Fela Kuti is regarded as the pioneer of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz.
50 Facts About Fela Kuti
2.
Fela Kuti was jailed by the government of Muhammadu Buhari in 1984, but released after 20 months.
3.
Fela Kuti continued to record and perform through the 1980s and 1990s.
4.
Fela Kuti's mother, Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was an anti-colonial feminist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was an Anglican minister, school principal, and the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers.
5.
Fela Kuti Is a cousin to the writer and laureate Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner.
6.
In 1960, Fela Kuti married his first wife, Remilekun Taylor, with whom he had three children.
7.
In 1963, Fela Kuti moved back to the newly independent Federation of Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos, and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation.
8.
Fela Kuti played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All-Stars.
9.
Fela Kuti called his style Afrobeat, a combination of Fuji music, funk, jazz, highlife, salsa, calypso, and traditional Yoruba music.
10.
In 1969, Fela Kuti took the band to the United States and spent ten months in Los Angeles.
11.
Fela Kuti set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel, first named the Afro-Spot and later the Afrika Shrine, where he both performed regularly and officiated at personalised Yoruba traditional ceremonies in honor of his nation's ancestral faith.
12.
Fela Kuti stopped using the hyphenated surname "Ransome" because he considered it a slave name.
13.
Fela Kuti's music was popular among the Nigerian public and Africans in general.
14.
Fela Kuti decided to sing in Pidgin English so that individuals all over Africa could enjoy his music, where the local languages they speak are diverse and numerous.
15.
Around this time, Fela Kuti became even more involved with the Yoruba religion.
16.
Fela Kuti claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for a commanding officer's intervention as he was being beaten.
17.
In 1978, Fela Kuti performed at the Berliner Jazztage in Berlin with his band Africa 70.
18.
Since then, Baryton player Lekan Animashaun became band leader and Fela Kuti created a new group named Egypt80.
19.
In 1979, Fela Kuti formed his political party, which he called Movement of the People, to "clean up society like a mop", but it quickly became inactive due to his confrontations with the government of the day.
20.
In 1983, Fela Kuti nominated himself for president in Nigeria's first elections in decades, but his candidature was refused.
21.
In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari's government, of which Fela Kuti was a vocal opponent, jailed him on a charge of currency smuggling.
22.
On his release, Fela Kuti divorced his 12 remaining wives, citing "marriage brings jealousy and selfishness" since his wives would regularly compete for superiority.
23.
Fela Kuti continued to release albums with Egypt 80 and toured in the United States and Europe while continuing to be politically active.
24.
Fela Kuti had been an AIDS denialist, and his widow maintained that he did not die of AIDS.
25.
Fela Kuti once stated that "there would be no Afrobeat without Tony Allen".
26.
Fela Kuti's band was notable for featuring two baritone saxophones when most groups only used one.
27.
Some elements often present in Fela Kuti's music are the call-and-response within the chorus and figurative but simple lyrics.
28.
Fela Kuti's songs are mostly sung in Nigerian Pidgin English, although he performed a few songs in the Yoruba language.
29.
Fela Kuti refused to perform songs again after he had already recorded them, which hindered his popularity outside Africa.
30.
The subject of Fela Kuti's songs tended to be very complex.
31.
Fela Kuti was known for his showmanship, and his concerts were often outlandish and wild.
32.
Fela Kuti referred to his stage act as the "Underground Spiritual Game".
33.
Fela Kuti's European performance was a representation of what was relevant at the time and his other inspirations.
34.
Fela Kuti attempted to make a movie but lost all the materials to the fire that was set to his house by the military government in power.
35.
Fela Kuti thought that art, and thus his own music, should have political meaning.
36.
The singers of the group played a backup role for Fela Kuti, usually echoing his words or humming along, while the dancers would put on a performance of an erotic manner.
37.
Fela Kuti was part of an Afrocentric consciousness movement that was founded on and delivered through his music.
38.
Fela Kuti was highly engaged in political activism in Africa from the 1970s until his death.
39.
Fela Kuti criticized the corruption of Nigerian government officials and the mistreatment of Nigerian citizens.
40.
Fela Kuti spoke of colonialism as the root of the socio-economic and political problems that plagued the African people.
41.
Fela Kuti was arrested on over 200 different occasions and spent time in jail, including his longest stint of 20 months after his arrest in 1984.
42.
Fela Kuti's rise in popularity throughout the 1970s signaled a change in the relation between music as an art form and Nigerian socio-political discourse.
43.
Fela Kuti thought the most important way for them to fight European cultural imperialism was to support traditional religions and lifestyles in their continent.
44.
Fela Kuti was a candid supporter of human rights, and many of his songs are direct attacks against dictatorships, specifically the militaristic governments of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s.
45.
Fela Kuti criticized fellow Africans for betraying traditional African culture.
46.
In 1978 Fela Kuti became a polygamist when he simultaneously married 27 women.
47.
However, Fela Kuti critiqued what he considered aberrant displays of African masculinity.
48.
Fela Kuti is remembered as an influential icon who voiced his opinions on matters that affected the nation through his music.
49.
The full-length documentary film Finding Fela Kuti, directed by Alex Gibney, premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
50.
On 1 November 2021, a blue plaque was unveiled by the Nubian Jak Community Trust at 12 Stanlake Road, Shepherd's Bush, where Fela Kuti first lived when he came to London in 1958 and was studying music at Trinity College.