Fela Kuti: Afrobeat ambassador - Music rebels: dissident music then and now - Brief Article

New Internationalist, August, 2003

Nicknamed 'The Black President', Nigerian Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was a tireless campaigner for the poor, his incendiary and establishment music and politics earning him the respect of millions.

Fela blended African-American jazz, soul and funk with traditional Nigerian and West African rhythms, often singing in the pidgin English spoken by the Nigerian poor. The Shrine nightclub he created became an important social and political institution, attached to his home compound, which he declared a sovereign zone--the Kalakuta Republic.

Fela was harassed and vilified by the ruling elite, spending most of the 1980s in prison. His song 'ITT (International Thief Thief)'--a scathing attack on the corporate looting by Western transnationals such as International Telecoms and Telegraph--earned him the wrath of the Nigerian military regime. Over 1,000 soldiers attacked and burned down his house, throwing the musician's mother and brother out of a window. When his mother died from her injuries, Fela, in an act of grief stricken protest, placed her casket at the doorstep of the junta's headquarters.

A believer in African cultural heritage, he often took his cues from 'tradition' and held reactionary views about the status of women--he had 28 wives. However, in his later years he divorced all his wives saying: 'No man has the right to own a vagina.'

He died of AIDS in August 1997, aged 58.