The Untold Truth About Fela Kuti - From Abeokuta to the Afrika ShrineIn 1977, soldiers stormed Fela Kuti's Kalakuta Republic. His home was destroyed, he was beaten, and his mother was thrown from a second-floor window. But that was not where Fela's story began.
There are musicians people listen to.
Then there are musicians people remember.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti belonged to the second group.
When his voice came through a speaker, it was rarely just music. There was usually an argument hiding inside the rhythm. A complaint. A warning. A challenge.
And sometimes, a direct attack on whoever was in power.
like the saying "nobody is bad in his own book" i will like you to be the judge when you finish the whole series.
Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti in Abeokuta on October 15, 1938. He grew up in a family where music, education and activism were already part of everyday life. His father, Reverend Israel Ransome-Kuti, was an educator and pianist. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a formidable nationalist and women's rights activist.
Nobody could have known exactly what that combination would produce.
But eventually, Nigeria would find out.
CHAPTER ONE — THE BOY WHO REFUSED THE EXPECTED LIFE
Fela's parents had expectations for him.
Like many parents, they wanted their son to have a respectable profession.
Medicine was supposed to be part of his future.
Instead, Fela chose music.
He left Nigeria for London and enrolled at Trinity College of Music. There, he immersed himself in jazz and other musical traditions while developing his own identity as a performer. He eventually formed bands including Koola Lobitos and began building the musical foundation that would later become Afrobeat.
It was not an overnight transformation.
Fela experimented.
He played highlife. He played jazz. He travelled. He performed.
Then came America.
During a ten-month visit to the United States, Fela met Sandra Izsadore, an African-American activist who introduced him to the writings and ideas of figures including Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon.
That encounter mattered.
Fela returned to Nigeria in 1970 with a different understanding of music and politics.
According to the Fela archive, he increasingly saw music as a weapon against what he regarded as the exploitation of ordinary Nigerians by a powerful military and commercial elite.
The entertainer was changing.
The protester was emerging.
And Lagos was about to become his battlefield.
TO BE CONTINUED — WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL SHOCK YOU
That trip to America changed everything. Fela came back not as a highlife musician, but as a revolutionary with a saxophone.
He would create Afrobeat — a sound the world had never heard before. He would build his own Republic inside Nigeria where police were forbidden to enter. He would marry 27 women in one day. And he would write songs that made military generals tremble.
Then in 1977, exactly what he feared finally happened. One thousand soldiers surrounded Kalakuta Republic. They set it on fire. And his mother — the great Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti — was thrown from a window.
How did Fela survive that day? What song did he write holding his mother's coffin to Dodan Barracks?
Chapter Two drops this Thursday — The American Awakening, Sandra Izsadore, and the birth of Africa 70. You don't want to miss it.
Follow this series every week on NadiaGist247 as we uncover the stories they never taught you in school.
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- Love untold stories? Read: UNTOLD TRUTH ABOUT FELA PART 2
Fela Kuti, Afrobeat, Kalakuta Republic, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Afrika Shrine Lagos, Nigerian Music History, The Untold Truth Series, NadiaGist247
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