Purple Hibiscus Research: Fela Kuti

Beetz, Tom. “Femi Kuti 2.Jpg.” Wikimedia Commons, 20 Apr. 2008, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Femi_Kuti_2.jpg. 

San Millán, Carlos Fernández. “Femi-Kuti.jpg.” Wikimedia Commons, 4 Apr. 2010, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Femi-Kuti.jpg. 

Fela Kuti, born Funmilayo Ransome Kuti in 1938, was a Nigerian musician and activist who created Afro Beat. Afro Beat blended American, blues, jazz, funk, and traditional Yoruba music together. As a child, he studied percussion and piano before studying at Trinity College in London in 1959. There he encountered numerous musical styles by playing piano in jazz and rock bands. He returned to Nigeria in the mid-1960s and recreated Koola Lobitos, a band that he had played for in London. In this band, Kuti’s iconic style, the Afro-beat was created. In 1969, he toured the United States. He was influenced by civil rights leaders such as Malcom X and the Black Panthers which he used in his music. In songs such as "Zombie", "Monkey Banana", "Beasts of No Nation", and "Upside Down", more politicized themes were used. His music reflection his desire for social change and struck chords among the unemployed, disadvantaged, and oppressed. His songs denounced oppression by Nigeria’s military government. This led to his clubs being raided by the government to look for reasons to jail him. He provoked controversy for and attracted attention by encouraging indulgence in sex, polygamy and drugs. He set up a communal compound which he proclaimed the independent Kalakuta Republic. A raid in 1977, resulted in his incarceration and his mother dead. He was exiled to Ghana in 1978 and changed his name to Anikulapo-Kuti. In 1979, he formed a political party called the Movement of the People and ran for president of Nigeria. Five years later, he was jailed for 20 months on charges of currency smuggling. He turned away, after his release, from active political protest and left his son to carry on Afro-beat music. He was jailed again in 1993 on murder changes and died of AIDS in 1997.

Kuti was very involved in activism in Africa. He sung and criticized of the corruption of the Nigerian Government officials and the ill-treatment of the citizens. He was an activist who believed that colonialism was the problem of the economic and political issues in Nigeria. Examples of this corruption were in the election rigging and military coups that made the poverty worse. Due to his resistance, he was arrested more than two hundred times and would send soldiers to beat Kuti, his family and friends, and to destroy his instruments or recordings. In the 1970s, he started creating political columns in the newspapers such as The Punch which went around the editorial restrictions of Nigeria’s state controlled media which addressed any issues such as pollution and poverty.

Kuti, Fela. “Water No Get Enemy.” Youtube, uploaded by ACghigo, 10 Aug. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQBC5URoF0s&feature=emb_title.