádé played “Story,” his father got on stage to surprise him with a solo, and ever since then, he couldn’t hear it any other way.

Mádé and the band have been performing the album’s songs for a while and recorded it two years ago. Last year it was mixed and mastered — with additional work from other producers — and now it’s out. “As always, I write all my music myself,” he says. "I write all the parts and do a lot of notation before bringing it to the band, just in case, and to keep my catalogue in tune. Once I share the music with the band, we rehearse, perform, and eventually record it."

When Mádé Kuti put out his debut album For(e)ward in 2021, it was striking that he played all the instruments on it. A virtuosic display, it was one he, however, needed to evolve beyond since he couldn’t possibly replicate it on stage. That's why he formed The Movement band, further stamping his feet into the Afrobeat legacy, which counts iconic bands like Egypt 80 and The Positive Force amongst its pantheon.

It’s not far-fetched to see where Mádé gets his musical ambition from. Beyond his legendary family, he’s also been training as a musician since his early childhood, picking up several instruments before he was well into his teens. Such a life becomes a never-ending journey towards artistic fulfillment, which the greatest artists will tell you is a facade, since there’s no perfecting the form of art. One must always strive to be better.

“The most important thing above anything else is discipline,” he says now. “There’s a saying with the trumpet that’s very popular: if you don’t practice for one day, you’ll notice it with your tone. If you don’t practice for two days, the musicians around you will notice. And if you don’t practice for three days, then everyone will notice that you haven’t touched your trumpet in three days. Like today, I have to play the sax, trumpet, and guitar. And I’m very embarrassed to say that I haven’t been practicing my piano as much as I should be, because of how busy the album and everything have been.”

With his new album out, listeners will again be reminded of Mádé’s robust interpretation of Afrobeat and how everything in his music traces back to the sonic dedication he’s shown since he was barely three. This was the concluding aspect of our conversation — if there was even the slightest chance that the soon-to-be 30-year-old artist ever considered a life outside of music.