Listen, take me to court at some point, you know, we'll discuss how when I was a kid, I was just walking through a haze of marijuana smoke every day, all day, from the time I was born. Come and tell me how I am normal. Come and tell me that I'm truly normal. Brothers and sisters, the secret of life is to have no fear. We all have to understand that. This is Fela Kutifirno Man. I'm Jad Abumrad. Chapter 12, Bloodline Covers. Here's a situation many of us will recognize. You are part of a family, a large, unruly family. Like all families, it's dysfunctional, doesn't make any sense, except that it is centered around one person, a matriarch or a patriarch. And as long as that person is there, things hold. But then one day you lose that person. They pass away. And suddenly all the planets that orbited that one sun have to find new gravity. This is that story about a moment a parent dies and all the siblings gather in a hospital room to try and figure out what to do now. And because it's a hard decision and because they all experience different sides of the person who's no longer there, they don't really agree. Now imagine in that hospital room, one of the walls has flown off into space. And on the other side, you see millions of faces peering in who are also ready to weigh in. How do you move forward in that situation? Let's start with Yeni. Yeni lives in a different part of Lagos. Getting to her was interesting. Coming in from the mainland, you go over a small bridge, and then there's a significant vibe shift. Suddenly the roads go from concrete to very bright red dirt. And in the middle of these red roads are sinkholes the size of, I don't know, they could swallow a car. They actually do swallow the motorcyclists, at least temporarily, that zip by us on either side and invariably come to our window and wave and then say... They'd say, hey, Oyembo, which means, hey, white people. spoken with no malice. And then they would disappear out of our view, go down into the crater, into the muddy water, a few seconds later, come back up, back into view, and then they'd say again, Oyembo! It's me. They can see me. It was like a game. Oyembo! Disappear. Come back up. Oyembo! Disappear. Come back up. Made me realize, oh, this is not a neighborhood where people like us come. It was chaotic, it was noisy, not the place I would expect to find Fela's eldest daughter. But then we turned off the road. Gates swung open and... It's so quiet. We were in another world. Courtyard, big tree, bunch of friendly dogs. Hey, buddy. When Fela died, his eldest daughter, Yenny Kuti... Oh, thank you. We're all lifting presents. Stepped in to help the family decide what to do. Hi, Jack. Hello. How are you? Very well. Nice to meet you. It's an honor to meet you. Meeting Yeni, you feel like you're meeting a queen mother. Nice to meet you, Yeni. Even if you didn't know who she is, there's something about her presence. Everyone in our crew started using honorifics when speaking with her. She was dressed that day in a blue Nigerian print dress and matching headscarf that evoked water, as though she had wrapped herself in the very seas. And even they bent to her will. How was he as a father? Wow. Wow. I think, honestly and truly, I think that Fela was a father to everybody. I don't think he should have had biological children. I think he should have just continued to be a father to the nation because everybody, there was no special treatment as a child. You are treated just the same as everybody else. Not because you are his child, you are special. So I think... That must have been very confusing. What I tell people today is, for me, because when you say, oh, Fela was my father. No, Fela was our father, not just your father. So I would tell them, I would say, that's the problem. Fela is your father and my father. The only difference between you and I is you have another father that you can go and meet and call father or daddy. I don't have another father. That's my only father. At this point, producer Ruby Walsh chimed in. When you think about your fondest memories with your dad, when he's being a father to you, is there something that stands out, a memory that you look back on especially fondly? He used to take us swimming. That, we used to love it. We were kids then. I mean, he made a point of taking us swimming every week. and I remember once when he couldn't afford it and he was so sad, he was so broke and he couldn't afford to pay the tickets to get into the pool and we were so sad and I had a penny and I said, ah fella, look, I have one penny and he just looked at me and smiled no, that penny won't work This was before he became Before he became who, yeah. Before Kalakota, everything. Yeah. By the time he became famous, you go to a place with him and he's mobbed, besieged, bam, taken away. They've carried him and they've carried him out of your sight. You are looking, you can see your father far away. You can't reach him. You know, you can't reach him. He used to be very, ah, man. Wow, this is so real. It's hard to describe the stillness around Yeni as she says that. When she gets quiet, everything around her gets quiet, as if her nerves run through the room, out into the courtyard, into the two other buildings of the compound. Even her dogs get still and then whimper when she's lost in a thought she doesn't want to be in. It felt to me, in that pause, that she was silently assessing conflicting memories and figuring out which to weight heavier in the balance. I don't know if, as a child, I resented it. I don't think so. I think I would not have it any other way. I would not have it any other way because I listened to his lectures. They opened my mind. So I idolized him as well. Loved his ideas. I loved his teachings. I took in what she just said. Dad shouldn't have had biological kids, therefore I shouldn't exist. And yet, I wouldn't have it any other way. That tension, whatever it is, I would hear it echoed in a very different way when we met her brothers. You guys want something to drink? Beer, water, whiskey. You guys want to smoke weed? Cheyun Kuti is Fela's youngest son. Jed or Jed? Jed, J-A-D. Femi Kuti. Thank you. Stands for what? It's Lebanese. It's just short. It stands for Jed. It's his oldest. They're 22 years apart. Both lead their own Afrobeat bands, both play around the world. They are endlessly compared to each other and contrasted with each other in the Nigerian press. And they do carry very different energies. If Yeni is stillness, Sheyoun is the opposite. He's like a wire that can't quite contain its electricity. The day we visited him at his house in Lagos, he had a giant dog chained outside. 100-pound dog that had just put someone in the hospital and taken a big bite out of his car. That sounds like some angry dog right there. Like a dinosaur. I'm saying when I look at what we call the music industry... And periodically through our conversation, he would say something in answer to a question. In a world where the oppressed people's income is diminished, the music that speaks for them becomes more and more niche, more and more out of reach. He would say a thing, hear himself say it Uh-oh, lyrics. and then bolt up off the couch. Where's my pen? I just came up with the greatest rhyme. More and more niche, more and more out of reach. Bring my pen, bitch! Oh my God, another one. I'm inspired this year. When you hear it in the song, you'll be like, ah, you came up with that during our interview. Check on that table. There should be just a little notepad. I just scribbled in it. Femi, different temperature. When we went to see Femi, he actually lives in one of the adjoining buildings in the compound where we met Yeni. He came out with a towel wrapped around his neck, a trumpet in hand, and a dour look on his face, because he just had a mediocre practice session. How are you feeling today? I always tired I always tired because I still try to do my physical exercise and keep fit every day I still try to practice every day six hours Any day I don't do it, I feel completely lost and helpless. And then I got seven children. Who bother my life? So I'm always very stressed. I set out a path for myself, and I don't like going out of that path because then it's like a horror movie, you know? Femi struck me as the middle ground between Yeni and Cheyoun, the live wire that he has managed to insulate through sheer force of will. Can we talk about your childhood? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to talk about my childhood. Where they converge is when they start to reminisce. Growing up. That's Femi. And I see my 12-year-old sons. I would say, it must have been madness. I was driving a car, 12, man. Wow. I was driving a car to school. Everybody would know me. I still remember the horn of the Volvo. I still remember that horn. I know police would chase me. And Kalakuta had this big gate. I would run. Put two pillows. Help! I would run. Then they would open the gate. I would just drive. screeching to the combat. They'll lock the door. Police will say, one day we'll catch you. You know, the freedom was just too much. Interesting. Too much. Take me to court at some point. Shayun. You know, we'll discuss how when I was a kid, I was just walking through a haze of marijuana smoke every day, all day, from the time I was born. You know, I mean, by the time I was 10, I knew what every kind of gun sounds like by living in my dad's house. Can't tell you how many times the police army parked in front of our house, surrounded and opened. This is not tear gas, like live ammunition, like riddle the house with bullets. Just, oh my God. So come and tell me how I am normal, really. Come and tell me that I'm truly normal. My eldest son, he believes I'm traumatized. Like Yeni, there's this thing that seems to happen when Sheyoun and Femi think about their upbringing. They remember their childhood. Then they think about their own kids now. They put the two childhoods next to each other. And then they make a proclamation, which usually starts with the words, I would never. I would never let my daughter. I would never even think of letting my child, you know? And then they don't finish the sentence. This is Fela Kuti, Fear No Man. August 2nd, 1997, the planetary realignment begins. Fela dies. The family is caught off guard. Even though he'd been sick for a while, his unearthly confidence had allowed the family to pretend that nothing was wrong. and so they'd been robbed of the time to prepare. In the wake of the news, Yeni calls an emergency family meeting. All of us were in the room. We had a meeting with the mothers and the kids. This meeting was before his funeral. Oh my God, that was a crazy time. Who was in the room, by the way, for that meeting? The whole family and the whole band. Which was a lot of people. There were six kids there. his wives, members of his band. So in total, probably about 40 or 50 people. And Kunle was nominated to represent the younger kids because there was this distrust of Femi and I. So Kunle was now going to represent the younger kids. Femi and I represented everybody, but they just still thought, maybe because we were so much older, I don't know. Politics. One of the complexities in the room was that everyone was born to different mothers. Yeni and Femi were born to Fela's first wife, Remy, the woman who was there before it all. When the commune started and Fela started taking on all these girlfriends, she moved out into her own house and took Yeni and Femi with her and tried to protect them. Protect us from the environment he created that created itself around him. He says she gave them the ability to separate when they needed to. Sheyoun and the other kids were born to wives from the commune era, so they didn't have that. So between the young kids and the old kids, there was a difference. Two meetings were held. One was held to tell the people in Kalakota Republic that they had to leave because nobody was going to pay for their upkeep in Kalakota anymore. You know, only the essential staff that they needed to keep the house going. If Phila was everyone's father, This was the moment that they as a family would take him back. Coming out of the meeting, Fela's commune would be shut down. The newspapers would fill with sad accounts from the hundreds of people who lived there and who'd been on Fela's payroll for years and now were suddenly homeless. And also that the band, the next meeting was that the band had to leave. This was like a week after his death. Many of the members of his band, Egypt 80, were in the room for that meeting. Some of them had been with Fela since 1960 in Kululubitos. When the question came up of what to do with the band, Koye, Fela's uncle, made a speech about how it is time to shut down the band. They can't afford it. It's run its course. And many members of the band nodded in agreement. When he finished, 15-year-old Sheyoun raised his hand. My dad always used to take us on tour. Every time, everywhere, every show. I'd been around the band so much. and had been around him. And there's nothing more inspirational than seeing an artist backstage after a show. Nothing beats that energy of just being the man. Everybody wants to say hello. This person is the center of the world at this moment. And I'm like, that's the guy I want to be. That guy, how hard can he be? What is he doing? He's not doing anything. He goes on stage, he sings, he dances around. I can't do that shit. You know, and by the time I was eight, I wanted to do it, you know. When he was eight, about seven years before this particular meeting, he had gone up to his dad and said, Listen, fella, I want to start singing too. I want to sing. I'm ready to start now. He's like, okay, wait. Because we're on tour. So like, wait. In fact, he gave me an audition when I told him to sing. Can you sing? I was like, yeah, okay, sing a song. Wait, wait, take me into that moment. What did you sing? Sorrow Tears and Blood. Do you have any recordings of you singing? Funny enough, there's a video of me that has been going viral. Let me see, I'm sure somebody... He pulled it up on his phone. Oh my God. On the screen, an eight-year-old Cheyoun in baggy pants jumps around the stage. See the bounce, fam? Look at that bounce. It is a uniquely strange thing to see an eight-year-old sing a song about how his father and his entourage were beaten and raped. Did you have a sense of what you were singing? Yeah. You understood the lyrics? I understood very well. Maybe many eight-year-olds didn't, but I did. So that's how I got my first job, you know. It was some nepotism. What was the job? so that from that moment... So that was me. So my dad didn't have an opener. That was him seeing his opening act. Right now, before we bring Fela on stage, we want to present to you... I started opening the shows for him. The youngest sensation, Sheung and Nicola Kokuti. Everybody run, run, run. Everybody... This is from a concert in Atlanta, 1984. Would you always sing that song? Yeah. So I added to my... Come on, man. I added to my repertoire as time went on. So getting back to that meeting where he raises his hand. I just stood up and objected. I just said, what if I kept playing with the band? Because we still had the shrine, we had the equipment. And the family was unanimous. They said, even if you are in the band, it doesn't mean we want to invest money in the band or pay for it. So you just have to keep what you make. I can keep what I make? Keep what you make. Okay. Wait, so just so I understand, that means that the band is now fully independent? Yeah. It means you pay for the band. Did you have a sense of how you would do that? I play music. Was Femi in the room for this conversation? Yeah, yeah, everybody was. Femi had his own band. He had the positive force going, you know, and I don't think he was interested in the Egypt 80s as well. My dad had always, like, said that the band was the most important thing to him in his life. and he used to say it and intentionally spite me by saying even more than my children. That thing he said was what inspired me to work with the band after he died. It was my way of doing something for him. Can you? And also giving him the finger. Both things can be true at the same time. Like, you know, it's important to me, even more than my children. We're one of your children going to keep this important thing going, dickhead. Band shrunk down to maybe 13 or 14 people. Everybody left because nobody thought the band could, you know. I'm trying to imagine the first show, Shayun Kuti, Egypt 80. I remember it vividly. Tell, what was that? We were 10 people in the shrine. I counted them from the stage, like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight nine ten minus my friends you know and I just close my eyes all through the show and just imagine that the shrine was full of people and I would perform like that. All of this brought up an interesting question for me. As a dad. Let's call it a question about patrilineal lineage. Fela very consciously broke with his father and his father's father. His grandpa, remember, recorded the first album in all of Nigeria. And what did he release? Hymns, taught to him by British missionaries. Fela wanted to undo that in every possible way. His lifestyle, his music, was surgically designed to alienate the past. If you're the son of a patrilineal destroyer, what do you do? Do you destroy like your dad? That is, destroy him? Or do you do the opposite? That question came to mind talking with both Shayoon and Femi. With Shayoon, it was about the music. After that first empty show, the crowds did start to show up. We actually saw him play in Brooklyn to thousands of people. Shayoon has recorded six albums with Egypt 80 and been nominated for a Grammy. he's collaborated with Lenny Kravitz, Brian Eno, Carlos Santana, and the sound, like his sound, it's interesting, I asked him about that. Like, how does he think about his music versus his dad's? What is Afrobeat to you? Uh-huh. Listen, Afrobeat is a movement. But I think we are just like, I think really, I don't want the world to see it as ours in the sense that we own. It is ours in the sense that we protect custodians. We are, at best, custodians. Custodians is an interesting word. Yes. He talked about his responsibility towards his dad's music as something like a museum curator. I'm a conservationist. Or like an orchestra that only plays Brahms. Like, nobody questions that orchestra because they're European, and you just assume classical music. it's worthy of being preserved. Well, so is Afrobeat. That's his point. Classical music has not changed much in 500 years. Afrobeat is 40 years, 50 years old. I don't want to make it something else. That's not what I thought you were going to say. That's interesting. But that's what it is. So that's duty. But then, as soon as he said that, he grabbed his phone and played us one of his side projects. I need to play you my hip-hop project. So that's not Egypt-Aid? No. What do you call that project? Fuck Them Kids. That's the name of the EP. I'm talking to my PR to see how we announce. I can't announce Ashen Kuti because it's going to fuck up my other project. So I have to create an alter ego to do this project. It sounds like you're two musical minds at once. Yeah. You scaled the sheer cliff face, battling frostbite, running low on oxygen. The wind pierced your skin and every inch was agony. You reached heights no other human had before, while getting nowhere at airport security. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling action titles on Audible. This is Fela Kuti, Fear No Man. I don't want to make it something else. That's not what I thought you were going to say. That's interesting. But that's what it is. Yeah. That was Shayun. Our conversation with Femi went somewhere quite different. We spoke to Femi many times while we were in Lagos, and each time he would start out very, very frosty with us, and then warm up and start to laugh, and then immediately berate himself for letting his guard down. I don't want to talk anymore. I don't want to talk to anybody about nothing anymore. I'm tired of talking because I'm sounding like a crack record and I don't want to talk anymore. We have a lot of questions, but you tell me. You kick us out whenever you're done. You get the sense with Femi that, like his mother, I am very, very much like my mother. Paranoid or very, very careful with many things. Like his mom, in every situation, he imagines the worst thing that could happen. and then does anticipatory damage control to prevent it from happening. And the more we talked with him, the more that attitude made sense. If I used to hear the sirens, I used to panic. Every siren, I just knew. I don't even know how I know. And when I moved to Kalakuta, every time the aliens come to our heads, they say, oh, they're coming to our heads, we are going to get beaten today. Yay! Similar to Sheyoun, who sang about things no eight-year-old should have to think about, much less sing about, Femi, from the time he could stand, would go over to his dad's house. It was like a big party every day. 200 people having fun. To join in the fun. And then inevitably, a raid would happen and he'd end up getting the snot beaten out of him. One story he told us that I can't get out of my mind is after a raid, some soldiers told him to lay down on sharp gravel. Ah, they now told me to swim on gravel. And pretend it's a swimming pool. Ah, they said, oh yeah, what are you seeing? I said, stones. He said, hey, stone. This is not stone. This is swimming pool. He seemed to like to tell those stories. Swim there, swim there. Beat us very well indeed. But his mood shifted noticeably when I asked him what I thought was a pretty simple question about school. He kept saying, we didn't need this Western education. Don't worry, he'll find his way. You know, he was always... Fela left a lot of things to chance. He took me out of high school. Baptist Academy in protest because Obasanjo put soldiers to flog the students or discipline the students. He took me out in protest. So I didn't go to school for about some months. He took you out of school to protest the government? Yes, for other parents. And we fell way, way back in school. And when we asked for teachers, he would never, look, Fela was so rich. The tuition fee was 10 naira. But Fela would refuse to pay, you know, till they brought us out of assembly. The children that have not paid their school fees, Fela, I'll be one of the first, you know. And to get him to pay was, Fela, please pay, you know. So as we grew older, I said to, question, what am I doing with my life? He used to rehearse in the sitting room. He used to play the trumpet at that time. He was supposed to teach me the trumpet, but he never had the time. So his cousin, Okola, started to teach me the scale of C, and then he disappeared, so nobody ever taught me. When he was 18, he says he kind of played the sax, barely. I was such a terrible saxophonist. Couldn't get a good tone out of the instrument, couldn't read music, didn't know what a time signature was. That year, 1980, Roy Ayers comes to town. Roy Ayers as in the My Life, My Life, My Life and the Sunshine. That song? Massive star. He and Fela decide to make an album together, and on a whim, Fela pulls Femi into the studio. He just assumed that he knew how to play the sax. I don't know how he's doing. Oh yeah, play. Play? Play how? Oh, you can do it, you can do it. And I'm there shaking like a leaf. Then he gave me another very complicated one. Parambulator. So, ah, you know, so probably it was his own way of education. Just say, take, you must know it. I must know it, yes, I must know it. Okay, I must know it, I must know it, yes. So I started to listen to my jazz, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. I started to try to teach myself how to read music, made it point to always do a minimum of six hours, practice on my sax. I taught myself everything. In 1984, when Femi was 22, Fela gets thrown in jail on trumped-up charges of currency smuggling. Desperate to keep the band together, he sends word that Femi should now lead the band, which he does. Fela would stay in jail for almost two years. By the time he came out, I was too far independent. So I left, started my band, the Positive Force. Set your sun! Because the flow has been growing since then. Since then, he's released 14 albums, been nominated for a Grammy, toured the world many times over. And in 1995, he and his wife Funke gave birth to a son, Made. In here, we come to a patrilineal break that's arguably no less radical than anything Fela did. It hits you the moment Made walks in the room. How are you doing today? I'm good, thank you. My voice is very soft, so you might walk in here. It looks good. I was actually going to say you have a very good radio voice. Do I? Yeah. Oh. I don't know. Maybe I should consider it. Yeah. Made is Femi's son and Fela's grandson. We met him in a green room at the shrine. He walked in and got settled on the couch for our interview with an ease that was kind of shocking, actually. A few days before meeting him, I had actually read the book Unbearable Lightness of Being. And in that book, there's a description of a moment when a woman walks into a room, takes her hat off, I believe, and does it with such casual self-possession that, as the author put it, an entire oppressive political reality was destroyed by that one gesture. There's something about Made, his presence, that called that description to mind. If Yeni is the queen mother, Made exudes a delicate nobility. As a child, I think I was very troublesome. I used to skate around the shrine I used to skateboard in between people tables I used to jump over tables that weren in use I was a nightmare for every adult except my father He was wild, wild. He was a child, you know. And as he grew older, he became subtle, you know. Very peaceful being. Even with that, I still let him be. Just hoping one day he'll be able to defend himself on the streets. One day he'll be able to grow up and be his own man. But at the same time, he's so humble. He's so relaxed. Definitely he's much better than I am. I always tell my dad that I could not have survived as Fela's son. Everybody had to call him by his first name, including his children, because he didn't want preferential treatment in the house. My dad is the opposite. His kids are the most special people. He's protective, he's supportive to his children first. and then the world comes after that. So it's very, I can survive very well under my father. Under Fela, I don't think that I've lasted a year. Made also told me that he hated school, was constantly getting in trouble, like his grandfather, didn't understand the point. School was truly hell for me and I tried to leave many times and my dad didn't let me. I think it was because he thought it was important that I finish it because he knew I would want to do higher education in music so I needed those qualifications. I mean, part of your dad's insistence on you going to school feels to me maybe in reaction to his dad being very sort of hands off. Yeah, it was worse than that. My dad wanted to study music and Fela just didn't provide the means for him to do it. So my dad is entirely self-taught. He taught himself every instrument he plays and how to make and compose music. And there's an interview of Fela being proud about that, saying something about, I don't teach him anything, no. Now he teach himself. I didn't teach him anything, but see his sound. You know, very proud about the fact that he taught my dad nothing. My father and I will discuss there's still things that he could have learned that would allow him to apply himself even better. Did you give Made lessons? How did you treat music with him? I taught him everything I knew. I still teach him. If I just wake up, oh, I didn't tell Made this. I'll say, Made, ah, you have to do this workout. I said, Daddy, you already told me that. I said, I did. Okay, shh. You know, I'm always very frightful. I might not be here tomorrow. So I understand life. I understand death. I've come across death so many times that any day could be your last day. And the beauty of my life is I want to ensure Madi is the eldest of my children. He is capable of handling anything. He has to know everything, every single story, every single how I walk my way on the sax, on the trumpet, what happened, where I stumbled, where I fumbled, where I think I got it right. As we were talking, Femi thought back to a moment from 1995, two years before his dad died. He wrote an article. I had a very big, huge track called Wonder, Wonder. And the paper magazines, Femi, the new king of Afrobeat. Fela got quite upset. I couldn't understand why I was upset. To be honest, if somebody said to me today, my day is better than me, you know, I'll be very happy. because my objective in life, that's my desire. If my children are not better than me, then as a father, I believe I have failed. Femi, like his mother, has become the insulator. The result is one generation removed, Made, can walk into a room unencumbered, seemingly free of worry. That's the inheritance he's chosen to pass on. It's him. It's his destiny. to take the Afrobeat and the heritage to that next level. It is meant to be that way. I'm just passing that information to him. It feels almost like communicating something that is more than myself. It feels like I'm not exactly embodying them, but I am carrying their message. And I'm the person that is now the town cryer. cry. I have to now say that thing that they said so many years ago today, that it was happening then and it's still happening now. And it's me that is still telling you three generations later. In his sets, Made makes a point to play his music alongside his father's, alongside his grandfather's. Being able to travel through time on stage is really special. And you're not just doing covers. You're doing bloodline covers. It's very special. Bloodline covers. That phrase It gives me chills. We'll end where we started. We spent the whole day at the Kuti compound. Because after our interview with Yeni, Femi came in, started berating us, but then began to tell us hilarious stories that went on for hours. And overall, there's something about being in that compound that where time and space sort of collapse. It's the kind of environment that is so completely its own world that you forget there's anything else outside. But as we were leaving and pulling away from the compound and the gate opened, there was the red soil on the road. Red like terracotta pots that had been pulverized into tiny grains of sand. And there were all of the families crowded onto motorcycles descending into the craters filled with muddy waters. For some reason it surprised me. Like, oh, it's all still there. all the things that Fela had been railing about poverty, lack of infrastructure state neglect all those problems are still there but then I look back to where we'd just been Yeni, Femi and Made had gathered in the courtyard to wave us off and Femi and Yeni, the two original Kuti kids now grown adults in their 60s started play fighting like they were kids again there was something about that scene think about it all the time there's something about it that was profoundly beautiful and hopeful and it occurred to me in that moment maybe maybe this is fellah's true legacy that we all still have a choice his music is about struggle and joy suffering and smiling all of these contradictory realities coexisting and then repeating endlessly over and over and over, like the cycles of the music. The choice we have to make is which part of the story are we going to focus on? The downward spiral or the persistence that's always there with it? Which part of the groove are you going to move to? Thank you. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible original produced by Audible, Higher Ground Audio, Western Sound, and Talk House. The series was created and executive produced by me, Chad Abumrad, Ben Adair, and Ian Wheeler, written and hosted by yours truly. Higher Ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukta Mohan, and Dan Fehrman. Jenna Levin was creative executive, and Corinne Gilliard-Fisher was executive producer. Executive producers for Audible were Anne Hepperman, Glenn Pogue, and Nick D'Angelo. Our senior producer was Gofan Utwuele. Ruby Heron-Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefe Odudu and Oluakemi Aladiusui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help Carla Murphy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Neek Abdur-Akhid, Michael Veal, Moses Ochunu, and Judith Byfield. I want to give a very special thanks to Guad Lawal, Chika Hirim Mo, and Esther Eze from archive.ng. That's A-R-C-H-I-V-I dot N-G. They created an archive of Nigerian newspapers going all the way back to the mid-1960s. It is an absolute treasure. Thank you to Duro Ikujanyo and his band Age of Aquarius. Search up Duro and the Age of Aquarius to hear his new record, which is out now. to ID for all his help with research and connections. Our fact checker was Jamila Wilkinson. Alex McInnes was the mix engineer. Also special thanks to Knitting Factory Records and BMG, to the Kuti family, Yeni, Femi, Shayun, and Made. They gave us so much of their time and access to their lives while we were in Lagos, and we're so, so appreciative. Thank you to Melissa O'Donnell, Dick Nadel, to Inside Projects and Maggie Taylor for marketing support. And big thanks to Carla Murphy, Leah Friedman, and Shoshana Scholar. We couldn't have done any of this without their support. The head of creative development at Audible is Kate Navin, Chief Content Officer, Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Thank you.
