“Everything I did wrongly was for experience. That's how I see it. Once a man is looking for a better knowledge and he tries to be honest and truthful in all endeavours, then his life is just an experience. It cannot be a regret”. . . . .
“Everything I did wrongly is an experience…to be honest and truthful in all endeavours is an experience, not a regret”. . . . .
“Music is a weapon of the future / music is the weapon of the progressives / music is the weapon of the givers of life”. . . . .
Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti), also known as Abami Eda, was born into the Ransome-Kuti family, an upper-middle-class Nigerian family, on 15 October in Abeokuta (the modern-day capital of Ogun State, which at the time was a city in the British Colony of Nigeria).
He was sent to London to study medicine but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music, with the trumpet being his preferred instrument. While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos and played a fusion of jazz and highlife.
Kuti married his first wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he had three children (Femi, Yeni, and Sola).
. . . . . moved back to the newly independent Federation of Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos, and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All-Stars.
. . . . . travelled to Ghana looking for a new musical direction. He called his style Afrobeat, a combination of highlife, funk, jazz, salsa, calypso, and traditional Yoruba music.
. . . . . took the band to the United States and spent ten months in Los Angeles. While there, he discovered the Black Power movement through Sandra Smith (now known as Sandra Izsadore or Sandra Akanke Isidore), a partisan of the Black Panther Party. This experience heavily influenced his music and political views. He renamed the band Nigeria 70. Soon after, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was tipped off by a promoter that Kuti and his band were in the US without work permits. The band performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles that would later be released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions.
Kuti and Africa 70 released the album Zombie, which heavily criticized Nigerian soldiers, and used the zombie metaphor to describe the Nigerian military's methods. The album was a massive success and infuriated the government, who raided the Kalakuta Republic with 1,000 soldiers. During the raid, Kuti was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was fatally injured after being thrown from a window. The commune was burnt down, and Kuti's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Kuti claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for a commanding officer's intervention as he was being beaten. Kuti's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo's residence, and to write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier", referencing the official inquiry that claimed an unknown soldier had destroyed the commune.
. . . . . he married 27 women. Many of them were dancers, composers, and singers with whom he worked. The marriage served not only to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic but also to protect Kuti and his wives from authorities' false claims that Kuti was kidnapping women. Later, he adopted a rotation system of maintaining 12 simultaneous wives. There were also two concerts in the year: the first was in Accra, in which rioting broke out during the song "Zombie", which caused Kuti to be banned from entering Ghana; the second was after the Berlin Jazz Festival when most of Kuti's musicians deserted him due to rumours that he planned to use all of the proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.
- Kuti's musical style is called Afrobeat. It is a style he largely created, and is a complex fusion of jazz, funk, highlife, and traditional Nigerian, African chants and rhythms. It contains elements of psychedelic soul and has similarities to James Brown's style of composition. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native "tinker pan". Tony Allen (Kuti's drummer of twenty years) was instrumental in the creation of Afrobeat. Kuti once stated that "there would be no Afrobeat without Tony Allen".
. . . . . formed his political party, which he called Movement of the People (MOP), to "clean up society like a mop", but it quickly became inactive due to his confrontations with the government of the day. MOP preached Nkrumahism and Africanism.
. . . . . nominated himself for president in Nigeria's first elections in decades, but his candidature was refused.
. . . . . Muhammadu Buhari's government, of which Kuti was a vocal opponent, jailed him on a charge of currency smuggling. Amnesty International and others denounced the charges as politically motivated. Amnesty designated him a prisoner of conscience, and other human rights groups also took up his case. After 20 months, General Ibrahim Babangida released him from prison. On his release, Kuti divorced his 12 remaining wives, citing "marriage brings jealousy and selfishness".
. . . . . 21 January, he and four members of Africa 70 were arrested and were later charged on 25 January for the murder of an electrician. Rumours also speculated that he was suffering from an illness for which he was refusing treatment. However, there had been no confirmed statement from Kuti about this speculation
. . . . . 3 August, Kuti's brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, already a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, announced that Kuti had died on the previous day from complications related to AIDS. Kuti had been an AIDS denialist, and his widow maintained that he did not die of AIDS. His youngest son Seun took the role of leading Kuti's former band Egypt 80. As of 2020, the band is still active, releasing music under the moniker Seun Kuti & Egypt 80.
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