Fela Kuti and the music of political resistance

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This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. You may know my guest, Chad Abomrod, as the creator and form a host of the public radio program and podcast radio lab, and the creator and host of the popular and Peabody Award-winning 9-episode podcast series, Dali Partners America.

Now, Chad has a terrific new series of episodes about the life and music of Fala Kuti. He's known as the father of Afrobeat, but music was also Fala's weapon against the colonial values that tried to civilize Nigerians, erase African culture, and inflict punishment often brutally to keep Nigerians in line.

With Fala's danceable almost translike grooves and political lyrics, he started a youth movement that rebelled against the repressive post-colonial government and military. For that, he was jailed about a hundred times, beaten frequently, enduring multiple broken bones, leaving scars all over his body.

The military breached the electric fence that protected his compound through his mother out a second story window and burned his home to the ground.

He's also a problematic figure. He fashioned himself into what you might describe as a cult leader. He had 27 female backup singers and dancers and married all of them in one day.

He didn't believe AIDS was real, advised men not to use condoms and even wrote a song about it, and when he contracted AIDS, he denied that was possible.

We'll talk about all that and how his music continues to get people listening and dancing and rebelling against injustice.

Chad, welcome back to Fresh Air. I really love this series and I really learned a lot from it, so thank you.

Well, it's great to be here and that means a lot, Terry. Thank you.

You know, Fala's music was, it was dance music, it was trans music and it was music that creates afrobeat and it inspires a rebellious youth movement, rebelling against colonious thinking, standing up against the authoritarian government, the police, the military.

I'd like to ask you to describe those elements of his music.

I mean, early on what he would do is he would build a loop slowly, you know, he would, he would bring in the bass and then he'd bring in the congas and then he'd bring in the shaker and then he'd bring in the rhythm guitars.

And sometimes there were three or four rhythm guitars, 30 different people on stage and he would build the loop very, very slowly.

And as a listener, it can be quite monotonous, but then there's this moment where you stop wanting it to change and you just give in and suddenly you fall out of time and you could be listening for four minutes or four hours, you don't know.

So there's an element of trans to his work, then what will happen typically as at some point when you are deep in the trance, he will break the trance and start singing and that can happen 15 minutes into into a song.

Suddenly his voice drops on you like the voice of God and he's talking about politics.

He's singing about all the injustices of post-colonial Africa. He's calling out dictators by name. He's giving sort of broad history lessons in pitch and English.

And that created, you know, so many people I talked to in the reporting this series talked about hearing that that his voice and it just woke them up, almost like woke them out of a slumber.

And if you imagine that happening a million times, it created a youth movement that was very, very dangerous to the government.

And as you say in your intro, he was beaten repeatedly. His house was burned down. His mother was thrown out of a window because he was able to use music, just music to fight back.

So yeah, and it's groovy, it's funky, it's blending in jazz influences. He's got this sort of James Brown, chicken scratch guitar influence.

It's all of these things fused together in what he would ultimately call African classical music, but which started out as being named Afrobeat.

Yeah, and part of the reason why his music made such a profound effect on young listeners was that this is stuff you weren't taught in school because the schools didn't emphasize or teach about African history or colonialism.

Yeah, I mean, I think Terry, it wasn't really, it wasn't even until much later, 2025, that history was mandated to be taught in schools.

It was always seen as a sort of surperfluous subject. You know, our producer, Fafi Odudu, who we used, a field producer in Legos, after a lot of the interviews would say, I had no idea because history isn't really taught.

And you know, one of the sort of, one of the sort of patented moves of the colonial authorities is to remove the study of history as a way to create the sense in the subjects that their experience, their culture has no value.

And so the long tail of that is still going.

So here's what I'd like to do to give listeners who aren't familiar with Faelas music. I want to play something that will show the repetition, the layering, and then segue into his most political song that got him into the most tremble, which is called zombie.

So to set it up, we're going to start with authority stealing. And this will show you a very compressed version of the layering in his music. And imagine that, imagine each of those layers, spreading out for like five minutes each or more. And then we'll segue into zombie.

And then each of those layers.

That was authority stealing. And this is Faelas song, zombie.

So that was two tracks, two separate tracks.

Authorities stealing followed by zombie. So tell us why zombie was so important and dangerous.

I guess every artist has their sort of anthem. And Faelas zombie is that song came out in 1976. And this was at a time when he was getting into repeated clashes with the authority.

A few years prior, there was the dictatorship, the military dictatorship, waged war on indecency. And under that guise, they would raid his compound repeatedly. And zombie was really the thing that really escalated or caused the government to escalate, I should say.

This was a song that, first of all, musically, it's just propulsive. It doesn't do the fella thing that a lot of his songs do where it builds slowly. This song just comes out of the gate 100 miles an hour. And when he sings, he sings about how the military and the army and the police are basically brainless zombies.

So, Faela grows up in a post-colonial environment that still practices a lot of colonial values. His grandfather translated Anglican hymns into the Urba language. And Faela's mother and father had a school that basically followed the colonial education practices.

And I want to talk a little bit about his mother, Fumalayo, Ransom, Kuti. Because before Faela became political, she had a women's club which taught women Christian values. It had to be a good Christian wife.

But then women from the market who sold fabrics started coming and she realized they don't know how to read. So she organized a literacy class to teach them how to read. And through that, she found out about the problems they were having, including the tax that the government had put on them that they couldn't afford to pay.

And so she organizes this protest movement. Faela's mother organizes this tremendously powerful protest movement. Can you describe the movement?

Yeah, this is one of the aspects of the history that we dug into that was just so fascinating. He would have been about eight or nine at this point and he's going to these organizing meetings with his mother. And the literacy club, it begins more as sort of a kind of ladies who launch type of situation very quickly turns into a full-fledged union.

And that becomes thousands of women marching in the streets to protest the taxation policies of the British government and the king, the al-Qa, as he was called, who was backed by the British.

And they essentially lay siege to his palace. So if you can imagine 10,000 women from the markets basically encamped day and night at his palace and he's trapped inside and he can't leave.

And they sing, talk about music as a weapon, they sing these abuse songs to him. And we found hundreds of these songs in Fumalaya Ransom Kuti's archives that she had handwritten, she had phonetically spelled in English the Yoruba lyrics.

And we got a choir to translate them and sing them for us. But there are hilarious songs calling his manhood small, saying that they're going to unleash a lake of fire from their generals.

Yeah, there you go, to overwhelm him, really raunchy hard-hitting lyrics and they would sing them one after the other. And Fella was with her, we think. And so it's interesting to think of his later music, that abuse singing that he would direct at the government. Maybe he learned it from her.

But at a pivotal moment in the story of this protest movement, you have the British army amassed just outside town and you have these thousands of women. And some number of them stand up and they strip naked, which in many traditions around the world and certainly in West Africa is a kind of

spiritual curse or a hex of some sort. It's essentially sort of wielding the spiritual power of women against men and any man that looks upon them is considered to be cursed. And so they stand up in this very defiant gesture. And the British, I mean, and we read the colonial diaries that were that were written at that time and letters that were flying back and forth.

They were really scared that if they come in and meet that symbolic protest with actual violence, it would unleash forces that they could not control.

And so they decide to basically sneak the king out of the palace and abdicate the throne. And so it is one of the first colonial revolts prior to the African independence movement that actually was successful.

And in some small way, it sort of it's seeded the ground for the African independence movement. And fellow was there.

It's really a remarkable story. And did people remember the role that she played?

Well, yes and no. There are that you will find people who know the story. But more often than not, what we found is that people would refer to her simply as fellow's mother.

And so she has been reduced a bit because I mean, I think this revolt is one of the great. I mean, it's one of the fiercest things I've ever encountered.

And yet she just gets reduced to being the mother of this famous consequential, but pop star.

And one of the saddest moments in our reporting was we were very anxious to find her grave. And we found it on the backside of an Anglican church.

And she's buried with her husband, Israel, Ransom, Kuti. But there's no mention of her. There's simply a long kind of litany of his accomplishments.

And there's no mention of what she did. And it was kind of wild to see the ways in which this incredible, incredible movement was kind of erased in a way.

Once Phala starts really understanding more about what his music is about, he creates a club called The Shrine.

And it's mobbed. I mean, once people hear his music, they want to hear more. And he creates what he calls the Calacuda Republic, which includes his compound.

And by calling it the Calacuda Republic, it's basically a government free zone where he, people smoke marijuana, even though there's like a steep penalty, if you're caught, but it's his compound. And it's his like free space. And they get away with it.

How do you pull that off?

I mean, he is a case study encouraged like no other.

So I think part of it was just the Hutzba that he brought to the cause. I also think part of it was this is a moment after a brutal civil war that ended right about 1970, 1969, 70,

where the Nigerian government basically starved an insurgent movement to try and secede from the Biafran Republic.

It was a horribly brutal war of starvation. And in the wake of that, I think there was a lot of disillusionment on the part of young people.

There was kind of as it was put to me, an eerie calm. And into that walks this guy, you know, as you have millions of young people looking for a new way, a new direction, in walks this guy with otherworldly confidence, making music that is just funky and danceable and trans inducing and amazing.

And he becomes this instant magnet for lost souls and creates a compound and almost overnight hundreds of young people flock to him.

And it's really hard to know how he got away with it because to declare your compound a sovereign republic a year after a civil war when a whole republic tried to secede.

And that was met with brutal force. It's kind of mind-bogglingly insane and courageous to do it. But it's really hard to know how he got away with it.

So one of the things you point out in the podcast is that, you know, his songs got him into a lot of trouble. And what would happen is he'd write a song, then he'd be like jailed or beaten for it, then he'd write a song about being jailed or beaten or, you know, whatever was done to him.

They'd punish him for that song and then he'd write a song about the punishment. So it was like he answered songs to the military.

You know, they were writing answer songs to each other. Do you have a favorite example of that?

You know, one of my favorite fellow, I think in those trickster songs where he was sort of like playing tricks on the authority and then they'd come and raid him and then he'd make a song about the raid.

And then they'd raid him again. One of them is called Calacuda Show. I believe this was 1974. It's not only like a really great, really funky song.

But if you listen to the lyrics, it's almost like a news report, like an eyewitness news report about a raid. So let's hear Calacuda Show.

So let's hear Calacuda Show.

That was Fala Coutie, his song Calacuda Show. Okay, we have to take a short break here. And then we'll get back to my interview with Chad Abramrod,

the creator and host of the new series, Fala Coutie, Fear No Man. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air.

So let's hear Calacuda Show.

So let's hear Calacuda Show.

Music

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So here's what failed loses me he puts together a group of fantastic women dancers and backup singers and that's part of the reason why people want to see him perform because it means seeing these women sing and dance and their elaborate makeup and face paint and costumes.

But you eventually marry 27 of them in one day.

I want to play an excerpt from the podcast in which several people talk about how they felt about the 27 wives.

His wives are trophies when it came to win he was just total pictures of him sitting in his underwear and he's sitting there with kind of oil on his body.

And the women are surrounding him. Everything about it just looks like a throwback.

The fact that he violated women. He broke laws.

These women are young women girls and women were with felacuti and living in Calacota Republic.

They know what they don't want to talk about it.

Because all of this moral controversy about what these women's relationship with fellow was.

Just this speculation alone produced controversy and then there were court cases that amplified publicity for fellow's work.

Like that's my point. We wouldn't have Afro big music.

The phenomenon that it became without the influx and the injection of the women's creativity and their passion and their voices.

What do you make of that?

I mean, it's really fellow's relationship with women is hard to wrap your mind around.

All I can say is that it was very important for us when we were reporting this series to speak with those women.

And by the way, I see that particular marriage as a PR stunt and also kind of as an HR move.

Because he was bleeding talent at that moment.

This was after the house was burned down. A lot of his band were like, this is ridiculous. We're out.

A lot of his backup dancers were coming to the same conclusion.

And so I think the idea of marrying them was as much about trying to make sure people don't leave as it was anything else.

That's not to excuse it at all.

But I see that much more as a stunt and as an active desperation, frankly.

So you spoke to I think a couple of the women who used to be in the band and married to him.

And one of them said he didn't marry the women. He married the women to his band.

Which is like what you were saying. What else did you hear from the women you spoke to who had been in his band and married to him?

Yeah, we spoke to three of the four that are still alive as far as we can tell.

And what was really interesting is that they all insisted that they were there by choice.

However, we might judge them. They did not want to be seen as political objects.

Each of them got there for their own reasons.

One of them, Laide, wanted to travel and see the world. She'd always dreamed of being an air hostess.

And there was no way for her to be that.

But along comes this guy who is traveling and it does allow her to see the world.

Another Lara wanted to fight back politically. And this was the only guy doing that.

A third person, Chenyeri, talked about how in Nigeria you have an amalgam of ethnic groups, an incredible amount of tension.

That's what led to the Civil War.

And one of the rules of fellow's compound was that there can be no ethnicity.

You cannot refer to each other as Yoruba or Ibo. You're simply people.

And that was why she went there. So each of them had a reason.

And as they spoke about him, they acknowledged some of the excess.

But they also spoke about him with incredible fondness.

And that was complicated. It was complicated to hear that.

That he did things that I think we would all condemn.

And yet the feeling I had leaving was that he was partially, he was an abuser at times, but also a liberator in a weird way.

You have to kind of understand him as being both at once. That's certainly the picture that they painted.

So we have to talk about Festaq. Festaq was supposed to be a joyous festival, basically I think like uniting black people from around the world.

Yeah, it was sort of the, if you imagine Woodstock, but thinking of it as a cultural festival focused on the sort of diaspora.

Nigeria at that point was flush and oil money and they wanted to sort of come out as the center of the black world.

And so they invited Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Audrey Lorde, all of these different cultural icons from every different discipline to come to gather in Lagos for an extended cultural festival.

And it's one of those, it's one of the most amazing gatherings and it's really hard to summarize because it was so many things at once.

It was beautiful and joyful. It was also kind of a sham. There was a ton of fraud.

And this festival of joy is run by a dictator.

And it's run by a dictator for, you know, I think what some would say are the wrong reasons.

Fairler was put on the planning committee and then he made a list of demands. Tell us about a couple of the demands.

Yeah, he had a nine point list that he presented to the committee. I think the committee brought him on because they really couldn't not have him on it.

He was the most popular Nigerian musician, most popular African musician at that point.

So they had to include him in some way.

He comes in and basically says, here are the nine things I need to be in place if I'm going to participate.

One of them was to feature Nigerian artists.

Another was to create a kind of educational curriculum around Festac that was all about African pride and African history.

There were all of these things that were basically around educating the people, not simply making this a good time, a good dance party.

But let's actually make this an educational teaching moment about sort of African history.

And of course the committee said, no, we just want you to play.

And so he stormed out and he created very famously a counter Festac so that as Festac was happening across town, he would play every night at the shrine.

And you know, if you are a black intellectual or a black musician at this moment and you're coming to Nigeria, the person you want to see is Felacuti.

And so you had all of these people coming to the shrine.

They had been flown in on the government's dime and they were suddenly going to Felah's shrine where he was talking badly about the government.

So from the dictator's point of view, this was beyond enraging.

And it was only a day or two after the festival closed that you had this incredibly violent conflict between Felah and the authorities.

And many people that we spoke to point to that moment is a turning point not just for Felacuti but for Nigeria as a country.

So what's the short version of how Felah's counter festival to Festac led to the burning of his house?

The short version is that a few days after the festival closed, one of Felah's boys, one of the area boys as they were called, gets into a minor traffic conflict with a policeman.

He flees to Felah's compound, the policeman chases him.

This leads to a standoff fast forward their hundreds and then a thousand soldiers surrounding the compound.

Apparently Felah gets on top of the roof and he plays zombie down at the police on his saxophone.

And they fly into a rage, they pour gasoline over everything and they basically burn the house to the ground.

And they storm the compound while it's burning and some pretty awful things happen because a lot of Felah's wives were inside the compound at that point.

There was some very upsetting sexual violence that occurs and that really was kind of the end of a certain era of Felah's career.

The military threw his mother during this raid out a second story window amazingly she survived first in a coma and she was never herself again she died a year later.

It's so horrible to think about and Felah wrote a song that's basically about his mother and being thrown out the window.

So I want to play an excerpt of that it's called Unknown Soldier.

So that was Felah doing his song Unknown Soldier about his mother being thrown out the second story window by the military who raided the compound and burned Felah's home down.

So after his mother dies it transformed from him he misses her so much she was the person who really supported his vision of change and like you said earlier he lost a lot of his following because people didn't want to be exposed to this kind of brutality and death.

And his music changed he became more spiritual his music became more spiritual or ambient I don't know what how you describe it exactly.

So it's a slower you know slower and heavier yeah what kind of spirituality did he pursue you know from somebody who was so outward looking and so intensely political.

He kind of turned inward and what you hear in his music it's much more story based you know he would tell stories of ordinary people you know but the spiritualism became almost a kind of occult spiritualism.

He began to believe that he could communicate with his deceased mother through some of the women that lived with him so they would hold to kind of say on says where he would talk to his mom through her.

It really was a spiritualism born I think of grief and increasingly he let go of the I mean it took a while so I don't want to say it was instantaneous but he began to turn away from politics entirely.

And that sort of fierce optimism or hope or whatever you call it you begin to see that ebb and you can hear it in the music.

Well let's take a break here if you're just joining us my guest is Chad ebomrod we're talking about his new podcast limited series about the father of Afrobeat the Nigerian musician Phala Kuti.

It's called Phala Kuti Fear No Man. We'll be right back this is fresh air.

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Another place where Phala really loses me he's an AIDS denier you know AIDS is kind of raging in Africa at the time and he doesn't believe it's real and then he contracts AIDS himself and won't admit that he has it.

Yeah it is upsetting but you know if there's a silver lining in that particular anecdote I mean you have to dig a little bit to get to it when he died Yeni and Femi initially were very reluctant to declare to the public that he died of AIDS but they were eventually convinced to sort of come out and say this was AIDS it becomes the first public discussion of AIDS in Nigeria and in much of Africa and leads to a lot of positive change.

So even while he denied it himself that information about him was used I think for mostly positive impact.

So his children were his oldest children were unsure whether they should have a big public funeral or not because he lost a lot of his popularity and you know he died of AIDS so they decide finally to hold a big funeral and like tens of thousands of people show up

Yeah I mean reports are anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million. Wow that much. Yeah it completely shut down the city for days and massive crowd marches from Tefalbolewa Square where there was a wake to the shrine where the family was paying their last respects and then to where he's now buried.

And there's footage of this on YouTube it's really kind of an amazing thing to behold even from afar the idea that this is a people's burial this is an entire country coming together to mourn the loss of this one man.

Your series made me think about how art in some ways has a lot more power in authoritarian governments that want to ban art because when something is taboo and you're not allowed to hear it creating it and hearing it are very subversive acts.

Yeah like in America in the U.S. were maybe heading in that direction.

Yeah I mean you know you and I are having this conversation the day after the Super Bowl and bad bunny you know gets out there and he's he ends his performance marching with people holding a series of flags from South America.

And I and everybody that was watching teared up because it was such a simple but powerful statement given what's happening in Minnesota and there is some way in which these horrible times just this data plainly do reinvest music with the power it should have had and should have all along.

And so I take that with me that the art that we create the culture that we create it matters it's not just a thing that we used to escape and to divert our attention but it can actually do something real in the world.

Well it's been great to talk with you John thank you so much and congratulations on the series and I want to say to our listeners we covered you know several aspects of fail is life in this interview but there's there's really so much more and so much like fascinating detail.

That we couldn't possibly fit into one lesson in our episode when Jad's series is what 12 episodes yeah it's quite a deep dive but worth it I hope to me certainly.

So thank you so much it's been a pleasure to talk with you again.

Yeah thank you so much Terry for having me on.

Jad Abramrod's new podcast is called failure kuti fear no man after we take a short break we reluctantly say goodbye to our long term executive producer Danny Miller he's retiring this is fresh air.

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Today marks a turning point in fresh air history our long time executive producer Danny Miller is retiring we've been celebrating always led the show through good times and hard times and what he's done professionally and personally for each of us who's ever been part of the fresh air team.

We're all so sad he's leaving I'd like to take a moment to speak personally about what Danny means to me fresh air started as a local program on WHY and Philadelphia back in 1975 when I became the host it was a live three hour show five days a week and the staff was me in 1978 when Danny applied to be an intern on the show he was studying film and music therapy at Temple University

and was the pianist and a local salsa band I interviewed him for the intern position and we hit it off he bummed a cigarette from me and I was happy to give him one since I had bummed cigarettes each time I had tried to quit.

As we talked we realized we shared a sense of humor we both loved and listened to a lot of jazz and liked a lot of the same movies most especially taxi driver.

It was clear we'd have similar judgment and who we should book on the show you know the expression that if you're an intern make yourself indispensable Danny managed to do that pretty immediately recommending guests booking guests organizing things he even invited me over to dinner and served what I like to think of as baked eggplant a la sponge but I forgive him for that now he's a good cook famous among other things for his chicken soup.

I remember we drove together to the bar and in in the Poconos so I could record an interview with the pianist John Coates for NPR to use in its concert program jazz alive before driving there when Danny and I met at the radio station he showed up in a bright yellow sports jacket that was also too large it made me wonder maybe I misjudged a sensibility until I realized he'd pranked me to see how I'd react and then put on his real job.

And then put on his real jacket after he graduated are then station manager Bill Seemring understood how indispensable Danny was and he kept managing to find hidden money to hire Danny part time and eventually full time as a producer when fresh air became a national show in 1987 Danny became its executive producer there was so many changes we had to make in the show and then we face so many changes in the world all of which Danny let us through.

This included the first goal for nine eleven the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan political crises he became a father not long after we went national at the time he was the only parent working on the show as time went on and there were many more fresh air babies Danny typically managed to come up with ways for them to stay on the show while still being good parents he built in a measure of flexibility like sharing a position with another new parent from our team allowing.

And then we had to bring each of them to work half time when it came to what we broadcast on the show Danny was the final word about what we actually put on the air he always made sure we were being fair to the guest and the subject at hand he was never approved about what language our guests could use on the show but he was prudent and always knew when to call someone for legal advice.

In addition to all that he was like the fresh air family therapist we all brought our problems to him and he always did his best to help solve them even when it meant more work for him which it typically did he made a lot of personal sacrifices to keep things running as smoothly as possible including working lots of nights and weekends over many years.

To me Danny is more than a great executive producer I think of him as a brother and I will continue to think of him that way now that he's leaving the show.

It's a strange time for me Danny became an intern in January 1978 just a few weeks later I started seeing my future husband Francis Davis.

Francis died in April and now just a few months later Danny is retiring that's a lot to process.

I won't get to see Danny and work with him every day but that won't mean he's absent from my life I plan on scheduling many future dinners with him.

We at fresh air are also extraordinarily lucky that Sam Brigger is taking over as our executive producer a role he'd already started while Danny stayed on to help with the transition.

There is no one better in the world to take on the role.

Sam has been part of the fresh air team for about 21 years during those years his first child was born that son is now in college.

Sam knows the show inside out having worked as an associate producer our book interview producer and managing producer.

He's smart funny and a good musician he's wise and calm even when there's a crisis and everyone on our show loves him.

And who else at one of our end of the year holiday potlucks would have made a gift for Danny of a Lego version of a climactic moment in taxi driver.

So I don't want to hog the mic any further because everyone on our show wants a chance to thank Danny.

Fresh air's new executive producer is Sam Brigger.

Wait he's not going on vacation I thought he was going on vacation.

Danny don't let us miss you too much come back real soon.

Fresh air's technical director and engineer is Audrey Pentham.

Danny we love you so much don't leave us with Sam.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and you left us with Sam will be in really good hands.

So you around the hood and rebuild an auto.

We're going to miss you so much but I'm here to say.

Some people come back Lauren Crenzel.

Come back to see us Danny soon and often.

Theresa Madden.

Danny I'm missing your tiny little lunches.

Monic Nazareth.

Danny I've truly loved working with you all these years.

Thank you for everything and enjoy retirement.

Thaia Challener.

Danny I'll miss your snacks.

I'll miss our talks. Susan Yukundi.

Thanks for everything Danny.

We'll miss you in the office but hope to see you around the neighborhood soon.

Anna Bowman.

Thank you for all the mugs with our faces on it.

Thank you Danny.

Aniko Gonzalez Whistler.

Thanks for everything Danny.

We'll miss you.

Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper.

Danny I will always associate razor blades with you.

Not in a murder way.

Roberta Shorerock directs the show.

Gonna miss you Danny.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

You better take teams off of your computer and go on a real vacation.

Happy retirement Danny.

I'm Terry Gross.

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