Award-winning editorial cartoonist, Tayo Fatunla, who has contributed cartoons in The Nation newspapers, is the artist behind Fela Kuti’s image featured in Grammy-winning Burna Boy’s mega-hit anthem music “Ye” which is accompanied by an official YouTube video with millions of views. He has been speaking on his links with the star.
In his OUR ROOTS series, Fatunla has also featured Afrobeat musicians Wizkid, D’banj as well as Burna Boy.
Burna’s music is heavily influenced by Fela’s Afrobeat music and vocals and has triumphed globally with his “Afrofusion” pop music. Fatunla sees it as an honour to have his work featured in Burna Boy’s “Ye” video.
He said: One thing led to another and as the image was liked, we agreed to its continuous use for the ‘Ye’ video. The vibes from “Ye” could easily have been composed by Fela. I could see him blowing the saxophone to the music and singing it. So, I guess Burna is the only musician to acknowledge visually his thanks to Fela and Afrobeat musicians; to actually appreciate Fela for giving Afrobeat to the world, just like Bob Marley gave Reggae music to the world.”
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“The visual artist’s role is to enhance the video and bring it to life; to know the mind of the musician and put his thoughts down visually. Musicians are storytellers. They can perhaps only sing so they need an artist to come up with a visual for their video or CD/album designs.
“My good friend and colleague cartoonist, Ghariokwu Lemi, who illustrated and designed most of Fela’s album covers, explained to me how he would go show Fela his concept album design for his approval.
“With my drawing in the “Ye” video, there were ray power lines around Fela’s fists as takes on superpowers of a comic superhero and, in this case, indicates Black Power (that aspect was not added in the video).
“Burna himself when he was a young boy used to draw comic books. His “Twice as Tall” album was accompanied by The Secret Flame, an animated comic by Burna charting his journey to stardom and showing his love for comics and working with comic artists.
“I also did the Jay Z Magna Carta & Holy Grail Draw My Life animated video for Hattrick productions, London and Hooked for BBC.
Fatunla has also done projects for the British Museum, Royal Borough of Greenwich, London, and Hattrick productions in the U.K.
From drawing cartoons in Nigerian newspapers and magazines, where his career began, Fatunla has been producing distinctive cartoons and images on black history, particularly Afro-Caribbean history, including the publishing of a series of illustrated features into books titled ‘OUR ROOTS.’ He had a four-page illustrated OUR ROOTS documenting Nigeria’s history 60 years after independence in The Nation newspaper.
The focus of his works has been to bring about awareness of Black, African, and Caribbean cultures through the medium of individually illustrated images supported by short texts. OUR ROOTS continues to document the achievements of famous, and not so famous, Black people in the diaspora who have made significant impacts in societies and communities and to history.
Fatunla has held exhibitions and workshop sessions in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Finland, Ethiopia, the U.S., Egypt, Ireland, Israel, Belgium, South Korea, Algeria, Italy and South Africa
He began his career drawing for Punch, Daily Times, Concord, and the Nigerian Herald newspapers. He was the London-based West Africa magazine’s resident artist, designing the covers for ten years with a weekly cartoon column that ran from 1989 up until 1999. He is a member of Cartoonists Association of Nigeria (CARTAN).
