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Fela Anikulapo Kuti (15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997) was a multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre and Pan-Africanist. Most persecuted musician ever in history, arrested on 200 different occasions,his mother Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
Was a women rights activists, Socialist, first woman to drive a car in Nigeria. She dealt with the british colonial government during her active years, she was the first African (Black) woman to visit China, which she did in 1956 and met Mao Zedong. Fela was influenced by the....
Black power movement, he spent 10 months with his band in the USA when he visited in 1969. It was then he met Sandra Iszadore a partisan of the black panther party in Los Angeles who is responsible for decolonising him. After he returned from the USA, he declared his house an
independent republic from the then military junta government, and named it Kalakuta Republic. It was in the Kalakuta Republic, he had his recording studio, his band members stayed there and he set up a free health clinic. On the 18th of February 1977, the military government sent
one thousand armed soldier's to take care of him, for good. Prior to the event Kalakuta Republic suffered police raids, and military attacks,because of the songs he used to sing and the messages it carried. Around that period he took attention away from the African cultural event
that had people of African descent from all over the world visit Nigeria, it was known as Festac 77, and he already had a song insulting military men known as Zombie, the military government got angry and sent one thousand armed soldier's to take care of him for good,..
but Fela was already prepared for war. He had then purchased an electric fence which he encircled his house with and was powered by a generator. After hours of the one thousand soldiers trying to gain access, they successfully destroyed the generator powering the electric fence..
they came to kill Fela but did not succeed, his house was burnt to the ground, his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later lead to her death eight month later. Students, the visitors, his band......
members all brutally dealt with.There was a European from France that night, his skin did not save him from the wrath of the soldiers, he was also dealt with! Fela was beaten so bad,he had fractured skull. And after Kalakuta Republic was burnt to the ground, the government seized
all his properties and threw him in prison. Exactly one year after the Kalakuta attack where he was persecuted and nearly killed by the government, Fela Kuti married 27 wives from his band. It was seen as a way of answering critics who accused him of abducting and keeping women.
He was the owner of the shrine, a popular night club where he held his performances. He believed he had taken the role of a chief priest and always had white powder on his face. In 1979, Nigeria celebrated its 19th year of "independence" and the retirement of General Olusegun
Obasanjo’s three years in power. It was during this time that Fela Kuti led an entourage of his twenty seven wives to the gates of Dodan barracks, where Obasanjo lived. He surprised him with a farewell gift of a coffin that symbolised that of his mother, who had passed on the
year before. One of his band member once said "This was a man after every harassment, imprisonment, beating, sustaining wounds, came out stronger, and he always had a new song for that incident,” He later went ahead and founded another Kalakuta Republic, and spent 20 months in..
prison around the mid 80s. On 3rd August 1997, he sadly passed away due to illness. Additional information: He was born into a middle class Christian family, his father was a pastor, and died when he was just 17, he was sent to the UK to study medicine but he decided to study....
classical music. He formed a political party Movement of the people, which was banned by the government. His favourite people who he had their names on his shrine, where Malcomx, Nkrumah and his mother. He dropped his middle name “Ransome” which he said was a slave name,
to “Anikulapo” which means, “he who carries death in his pouch”. He changed his band name three times, from koola labitos - Nigeria 70 - Afrika 70 and finally Egypt 80. He said his name FELA means - forever lives Afrika. His first wife was an Afro-carribean who he met in the UK.
*Interesting fact: When he was a kid, he always got into trouble for catapulting bullies in his area. He had children who are alive and are continuing his revolutionary struggle.
He was also deeply, Afro-centric and practiced traditional African spirituality.
You could go and live in his republic if you're homeless, as long as you are Afrikan he never cared about your tribe, if you had an English name, he would change it to an African name. He would feed you and give you monthly allowance.
Up to one million people attended his burial.
