Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is best known as a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, a blend of traditional yoruba and Afro-Cuban music with funk and jazz. He died in 1997 at the age of 48, and is survived by his wife, three children, and two step-daughters.
About Fela Kuti in brief
Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is best known as a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, a blend of traditional yoruba and Afro-Cuban music with funk and jazz. Fela was the son of Nigerian women’s rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. In 1970, he founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, which declared itself independent from military rule and was destroyed in a violent 1977 raid. Since his death in 1997, reissues and compilations of his music have been overseen by his son Femi Kuti. He stopped using the hyphenated name Fela because it was a slave name. He made the decision to sing in Pidgin English so that his music could be enjoyed by individuals all over Africa, where the local languages are very diverse and numerous. His music had become popular in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was also unpopular with the ruling government, and was also very popular in general among the Nigerian public and in general Africans in general. He died in 1997 at the age of 48, and is survived by his wife, three children, and two step-daughters. He was buried in Lagos, Nigeria, in a ceremony attended by his family and friends. He also has a son, Femi, who is also a musician, and a daughter-in-law, Nkem Onyebuchi, both of whom are also musicians.
He has a daughter, Yemi Kuti, with whom he has two sons, Fela Kuti and Femi Ekpeyem, and daughter, Chude Kuti; and a step-daughter, Yinka Kuti with whom she has one son, Yemisi Kuti,. Fela is a first cousin to the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the first black African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He had three children with his first wife, Remilekun Taylor; and two with his second wife, Olusegun Taylor; he also had a son with his third wife, Olufela Ogunlesi Taylor. He and his band Africa ’70 became stars in Nigeria during the 1970s, during which time he was an outspoken critic and target of Nigeria’s military junta. In 1969, he took the band to the U.S. where they spent 10 months in Los Angeles. The experience would heavily influence his music and political views. In 1963, he moved back to the newly independent Federation of Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He played for some time with Victor Olaiya and his All Stars. In 1967, he went to Ghana looking for a new musical direction. It was then that Fela first called his music Afro beat, a combination of highlife, funk, jazz, salsa, calypso and traditional Nigerian Yoruba music.
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This page is based on the article Fela Kuti published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
