"One day I was at home when someone I knew came round and said "Stevie Wonder is in town and he wants some musicians". Needless to say I jumped at the chance just to meet the man. The next day I was talking to the man himself. The following day, I was in the studio sitting next to stevie at the piano, talking to him as if I had known him for years. People like Stevie are really special really great. Another special person like that was Fela Kuti. These people work 24/7 365 days a year, especially Fela who had all those wives to deal with on top of playing at "The Shrine nightclub " seven days a week. Another amazing thing about Stevie was that about a year later I got a gold record from him. I was so surprised considering the huge number of people he meets all the time.I played a bit of my "african guitar style" once for Stevie which he seemed to like. If I meet him again, I will lay it out a bit more for him. He really is a wonder; he has such a command of music and much much more" -Toks Ilorin Toks´African roots are very important to him and he spent many years playing up and down the west coast of Africa: Lagos, Cotonou, Lome, Accra, Abidjan, Monrovia, Freetown, ConaKry, Bissau, Banjul, Dakar, Niamey... you name it! During these journeys he met Fela Anikulapo Kuti and came to live for several years in his self proclaimed independent republic in Lagos - the Kalakuta Republic. Here he recorded with Fela and the legendary Egypt 80 Band. - I first met Fela in 1979 in Lagos and came back a year later to see him. When I first went to his home, Kalakuta, he greeted me in his usual swimming trunks, Toks remembers. - We talked for a while and then he sent one of his drivers to help me pick up my stuff from a friend´s place and when we got back I settled in... The next day I played some of my stuff for Fela and he really liked what he heard. Eventually he said I could record some of my stuff with his group. We did that not so long after. Fela played really good sax on the stuff and even sang some harmony on it. The band was full of good cats - even Femi, Fela´s son, played with us. He was very young then, I think he was just a teenager, but he was smart from the beginning... There´s always a lot of talk about a famous man after his death and Fela Anikulapo Kuti is no exception. Toks is an ardent defender of his friend´s memory, though: - Fela was the hardest working musician playing six nights a week and Sunday afternoons... but all this nonsense some people talk about... that he didn´t pay musicians and all... It´s just not true by my experience. All the musicians I saw got payed right there on the spot. There was no "go and come back later", so I don´t know their purpose. We´re all so happy to have Fela´s music to listen to and to keep us going. There will never be another Fela, just as there will never be another Duke Ellington.

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