Description
The title track likens politicians to street hawkers and hustlers, and caused considerable controversy. So did the B-side, Mattress, though for different reasons. In the song, Fela likens a womans role to that of a mattress, there to support and comfort her man. Felas espousal of traditional gender roles, and his approval of polygamy, struck a discordant note with some listeners, who accused him of being anti women. Fela was Fela and a man of his time, but he was never hostile to women. As he often acknowledged, his two greatest political influences were women: his mother, who had been an early champion of womens rights in Nigeria, and Sandra Izsadore, the black-rights activist he began a relationship with in the US in 1969. Each opened his mind, between them turning a playboy into a political revolutionary.
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