The Current - Searching for Fela Kuti

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Jad Abumrad’s new podcast, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, digs into Fela Kuti’s life, the good and the bad because he not only pioneered Afrobeat and pushed against the impacts of colonialism but he was also a deeply complicated and flawed man who left a wake of inspiration and trauma.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. I consider music to be effective, like a weapon, to inform people. You see, if I don't play my music now, I wouldn't be sitting here today to talk about the problems of Africa. So my music is like an attraction to inform people. That's a Nigerian superstar, father of Afrobeat, Felakuti.

His life, his politics, and his incredible music are the subject of a new podcast, Felakuti, Fear No Man, created and hosted by Jad Abimrod. You might know Jad Abimrod as a creator of Radio Lab and of the podcast, Dolly Parton's America. And he joins me now. Jad, good morning. Good morning. You call Felakuti one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He's often called the African James Brown. but that doesn't really cover it either.

For people who don't know his name or his music, who was, who is Felakuti? So Fela is, you know, on the most basic level, he was a musician who created music from the 1960s all the way through 1997, invented this style of music, Afrobeat, which was, you know, everything from jazz to kind of James Brown funk to big band

with Yoruba drumming, thrown in. It was a real kind of globalized amalgam of music. But what makes him consequential, I think is that the music, we heard it in that clip, the music itself became a kind of weapon. It catalyzed this political movement that almost toppled a dictatorship just with music. He never picked up a gun. Just making music created this political revolution that was suppressed, it was put down with violence, but then what we see now is that it comes back again and again. Years after his death, people rush out into the streets to try and make change, and they play his music. So his music, there's something about it that it

goes just simply beyond entertainment to really about change. How were you introduced to him? What was the gateway for you for his music? Well, I'll be honest, Matt. I mean, I knew Fela as like he's the song people put on at a party to get the party started. So I knew it as music, as dance music. I didn't know a lot about him and his story and the history until I started this project. But you know, I sort of got pied pipered in by a friend of a friend who worked with the Kuti family. And so initially for me it was very much like, oh, we could do a documentary about this incredible musician and get the rights to the music. That felt really exciting. But then when I just started making calls to figure out, you know, where was he coming from?

What was in his mind? Why did the music hit the way it did? That turns out to just take you into all kinds of rabbit holes, some of which are massive and continent-wide tectonic shifts. And some of which are very, very intimate stories of people around him. It's just so it ended up as everything that I do, it ends up starting small and then just snowballing. I want to talk about his music, but we can't do that without playing some of it. We've already been talking, and we haven't even heard any of Falakudu's music. This is a little bit of a tune called Let's Start.

One, two, three. So that right there is when he was still in his James Brown phase, still singing in Yoraba. He hadn't really switched to Pigeon English, which was most of what he sang from that point forward. And it is, it's still, when he, that's the period of Fela where it's, it's all about energy, it's all propulsive, it's percussive.

That particular song, is the song I was thinking about when I said that's the song that gets the party started. Like, that song, oh, it's so good. But, you know, that particular blend is, you hear it in the drums, but you'll hear it even more in the next album. There's a kind of West African rhythm baked into the drums. There's chicken scratch guitar kind of funk. There's the percussive horns, so you've got some James Brown happening.

And James Brown, when he made that shift, was famously thinking about Africa. and trying to sort of take those rhythms and bake it into his music. So you hear a real kind of pan-African conversation happening in that musical structure right there? What was happening in Nigeria at the time when Fela was seeing his music career take off? Because he's got this fascinating trajectory. And part of what's going on in the country is baked into his music in terms of the idea of resistance as well, right? Yeah, I mean, this is the part, Matt. that I found so interesting.

And maybe it's true of every musician who really becomes iconic. I think, you know, 80% is probably them and who they are. And 20% is they just land at the precise right moment when the world needs them. And what had been happening in Nigeria at that point, so in 1971, 72, is that the optimism of independence. So Nigeria was independent from Britain in 1960. you had 10 years of incredible optimism, incredible civic building of a country. And then in 1969, 70, you had the Biafran War. So ethnic tensions had flared in the country.

And you had a secession movement that was brutally put down. I mean, it really was one of the most salient uses of starvation as a weapon of war. really up until Gaza, frankly. And it shocked the nation. It shocked the world. I remember John Lennon protested a medal he had received from the queen by giving it back because he felt that Britain was supporting the wrong side in that war. Anyhow, digression.

So you had this horrible civil war, a million people die. And then in the wake of that, there was a kind of uneasy calm. and you had a lot of young people who suddenly were disenchanted. The idea of a unified Nigeria seemed kind of like laughable to them. And into this sort of uneasy calm lands Fela. He had just come back from America where he'd been radicalized by an African-American woman named Sandra Isidore. So he lands in Nigeria right in this moment, he establishes a compound. He declares that compound a set.

separate nation within Nigeria, almost like the Vatican. And so, like, at this point, when people are just looking around ready for some new way, here comes this guy. And he's making just nasty grooves, and he's espousing an entirely new way to live. And overnight, hundreds of young people flocked to him within a few years. He had a youth movement of, you know, 60, 70,000 people. He becomes extremely dangerous to the people. He becomes extremely dangerous to the people. government for that reason. So a lot of it was timing, you know, that he walked into a void and filled it immediately. The radicalization piece is fascinating. You spend a lot of time talking about how he became who he he was known for and what he was singing about. And in many ways, it's shaped by the idea of colonialism. Sandra Isidore, somebody who is, as you said, a catalyst in this, had a real, a relationship with what influenced over Fela as well. I want to play a little bit of her speaking about one of Fela's early songs. The song was about soup and she had a reaction to it.

Have a listen. You've been doing all this and you're singing about some soup? Because he was African, I made a lot of assumptions. Not knowing what colonialism did in Africa. Yeah. Between colonialism and slavery, I'll take. slavery. Those shackles are still on the minds. That's even worse. Between colonialism and slavery, I'll take slavery. When you heard that, what went through your mind? I mean, it's kind of a shocking

statement, but also, as you stare at it, I see what she means. I mean, slavery is a very visceral word. It's an idea that conjures images that we've seen in books and in movies. colonialism is typically talked about as an abstraction. You know, you say to people, what is it? They say, oh, I think it's something about European countries coming into Africa and other places and I don't really know what the next part of the sentence is. And so there's a way in which it can seem very vague and far away. But what she's speaking about is one of the things that colonial powers, like Britain and France, what they, did when they came into Africa was they

they set up a social system, an educational system, a monetary system that explicitly said that your culture, your native culture has no worth. It has no value. What impact did that

have on fell out when she said that? Well, so, you know, they were sitting in her bedroom when they were having that conversation. And then he, in her telling, basically said, I wish Africans were like African-Americans. I wish they had the same fight.

Africans are stupid. And she lost her mind and started to lecture him about the true history of America, the civil rights movement, the lynchings, Jim Crow, all of that. She gives him a book, she pulls a book off the shelf, autobiography of Malcolm X, hands it to him and says, before you do anything, read this. And that night changed his life. life. He, as he puts it, he became African in that bedroom, which is interesting. I guess it's

like you have to leave the place you're from to actually see it. He became African when he came to America. And when he went back to Nigeria, his sound completely changed. He went from a sort of John T. Dance music songs about soup to songs that were fierce and about political fight. And it had this kind of, well, it was just Afrobeat. Afrobeat became into the world at that moment. And so Sandra really was the person who sort of, I don't know how to say it, maybe like almost tapped him on the forehead with a magic wand and kind of Harry Pottered him into his new revolutionary self. But he needed that idea in order to find a new form of music.

What influence did hearing Sanders say that have on you as you were making this podcast? Because it's one of those moments when you hear it, you just kind of stop cold. But as you were making this podcast, what did that do to you? You know, I mean, I guess in the back of my head, you know, so I'm Lebanese. I come from a country that was reformatted by a kind of colonial. and where the borders were arbitrarily redrawn, you know, sitting in drawing rooms in Europe. And the nightmare that has unfolded for going on 100 years from that point. So for me, I thought a lot about my own upbringing, the civil war that my parents had to flee

and that somehow connected to the same root trauma that she's discussing. I also thought about, you know, I mean, I think all of us who, I don't want to over-identify, but, you know, when you're in a culture and you're not the dominant part of that culture and you always feel like you're walking into a room and having to tiptoe, there is a way in which you're always using somebody else's tools to form, to forge yourself, you know? and I hear Sandra doing that, I hear Phela doing that, like he's taking all of these tools which are not his and yet using them to make himself. And that's a process that I think is very familiar to so many of us. You know, it's the immigrant story. It's the story of anyone who walks into a place that isn't theirs. So that's what I connect to deep in the back of my mind.

this ascent isn't for everyone you need grit to climb this high this often you've got to be an underdog that always over delivers you've got to be 6,500 hospital staff 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little you've got to be scarborough defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights and you can help us keep climbing donate at love Lovescarbrough.ca. Is your home ready for the next big snowstorm? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.ca. When he went back to Nigeria, he was not tiptoeing. As you mentioned, I mean, his music changed. What he was singing about, it was no longer soup.

It was about corruption and politics. and what was happening in the country in ways that perhaps were not being talked about, certainly in the media, maybe by other people as well. And that came out in songs like the one I want to play. This speaks to the political power of his music, but also his more mischievous side. Have a listen to this, and we should give a warning. There's an expletive that's part of the title here.

him shit The funk got me the last to wear him Go like to see Because why are you Because he's a Because what are you Because the shit

That's where you could imagine About defecation Chad Abramrod that's going on In that tune So that tune is It's a recounting of a thing That actually happened to him

So as you were saying He came back to Nigeria And he immediately ran afoul of the authorities And the authorities at that point, I'm thinking 72, 3, they had a war on indecency. And here was Fela who had declared his compound a separate state. It was all of these young people living there. There were a lot of pot smoking, a lot of sex, frankly.

So he was everything that the government was trying to do away with. So they would raid his house constantly, looking for pot mostly, which in Nigeria at that point carried a ten. your sentence. So on one of these raids, the police come in and apparently they don't find any weed, but they had come prepared and they had a joint on them and they plant it. And then they pick it up and they say, oh, look what we have here. Fela, according to his biography, says, I can't see it. Can you bring it closer? And they say, look, it's right here. He says, no, no, I can't see it. Bring it closer to my eyes. They bring the joint. right up to his face, and then he quickly takes it and swallows it. And so they put him in it,

they take him to jail, and the police idea is to wait until he passes the pot, and then they'll look at it under a microscope and then put him in jail. So for a day, he does not defecate. For a second day, he doesn't, a third day. And then finally on the, I don't know, the third or the fourth day. He says, I have to go to the bathroom. So all hell breaks loose. They take him to the bathroom. And he passes, he has a bowel movement. And they look at it under a microscope, and there is no trace of any pot anywhere. And it turns out what had happened is that he had swapped it in the middle of the night with a prisoner. He'd swapped his poop bucket. I'm trying to sort of say this delicately. It's a family radio program.

Exactly. And so they have no choice but to let him go. And then he quickly makes the song you just played expensive. You can say the title. S-H-I-T. And it's hilarious. It captures the sort of tricksterism of him. Like there was this constant cat and mouse game between him and the authorities. And every time that they would mess with him, he would turn it into a song like that. So every raid became a song. And so in the that way he was always turning violence into art in a way. And like the violence was pretty gnarly at times. I mean, they were breaking bones. He regularly came home from the police station with bandages wrapped around his head. They killed his mother. They killed his mom. Yeah, in one of the most famous raids. And so, and he turned that even into a song. So there was a kind of alchemical transmutation that would happen where he would take everything they could do and make it into music. His mother was a huge influence. on who he became, right?

Yeah, I mean, one of my, one of the most wonderful discoveries in, you know, this three-year process of reporting and making this was discovering that his mother really was one of the one of the great precursors to the entire African independence movement, which was a continent-wide throwing off of, you know, in 1956, almost. every month there was a new country declaring its independence. And she was one of the first, I mean, I would say maybe like one of the first early dominoes to fall. And she led a revolt of 10,000 market women in a place called Abu Quta, which is north of Lagos in Nigeria. And it was sort of the crown jewel of the colonial experiment in the British's eyes. And she and 10,000

women laid siege to the king's palace and like fellow would do many years later used music as a weapon uh they would sing abuse songs where they insulted his manhood um talked about you know how weak he was and and ultimately they were so present and so persistent and so fierce that the king basically fled the country and so they essentially deposed the king and it was one one of the first victories, early victories in the African independence movement. And as a result, Phela calls her the mother of Nigeria. And I don't think that's hyperbole. It was, she really was that important.

You spend time on this podcast looking at the question of, I mean, it's a familiar question. Can you separate the art from the artist? Yeah. And in his case, I mean, part of it is his treatment of women, but it's also the thing that took his own life. He was an AIDS denialist and then ended up dying of AIDS. Yeah. How do you understand that? How do you understand the complexities of he made extraordinary music and changed a nation and changed a culture, but also had inflicted real damage on people?

Yeah, I mean, this is, it's one of those cultural questions that we're living with in all kinds of ways, right? all of these figures who are really important to us in terms of the music and the art they created were also, you know, hurting people. And that's true with Fela. I mean, he, not only did he die of AIDS himself, but I mean, at least one of his wives died of AIDS. So he was giving people AIDS while denying it.

I don't know. It's a hard, it's a thing you have to, grapple with and at the, where you're left with with someone like Fela is you're left with having to embrace all of the good and there's a lot and all of the bad and there's a lot of that too. And I think it really is at the end of the day seeing it all soberly, seeing it all clearly, acknowledging it all, and then choosing what you want to pay attention to. Not denying any of it, but leaning into the parts that still resonate and still work

while also acknowledging and holding the parts that don't. I want to talk about the power just finally of music, but let's play one more song. This is probably the song that people know the best from his catalog. No break, no job, no sense.

A jo-do-do-go-do-go-and-d die. Go and quench. Go and quench. Go-ro-jad, I-go. Go-and-quench. That's fell Go and die Go and go and die. Jor Jada Jor Jada Jorah

A Joe Go and quaint Go and kill A song called Zobobo Jodajara Jor Zobu Sumbiwayna won way Jor Jorra Jorio Zambiw That's Felikuti The first line of the podcast is in a world

is on fire what do we do with art a lot of this is about about the power of of his music Barack Obama comes on and talks about the power the music can have politically and socially what do we do with art in a world that's on fire I mean that's the that was one of the animating questions for me I you know see it's it's interesting too because that song you just played zombie arguably was one of of the reasons why a thousand soldiers came, burned down his compound and killed his mother, as you mentioned earlier. Apparently, he played that song, you know, just for context, that song is basically

accusing the military of being zombies, you know, that they do, they kill when they're told to kill, they die when they're told to die. They're sort of mindless androids. And he would play that at the shrine, his club, and soldiers would be in the audience. it was banned from the radio it was that offensive to the to the dictatorship and then the day that his compound was burned down

he was on the top he was on the roof and he apparently played it on his sax to the soldiers below and it enraged them so much that they burned his house down and it's it's a shocking moment but as I step back from it I think God what would it take for a song

to so enrage, say, the Trump administration that they would want to burn the singer's house down? Like, what kind of music could provoke that? And what kind of music could provoke that and not get immediately turned into a commodity so that someone could make a buck off of it? I don't know if we live in a world where music can have that effect anymore,

but perhaps we live in a world where a network of musicians, a group of artists might come together and commit to a cause and then make music that can have that effect. I don't know. But for me, I found, as I was working on this series, like there's something in Fellow story that I need to hear right now because it tells me that music isn't just for entertainment. It isn't just for distraction. It can do something. It can do something important. It can carry our stories. And it can carry our dreams and turn that into action. Do you hear that now, though?

I mean, we're in this moment where, as you said, the world is on fire. And I just wonder whether you hear that in any, it doesn't need to be popular music, but whether there are artists or even those groups of artists that are coming together in a way that they did in past, and not just in Nigeria, but in other moments in history. I mean, I think you see it in bits and pieces and in fragments. I mean, Bobby Wine in Nigeria, excuse me, in Uganda, incredible documentary is made about him and where he really is making music that is putting him and his followers in direct harm's way and he keeps doing it at great risk, amazing, amazing figure.

You know, in the West, I don't see a figure anywhere close to Phila, but what, you know, there was a moment when a lot of musicians, artists came together around Gaza and banded together their voices. And they began to break through this sort of fragmented attentional atomization space that we're in. They began to collect enough energy around them to matter. I don't know that they achieved what Fela achieved, but it began to remind me a little bit of that. So I don't know. I think it's an open question whether it can happen again. I hope so.

But a podcast like this and part is about that possibility, right? That that avenue is there if somebody wants to take it. Yeah. It's sort of a wish, really. It's a 12-part wish that maybe that can exist again. This is such a great series.

And for a musician whose music was made decades ago, it is so timely as well. It's a real pleasure to talk to you about this. Thanks for putting this together, but also thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Chad. Oh, my God. And thank you for having me on. I know you're a huge fella fan as well, so it feels good to connect with you about this. Thanks so much.

Chad Abramrod is the host of Felakuti, Fear No Man. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.