Radiolab - Fela Kuti: Enter the Shrine

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Our original host Jad Abumrad returns to share a new podcast series he’s just released. It’s all about Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who created a genre, then a movement, then tried to use his hypnotic beats to topple a military dictatorship. Jad tells us about the series and why he made it, and we play the episode that, for us at least, gets to the heart of the matter: How exactly does his music work? What actually happens to the people who hear it and how does it move them to action?You can find Jad’s entire nine-part series, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Jad AbumradRadiolab portions produced by - Sindhu GnanasambandanSign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y.

C. See? Yeah. It's Radio Lab. I'm Latif Nasser. And I'm Lulu Miller. And I am Chad Abumrad here to hang out with Lulu and Lottif. Woo-hoo.

Welcome. back old man thanks youngster happy to be here um yeah where where have you been this whole time i've been here in brooklyn just um you know uh being a dad making stuff so pretty much the first thing that happened when i handed you guys the show proudly is i uh became a professor kind of a fake professor at vanderbilt been teaching all kinds of things relating to storytelling and interviewing. Dr. Abumrod? Well, you know, none of the other faculty are fooled.

But also alongside that, I've been making all kinds of weird music and theater things. We just had a big thing in Brooklyn that launched in May. It's about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, America's war-making engine in a way. And I don't know. It felt like what if journalism were sung by 60 women? And then somewhere along the way, early, I got into a conversation with Benadere, old friend, who has been making audio stories as long as I have. He approached me and he was like, hey, do you want to do a podcast about Felakuti? Felakuti, the Nigerian musician who invented a whole new genre of music and started a political movement and toppled a government just with music.

I was like, cool, that sounds interesting. and I said yes to it in the way that you say yes to things that you know are never going to happen do you know I was like this would be really fun I'd love to have dinner at your house

sounds great well I wasn't saying yes in a note like I don't really want to do it I was just like I don't know if I'm doing another podcast but let me just you know let's just explore it

because I knew a bit about Fela I mean he was sort of the record that came on at a party and everyone was like oh and it was like the party got started So I knew him from that angle, but I didn't know his backstory at all.

So I started making some phone calls. And I don't know. I just didn't stop. In this series, we're going to look at the life and the music of Felakutti. Fela and Nicolapo Kuti. I always get that. My tongue always strips over there. Anikulapokuti.

The father of Afrobi. The black president. The chief priest. I had never heard of Fela until you got obsessed with him. And I was like, who is this guy? And why is Jad spending like three years, like, obsessed with this guy? I mean, yeah, one of the first things that you discover when you're trying to unravel who this man was is that all of these people that you love, love him. Ayo Adeboree, actor, writer, someone I really respect.

She's in the bear, great show. On some red carpet somewhere, she was asked. Oh. This question. A musician I have a cult-like fascination with. Her answer? Fela Kuti, who's a, like, Nigerian legend. Bear is a very complicated man.

Fela has to be the epicenter. And Kwe's Love, one of the great musical minds of our time. I mean, Phelah is the one figure whose story, resonates with modern American hip-hop culture. The passion, the pain. Jay-Z. The strength, the need to get the message out there. Beyonce?

I don't know. It just presents a question. You're like, okay, what are the hearing, you know? Yeah. And can I hear it? Can I make other people hear it? Yeah. Okay, so you dive in.

You end up churning out this 12-part series called Phala Kuti, Fear No Man, which people can go listen to right now, anywhere, everywhere. And, you know, okay, people clearly. love his music, but what drove you to make the series? Yeah. He is the answer to a really important question for me personally, which is like right now, you're looking out in the world, none of it makes sense. It's all insanity. And if you love music as I do, and you kind of look around and you're like, what is the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point making music. Like, what's it going to do to make our world better? And then you look at, like,

the streaming hellscape that we all live in. And artists are now content creators, and they just sell their content to Spotify for precisely 0.01 cents. And you're like, what's the point? What's the point? Like, why? And he answers the question for me, that the music itself, it wasn't just music. It became the catalyst for like a political movement that had, you know, many, many tens of thousands of young people ready to march into the streets. And just with the music, he almost toppled a dictatorship. He's like, this is the point of making music. This is the point of making art is to try and make a new world, try and change the world in some way. And the music itself, though, like how it functions, how is that changing the world?

Just what's the almost mechanism? Sure. Okay, so here's a, so, so Lulu, I love that question because the political aspects of his music weren't just lyrical, although they were. It was baked into the very grammar of the music itself. It's like in the notes, it's below the notes. It's in the, it's in the structure of the music. It's in the, it's in the impact and the sequence of impacts that the music creates. Like, which sounds so pretty, but like what the F is?

Is that mean? What is that mean? How? This is this episode that I think you're going to play. Yeah. And okay, just for context, the first episode, we met a bandmate of Phelas. We got the story through his eyes. Then in the second episode, you traced his evolution into a revolutionary.

And then in the third one, the one we're going to play, this is the one where we really get into the music itself. Yeah. It really tries to first give you the experience and then explain what the experience is. Yeah, so it's called The Shrine. Anything else before we walk in? I should explain the Shrine is, it's his club in Lagos. And it really was sort of the epicenter of his movement. And we interviewed, God, so many people who described what it was like to be there.

People who were once asleep and are now awake. My experience in being in the shrine was like, like, the music was like inside of me, and it was all around and just like, you know, being hypnotized. Like you're all inside the music. The secret of life is to have no fear. We all have to understand that ends. This is Felakutti, Fear No Man. Chapter 3, Enter the Shrine.

One of the ingredients of a movement, necessary ingredients, is to have a place where you can experience the promise of that movement right here, right now, in the present. Can you tell us about your first visit to the shrine? Yes, of course. What do you remember about that? very, very funky. This is Michael Veal, musician, professor of music at Yale. He's also one of our advisors on the project.

To hear that music in New York is one thing. You know, you listen to that music in New York, you're like, oh, yeah, whatever. Look, the first night I was in Lagos, you know, is you walking up the shrine. You hear that. Then you get closer, you started doing it. So you started doing. So you started doing. I remember that.

very clearly. But it was at night and there was no power. Blackout. It's like going to Times Square, but there are people all in the street, like thousands and thousands of people. It's a jam-pack mob with people. It's total darkness

but thousands of these little stern-o lamps illuminating the place. Because the power went out all the time in there are thousands of these sternos. So you imagine the scene. It's almost like Woodstock kind of thing, you know what I mean? Yeah.

To hear that music in New York is one thing. You're like, oh yeah, whatever. But then if you ever get in a plane and go to Legos... They open a hatch and it goes... With the humidity and the heat. You know, the minute they open the hatch, it's like, bam! And then you walk out. out of the plane, you've got to go down the steps, and you're like, oh, now I get it.

Welcome to Nigeria. That's the way reality feels in this setting. You know what I'm saying? That interview with Michael Veal was one of the many reasons why when we finally got to Lagos, after a 13-hour flight. I'm good. It's taking it all in. The top item on our agenda was to go to the shrine.

Let me fill in a few gaps. After the whole Sandra Isidore experience in L.A., Felaa comes back to Nigeria, radicalized, steps off the plane, and takes the country by storm. He becomes the massive star that we know him to be. And then between 1973 and 1979, he releases this fire hose of music. Something like, by my count, 27 records in six years-ish. One hit after another, after another. Now, The Shrine.

During that time, early on, he sets up a club that he calls The Shrine. and it's important to understand where. Lagos, Lagos City, the most populous city in Africa. Lagos is on the coast, the Atlantic Ocean, and it consists of a giant landmass and mainland that curves around this bay, and in the bay are two major islands that connect back to the mainland with bridges.

On the islands, this is the sound you hear. Peacocks, golf. It's very lush, very beautiful. On the mainland, very different sound. You will find places on the mainland where the sheer density of people

is just breathtaking. For example, this audio that you're hearing is from a market that we visited in a neighborhood called Mushin, a poor working class neighborhood where a million people are packed into seven square miles. In this neighborhood, not the island, this spot is where he decided to put the shrine, to say basically, I am the voice of the people, the sufferheads, as he called him. when we visited the shrine at night it was more or less

as Michaelville described it people all in the street like jam-pack mob with people he was there in 92 we were there 2024 and the shrine has closed a few times and reopened and moved around a bit but it was kind of the same

it was dark you had about 50 food sellers lining the block this very long block in front of the shrine people smoked weed openly which in Nigeria can carry a heavy prison sentence? Our fixer in Lagos told us that even now 28 years after Fela died, this is the one place

where that can happen. One of the sellers that was there explained it this way. Fela is like life after death. Evergreen. Yes. What, you feel like Fela still protects this street, this place? Yes, exactly. His sense was the ghost of Fela is still there

protecting this one block. And as he said that, he nodded towards the end of the block where there were policemen waiting, standing almost like on the other side of an invisible line. You've done your research. You know that the shrine and also Phala's compound, the Calicut of Republic, he had kind of declared independent of Nigeria. That's Lisa Lindsay, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. she specializes in the history of West Africa,

and she brings up an important point. Is it in 1970, when Phelaa got back to Nigeria, he declared his club, the shrine, and also his house nearby, which he called the Calcutta Republic. He declared them a sovereign nation within Nigeria. Sort of like the Vatican is to Italy, that he was a country unto himself.

Lisa Lindsay visited the shrine in the early 90s. It was just all this. craziness that we saw. Well, okay, so outside, there's a dictatorship that was shooting people. At that time, and there are videos of this on YouTube, the government would hold public executions of criminals and dissidents on the beach.

There were soldiers in the streets. It wasn't safe to be out at night. You go in. And it's, just this alternate universe. Describe what it looks like. It was like a warehouse, sort of. Everybody's smoking.

A lot of weed smoking? Giant, giant joints. Joint's the size of police megaphones. Keep in mind. At that time, people were getting thrown in jail for 10 years for a half-smoked joint. There's just this massive cloud up at the top of the thing. It's hot, it's humid.

There are a lot of people in there. People dancing and people stoned out of their minds. And it was such a contrast to how scared people were outside of the shrine. The shrine was not far from his house, a couple of blocks. That's John Darten, a surprise-winning journalist who wrote from the New York Times, worked as a foreign correspondent based in Legos in the mid-70s, wrote many, many articles about Felaa, including this one where he watched Fela get ready right before he performed at the shrine.

Would you mind reading this? This is you. You reading you. Because Ruby and I have been trying to find as vivid descriptions as we can of the atmosphere. And this is actually one of the more vivid that we've ever read. New York Times. That voice is Nina Darton, John's wife, also a long-time journalist. Fellas pre-game ritual. The show begins at 1 a.m. inside the nearby Calacuda Republic,

fella prepares for it laboriously. From a jar, he spoons up liberal. Dosa's glitter-goey substance, nicknamed Fela Gold, distilled extract of marijuana. Full-length mirrors are brought before him and held by two young boys. He slowly slips into skin-tight sequined pants and a white shirt open to the waist, arranging his strings of beads as if he were smoothing a necktie. Six bodyguards draw near. So, Fela says, and the entourage moves outside where there is a crowd of several hundred people.

Some have been waiting for hours, clinging to the barbed wire to catch a glimpse of him. A chant, Fela, Fela, rumbles out of the dark. That is really good. And as he walked and... He got on a donkey. Well, that was the second. He got on a donkey? What?

Okay, wait, sorry, as he walked. He was a showman. You know, drivers would get out and raise a fist and yell, fella, filla! Anyway, then he starts playing. And I have never seen, I think, a performer quite as dynamic as that. He was absolutely incredible. Before we go back into the shrine, well, first, let me give you a picture.

It is a open-air club. It's about 500 people. There's a tin roof over the stage, but no. roof over the dance floor. And to either side of the stage are four studio 54-ish cages where dancers dance. Also to one side, there is an altar where Fela had a picture of his mother, a picture of Malcolm X, and a picture of Kwame and Krumah, the first president of Ghana. But I'll be honest, what's most interesting to me is not so much the shrine itself. I mean, it was a club, but rather what happened to people when they went inside of it? Because do you know how people

talk about psilocybin now, right? Like we all have one of those friends who did some mushrooms and it changed their life and they can't stop talking about it. And there's a way to explain those experiences. You can say in neurochemistry, right? There's something about these drugs. They rewire your brain. Fine. We ran into so many people who described listening to Phelah's music at the shrine in the same way, that it had the same effect on them, which is a little harder to explain, though I will try in a moment, but first let's re-enter the shrine

from their perspective. And as you're listening, see if you can let yourself notice, what are you paying attention to? How does that change over time? 1 a.m. Fela arrives on his donkey, takes the stage with 35 other musicians, and he begins a riff

that will last most of the night. My experience in being in the shrine was like, like, the music was like inside of me. It was all around. It was just like, you know, being hypnotized. Like you're all inside the music. A kind of hypnotic dancing. React to music. Dancing in this way.

In this room. I remember being lost in music. All the people are smoking around me and they're in a mist. So you're in a different world. This idea to be wanted Just like this baby one day To be wanted

This idea This idea of the spiral And circle circle It's another way to deal with time It's another way to deal with time react to music.

I would describe it as a swirl. You know, when you have a cycle, it starts up as a little thing that builds up. And it blows up. The more you allow it to circulate, it just starts to get bigger. Get bigger. Get bigger.

Get bigger. Terpida Circle Terpida Terpida Terpida Terpida Circle

Devita Tebida Tebida Tebida Tebida Fela starts its music This repetitive pattern, the power of the musical ostinato, is part of that enchanting strategy.

You've been captured. I thought this is really an amazing new form of music it was almost like a field of sound that sits there for a long time and you explore it you kind of enter it and live in it this is a place

this isn't a song and meanwhile the rhythm section's keeping going Going, going, going to it, going to it's going, going to go in the place. This is a place, and when you start listening to it, you're entering into that place. The music was like inside of me, was all around and just, like, you know, being hypnotized. Like, you're all inside. Kind of hypnotic dancing.

And so the fella, you could tell that there was a different kind of intention behind this paradigm of groove. The music is so nasty. You have to dance. But that's just the ground level. Because why would you play a song for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, unless you really have something to say? Unless you really are something. Go to me. Like,

Go. Go. Go. Go. Good. The rhythm sections of go. Go. Go.

Go. My super. Like, totally. Like, totally. Very. Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Yeah. Good. Unless you really are something. I need you're dead. Get me. You're dead. And then suddenly, after half an hour, 40 minutes. He starts singing.

Whether you like or you know like, after you hear this it to talk. Whether you like or you know like, after you hear this it you talk. When you don't like you hang If you like it good If you know like you hang If you hang you go die You go die for nothing We go carry your body go

Police station You die wrong fully When his voice came in I was like, what the hell? There are words too? After one year, he's like, hold up, what is this? He sings in a gravelly, low-pitched voice and sings about things that no one else ever even mentioned,

any newspaper, any columnist. He talks about the United Nations. He talks about Thatcher. He talks about Reagan. It's really everything. It's like a history lesson. You see it sinking in. You could see ideas in the air floating from the stage

like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull. I just felt, when has my mind been all, you know, all my life? Complete surprise. I was immediately captivated. Why did we not know this? Why aren't we thinking about this stuff? When a fella singing to a microphone, I saw the light. I was just like, you know, like...

He sucks you in, and then he has that light bulb effect on you. You come into yourself, and, you know, it's a moment of introspection, too, because you realize that you haven't been as attuned as you probably should have. All this stuff he was singing was just new to me. You know, I was just learning so much about Nigerian history through Fela that I had not learned in school. Before we go on, the voices you just heard, in addition to Michael Veele and John Darten, were Stephanie Shonikan and Boire Omijola, both professors of ethno musicology at the University of Maryland and Mount Holyoke, respectively, Afrobeat musicians Dele Shoshimi, Enduro Ikuggenio, activist, filmmaker, musician, Saul Williams, musician and producer Brian Eno, artist Lemmy Garayoku, photographer Marilyn Nance, designer Lorraine Anamosson,

and our advisor, Moses Ochoon, who's a professor of history and my colleague at Vanderbilt University. He was one of the last voices you heard, and I asked him. He said the music made you feel like you needed to tune in to things you hadn't been tuning into. Like what? You know, when I was growing up in Nigeria, you know, we would hear about corruption,

about thousands of Naira being embezzled by some politician or government official. And we would open our mouths in shock because our brains couldn't compute how one person would make off with thousands of Naira. How would the person carry this money? What would they put it in? In some boxes, in some cars, you know, physically.

How would they move this money? You know, we just couldn't fathom it. And then, over time, we started hearing about millions, not thousands anymore. Then billions, and now, as we speak, the corruption numbers have entered the trillions. So that over time has had a numbing effect, a dulling effect. The shock value, the kind of shock that I felt as a child growing up in Nigeria, the moral outrage that I felt, that's gone. That's long gone.

And that is what would come back when you heard his songs. Right, exactly. Moses said that Phelah's music would remind him of the insanity that he had been. been sanewashed into believing was normal. And I think that there's something really interesting about how the music can move him to that thought. Music is all about structure, right? Structuring the relationship between notes and chords and melodies.

But here you have structure on an entirely different level, almost like a phenomenological structure. For the first 15 minutes, it's just loops. Osternado is going round and round. The power of the musical ostinato. Osternato, in Italian, by the way, means basically stubborn. The loops stubbornly repeat. And at first, it's not so bad.

It's kind of grounding, actually. But then the natural response is then to want some change. Like, can we go to the next section now? Please? Please. No? This is what the Buddhists call our monkey mind. Our monkey mind wants distraction.

It wants anything to keep us from having to live with our own thoughts. But the music doesn't give us that. It doesn't change. It only builds. Layers get added piece by piece, instrument by instrument. And at some point, a few minutes in, you arrive at this mysterious moment where you stop wanting it to change. This is phase two. Now that part of you that wants novelty starts to notice things.

Like, whoa, listen to all the interlocking parts of this groove. Oh, the austen models that are like machine gears, they don't grind. The gears are timed in between each other, so they just suckly fit into the little gaps and holes like tech. The way that the Kanga plays off the shaker, call in response, the way that the three guitar lines spin around endlessly like gears and higher level clock. My God, this groove is a whole world. This is the trance state. Usually when we talk about trance, we mean a kind of dulling of our senses, but actually it's the opposite.

It's a state of hyper-focus. You are noticing things. You're hearing things you've never heard before because your neurons are rewired. You are open. And it is at this very moment that Phela begins to sing. I was like, what the hell? There are words, too? In comes his voice booming, like the voice of God.

This is phase three. And because you are open. You really hear what he is saying. You see it sinking in. You could see ideas in the air floating from the stage like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull. And in that way, as the final piece of this progression,

he gives you a new conception of what your life can be. I saw the light that you can now dance to. My music, my music, my main, my main preoccupation right now. A small part of it. This is a clip from an interview, Felaik gave in 1988, where he describes his musical form, almost as this vehicle designed to move people step by step by step so that they can hear what he has to say.

Is your music kind of a tool? It's a weapon. It's a weapon to say so I can talk when I have the chance to. I consider music to be effective, like a weapon, to inform people. My music is like an attraction. to inform people. It's the information side of the music that is important.

In that same interview, he suggested there's something else going on here too that has to do with time itself. Circle. If anybody tells me 20 years, it's a long time, I would tell him no. Time is meaningless unless you want to understand

what time is about. There is time for everything. Coming up, that idea of cycles, it's going to become not just about the music, but so much more. Cycles of history, of violence, of resistance. We're going to follow all of the interlocking ostinados of Phelas groove. Across time and space. Into the deep past, to an incredible story of a rebellion that they're going to be a rebellion that posed a king that created a sound that continues to echo to this day on the streets of Lagos

and the world. That's next. Okay, so, Jed, thank you. The series is incredible. It is a magnum opens. It is so good. It is. And yet there'll be another magnum because you know he'll keep going despite trying to leave.

But it is so special. It's amazing. This might be the last one. We'll see. Where else is the series going and where can people find it? What's it called? So the series is going to go all kinds of places. It's called Felakutti Fear No Man.

The next one is my fave. It's a story about Fela's mom. Oh, yeah. That was so good. Who is so extraordinary that immediately made me being like, wait, why are we talking about him? Right. It felt like you could flip it. You could do the 12 episode series about her.

and then one episode about him in the middle of them. Exactly. Because what she accomplished is so bananas. Yeah. And again, just with music. So, yeah, that episode is next. Wait, and can you share the title of that episode? It's called Vengeance of the Vagina Head.

And it was, it's not a title we made of. It was what the newspapers called the revolt that she led at the time. They called it Vengeance of the Vagina Head. Just let that be a tease. This has been a higher ground and audible, original produced by Audible, higher ground audio, Western sound, and talkhouse. The series was created and executive produced by me, Chad Ibramrod, Vanadere, and Ian Wheeler, written and hosted by yours truly. Higher ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukta Mohan, and Dan Fearman. Jen 11 was creative executive executive executive executive executive producers, and Corinne Gilliard Fisher was executive producer-producer.

Executive producers for Audible were Ann Heperman, Glenn Pogue, and Nick DiAngelo. Our senior producer was Gouffin-Wale. Ruby Heron Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefeo Oududu and Bolochemi, Al-Ladu Sui. Benadere was our editor, with editing help from Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolo Babolola. Tune Ayobade, Nick Abdurakib, Michael Veil, Moses O'Chunu, and Judith Byfield. Our fact checker was Jamila Wilkinson.

Alex McKinness was the mixed engineer. Also, special thanks to Knitting Factory Records and BMG, to the Kuti family, Melissa O'Donnell, who Inside Projects, Maggie Taylor, and big thanks to Carla Murthy, Leah Friedman, and Shoshana Scholar. The head of creative development at Audible is Kate Navin, Chief Content Officer, Rachel Kiyazza. Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Hi, I'm Sivant Jammuri and I'm from Mumbai and here are the staff credits.

Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasar. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyannas, Sandunasam Bandhan,

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and Jessica Young With help from Rebecca Rand Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly Emily Krieger Anna Pujol Mazini and Natalie Middleton Leadership support for Radio

Lab Science Programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.