Who is Fela Kuti?
I was at my friend’s dinner party last Saturday night, and the music of the late, great Fela Kuti started playing on the sound system. Of course, everyone started grooving to it! However, one of my friend’s relatives who was at the dinner asked what is this song and who sings it. I told him it was Water Got No Enemy by Fela Kuti. Then he said who is Fela Kuti.
Everyone looked at him in shock! But then we realized that he was younger than us, so it is possible for him to not know anything about this wonderful Nigerian musical genius. (He is a millennial who listens to 2 Chainz) We proceeded to give him a brief primer on Kuti’s life, music and politics.
I was actually intending on writing a longer blog post in the near future about his political writing. Back in the 1970s, he wrote a column called “Chief Priest Says” for a couple of newspapers in Nigeria. The column topics ranged from religion, government corruption, sex (or misogyny), and Western cultural imperialism. His columns abruptly stopped getting published in the newspapers, possibly because of censorship by the Nigerian government. Lucky for me, I have a friend in Nigeria who acquired many of his old columns for me and I will be delving into them and writing about his columns in the near future.
In the meantime, if you haven’t heard of Fela Kuti’s music, then you are really missing out on life. Enjoy!