Fela Kuti

Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti in Abeokuta, Nigeria, on 15 October 1938, into a prominent family. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was an anti-colonial feminist who led the 1946 Abeokuta women's protests. His father, Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was an Anglican minister, school principal and first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. His brothers Beko and Olikoye became well-known doctors, and the writer Wole Soyinka was his cousin. Public life, teaching, music and church were ordinary features of his home before he ever played professionally.

In 1958 his brother Beko invited him to London, where he studied at Trinity College of Music and played in jazz and rock bands. He came home in the mid-1960s and reconstituted Koola Lobitos, and Afrobeat emerged from that group's experiments, fusing West African and Yoruba music with American funk, jazz and blues. A 1969 tour of the United States changed his direction. There he met the politics of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, and he came back to Nigeria with a band renamed Africa 70, with Tony Allen as drummer and musical director. He sang in pidgin English and Yoruba, in long songs built on pulsing percussion, chanting vocals and answering horns. His lyrics mocked corrupt officials and Europeanized Africans, and he named names. Songs such as Zombie, Monkey Banana, Beasts of No Nation and Upside Down made the case for social change in a form people could dance to.

Fela refused to separate art from daily life. In 1970 he founded the Kalakuta Republic, a commune where followers made music, smoked hemp, raised children and declared independence from military rule. His club, later known as the Shrine, held packed early-morning concerts and was repeatedly raided. In 1977 soldiers attacked Kalakuta. His followers were beaten and arrested, the compound was burned, he was injured, and his mother was thrown from a window and later died. Afterward he married 27 women in a single ceremony. He carried his mother's coffin to the barracks home of the head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, and recorded the episode on the album Coffin for Head of State. His arm was permanently injured, which ended his tenor saxophone playing. His promotion of polygamy, sex and marijuana drew controversy in his own time, and it sits uneasily beside his mother's feminist legacy.

He also moved toward electoral ambition. A 1980 press report said he planned to run for the presidency, and Britannica records him as founder of the Movement of the People. In September 1984 he was arrested at the Lagos airport on currency charges before a planned US tour, and he was sentenced to five years. Amnesty International named him a political prisoner in October 1985, and benefit concerts and a Free Fela campaign followed. He was released in April 1986 after about 18 months. He later described his approach to prison as learning to suffer, and then trying to let time pass without distractions. He spoke of the jailers as ordinary Africans who suffered what others suffered. He kept recording and performing through the 1990s with Egypt 80, and he died in Lagos on 2 August 1997. His son Femi has overseen reissues of his music since then.