Fela Kuti: Enter the Shrine

Hey, I'm Molly Webster. Hey, I'm Mono Montgomery. Mono and I just made a snail episode. It's called snail sex tape. And we have not stopped talking about snails for like months. We've become deeply obsessed with snails. I think we should all get snail tattoos. Ooh, snail tattoo could be cute. But you know what, you can get instead of a snail tattoo. What? You can get an enamel snail pin in honor of our snail sex tape episode. I've never been more honored in my life. I know. It is based on a real medieval snail miniature. I will be rocking it on my gene jacket all spring long. So to get one of these pins, you have to join the lab. And when you join the lab in addition to helping fund our show, you get access to sponsor free podcasts, plus monthly bonus content, plus invitations to events with the team. Including an AMA that we're going to be doing next month, you and me about the behind the scenes of making snail sex tape. Behind the shell, BTS, all you have to do is go to radiolab.org slash join. And if you use the code word snail, you get two months off the first year of an annual membership. Get your pin. And we can't wait to see you guys next month. Thanks, everyone. Oh, wait, you're listening. OK. All right. OK. All right. Door listening to radio lab. Radio lab. WNYC. See? Yeah. Is radio lab? I'm Lula Fnasser. And I'm Lula Miller. And I am Chad Abelrod here to hang out with Lula Lula Latof. Woohoo. Welcome back, old man. Thanks, youngster. Happy to be here. Yeah. Where have you been this whole time? I've just been here in Brooklyn just being a dad, making stuff. So pretty much the first thing that happened when I handed you guys the show proudly is I became a professor, kind of a fake professor at Vanderbilt, but teaching all kinds of things, relating to storytelling and interviewing. Dr. Abelrod. Well, none of the other faculty are fools. But also alongside that, I've been making all kinds of weird music and theater things. We just had a big thing in Brooklyn that launched in May. It's about the Brooklyn Navy art. America's war-making engine in a way. And I don't know. It was felt like what if journalism were sung by 60 women? It was so much violence. And then somewhere along the way, early, I got into a conversation with Ben Adair, old friend, who has been making audio stories as long as I have. He approached me and he was like, hey, do you want to do a podcast about Fela Kuti? Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician who invented a whole new genre of music and started a political movement and toppled a government just with music. I was like, cool. That sounds interesting. And I said yes to it in the way that you say yes to things that you know are never going to happen. You know? It's really fun. Sure. I'd love to have dinner at your house. Yeah, it sounds great. Well, I wasn't saying yes in a note. Like, I don't really want to do it. I was just like, I don't know if I'm doing another podcast. But let me just, let's just explore it. Because I knew a bit about Fela. I mean, he was sort of the record that came on at a party and everyone was like, oh, oh, oh, and it was like the party got started. So I knew him from that angle, but I didn't know his backstory at all. So I started making some phone calls. And I know it just didn't stop. In this series, we're going to look at the life and the music of Fela Coutie. Fela. Fela. Anikulapo Coutie. Fela. Anikulapo Coutie. Anikop-pul. I always get that. My tongue always trips over there. Anikulapo Coutie. The father of Afrobe. The black president, the chief priest. I had never heard of Fela until you got obsessed with him. And I was like, who is this guy? Like, and why is Jad spending like three years obsessed with this guy? I mean, yeah, one of the first things that you discover when you're trying to unravel who this man was is that all of these people that you love love him. Io Adeberi, actor, writer, someone I really respect. She's in the bear. Great show. On some red carpet somewhere, she was asked, this question. I'm a musician. I have a cult-like fascination with her answer. Fela Coutie, who is like Nigerian legend, bear is a very complicated man. Fela has to be the epicenter. And Quest Love, one of the great musical minds of our time. I mean, Fela is the one figure who story resonates with modern American hip-hop culture. The passion of pain. J.C. The strength, the need to get that message out there. Beyonce. I don't know. It just presents a question. You're like, OK, what are they hearing? Yeah. Can I hear it? Can I make other people hear it? OK, so you dive in. You end up turning out this 12-part series called Fela Coutie, Fear No Man, which people can go listen to right now, anywhere, everywhere. And you know, OK, people clearly love his music. But what drove you to make the series? Yeah. Yeah. He is the answer to a really important question for me personally, which is like, right now, you're looking out in the world. None of it makes sense. It's all insanity. And if you love music, as I do, you kind of look around. You're like, what is the point? What's the point? What's the point of making music? What's it going to do to make our world better? And then you look at the streaming and the hellscape that we all live in. And artists are now content creators, and they just sell their content to Spotify for precisely 0.01 sense. And you're like, what's the point? What's the point? Like, why? And he answers the question for me. That the music itself, it wasn't just music. It became the catalyst for a political movement that had many, many tens of thousands of young people ready to march into the streets. And just with the music, he almost toppled a dictatorship. And he's like, this is the point of making music. This is the point of making art is to try and make a new world, try and change the world in some way. And the music itself, though, like, how it functions. How is that changing the world? Just what's the almost mechanism? Sure. OK. So Lula, I love that question, because the political, aspects of his music weren't just lyrical, although they were. It was baked into the very grammar of the music itself. It's like in the notes, it's below the notes. It's in the structure of the music. It's in the impact and sequence of impacts that the music creates. Like, which sounds so pretty, but what the heck is that? How? OK. So this is this episode that I think you're going to play. Yeah. And OK, just for context, the first episode we met a bandmate of Phalaes. We got the story through his eyes. Then in the second episode, you traced his evolution into a revolutionary. And then in the third one, the one we're going to play, this is the one where we really get into the music itself. Yeah. It really tries to first give you the experience and then explain what the experience is. Yeah. So it's called the shrine, anything else before we walk in. I should explain the shrine is. It's his club in Legos. And it really was sort of the epicenter of his movement. And we interviewed got so many people who described what it was like to be there. People who were once asleep and are now awake. MUSIC My experience in being in the shrine was like, the music was like inside of me. It was all around. It was just like being hypnotized. Like you're all inside the music. MUSIC This is Filacuti Fierno Man, chapter three, enter the shrine. One of the ingredients of a movement, necessary ingredients, is to have a place where you can experience the promise of that movement right here, right now, in the present. Can you tell us about your first visit to the shrine? Yes, of course. What do you remember about that? Very, very funky. This is Michael Ville, musician, professor of music at Yale. He's also one of our advisors on the project. They hear that music in New York is one thing. You know, you listen to that music in New York, you're like, oh, yeah, whatever. Look, the first night I was in Legos, you're walking up the shrine. You hear that. And you get closer, you start in your... I remember that very clearly, but it was at night. And there was no power. Every blackout. It's like going to Times Square, but there are people all in the street, like thousands and thousands of people. Champac Malfa People, it's total darkness, but thousands of these little sternal lamps illuminate in the place. Because the power went out all the time in Legos, but there are thousands of these sternal. So you imagine the scene, it's like almost like Woodstock from a kind of fame, you know what I mean? Yeah. They hear that music in New York is one thing. You're like, oh, yeah, whatever. But then if you ever get in a plane and go to Legos, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the town of Rambindy, Tanashten. They open a hatch and it goes, PUSH! With the humidity in the heat. You know, the mint they open a hatch, it's like, PAAAM! And then you walk out of the plane, you've got to go down the steps and you're like, oh, now I get it. Welcome to Nigeria. That's the way reality feels in this setting. You know what I'm saying? That interview with Michael Veal was one of the many reasons why when we finally got to Legos, after 13-hour flight. Good, taking it all in. The top item on our agenda was to go to the shrine. Hey, Lulu here, and this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It is March in like a lion, out like a lamb, and somewhere in the middle, it's International Women's Day. And BetterHelp wants us all to just take a moment to consider the women in our lives, our personal lives, our society, and thank them for their strength and for all that they carry. That work matters, they matter, you matter, and therapy offers a space for all of us to take care of ourselves in the way we deserve. Think about the roles you play for the people you love. Think about how those roles intentionally are not way on you and in the worst moments work to weigh you down. Therapy helps create perspective, set healthy boundaries and work toward balance. BetterHelp has loads of therapists, all of whom work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. Why not give it a try? Fill out a short questionnaire and BetterHelp will use their 12 plus years of experience to match you with one. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time. Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash RadioLab. That's betterHELP.com slash RadioLab. I'm Mandy and I'm Melissa and this is Moms and Mysteries. We're two Florida Moms obsessed with true crime. From infamous cases like Ellen Greenberg to shocking Florida stories like the Dan Marquell killing. With 55 million downloads, we bring you new deep dives every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Here it comes. Let me fill in a few gaps. 1969, after the whole Sandra Isador experience in LA, Ferla comes back to Nigeria, radicalize, steps off the plane, and takes the country by storm. Ferla becomes the massive star that we know him to be, and then between 1973 and 1979, he releases this fire hose. Of music, something like, by my count, 27 records in six years-ish, one hit after another, after another. Now, Dishrine, during that time, early on, he sets up a club that he calls Dishrine, and it's important to understand where. Legos, Lego City, the most popular city in Africa. Legos is on the coast, the Atlantic Ocean, and it consists of a giant landmass and mainland that curves around this bay, and in the Bay are two major islands that connect back to the mainland with bridges. On the islands, this is the sound you hear. Peacocks, golf, it's very lush, very beautiful. On the mainland, very different sound. You will find places on the mainland where the sheer density of people is just breathtaking. For example, this audio that you're hearing is from a market that we visited in a neighborhood called Moussin, a poor working class neighborhood where a million people are packed into seven square miles. In this neighborhood, not the island, this spot is where he decided to put Dishrine. To say basically, I am the voice of the people. The sufferheads, as he called them. When we visited Dishrine, at night it was more or less as Michaelville described it. People all in the street, like the Champat mob with people. He was there in 92, we were there in 2024, and Dishrine has closed a few times and reopened and moved around a bit, but it was kind of the same. It was dark, yet about 50 food sellers lining the block. It's very long block in front of the shrine. People smoked weed openly, which in Nigeria can carry a heavy prison sentence. Our fixer and legas told us that even now 28 years after Filla died, this is the one place where that can happen. One of the sellers that was there explained it this way. Filla is like life after death evergreen. Yes. What do you feel like Filla still protects this street, this place? Yes. Exactly. His sense was the ghost of Filla is still there protecting this one block. And as he said that he nodded towards the end of the block where the policeman waiting, standing almost like on the other side of an invisible line. You've done your research, you know, that the shrine and also Filla's compound, the Calacute of a Republic, he had kind of declared independent of Nigeria. That's Lisa Lindsay, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She specializes in the history of West Africa and she brings up an important point. Is it a 1970 when Filla got back to Nigeria? He declared his club the shrine and also his house nearby, which he called the Calacute of a Republic. He declared them a sovereign nation within Nigeria. It's sort of like the Vatican is to Italy, that he was a country unto himself. Lisa Lindsay visited the shrine in the early 90s. It was just all this craziness that we saw. Well, okay, so outside there's a dictatorship that was shooting people. At that time, and there are videos of this on YouTube, the government would hold public executions of criminals and dissidents on the beach. There were soldiers in the streets. It wasn't safe to be out at night. You go in. And it's just this alternate universe. Describe what it looks like. It was like a warehouse sort of everybody smoking. Like a lot of weed smoking. Giant, giant joints. Joints the size of police megafounds. Keep in mind, at that time, people were getting thrown in jail for 10 years for food. I have smoke joint. This is this massive cloud up at the top of the thing. This hot and humid. There are a lot of people in there. People dancing and people stoned out of their minds. And it was such a contrast to how scared people were outside of the shrine. The shrine was not far from his house, a couple of locks. That's John Darden, hold surprise when he journalists who wrote from New York Times, worked as a foreign correspondent based in Legos in the mid 70s, wrote many, many articles about Fella, including this one where he watched Fella get ready right before he performed at the shrine. Would you mind reading this? This is you. You're reading you. Because Ruby and I have been trying to find as vivid descriptions as we can of the atmosphere. And this is actually one of the more vivid that we've already read. New York Times. New York Times. New York Times. That voice is Nina Darden, John's wife, also a long-term journalist. Fella's pre-game ritual. The show begins at 1 a.m. Inside the nearby Calacuda Republic, Fella prepares for it laboriously. From a jar, he spoons up liberal doses, glitter, gooey substance, nicknamed Fella Gold, to still extract of marijuana. Full-length mirrors are brought before him and held by two young boys. He slowly slips into skin-tight, sequined pants and a white shirt opened to the waist, arranging his strings of beads as if he were smoothing a necktie. Six bodyguards draw near. Let's go, Fella says, and the entourage moves outside where there is a crowd of several hundred people. Some have been waiting for hours, clinging to the barbed wire to catch a glimpse of him. A chant, Fella, Fella rumbles out of the dark. It's really good. And as he walked and... He found a donkey. Well, that was the second time. As he got in the donkey, what? Okay, wait, sorry, as he walked. He was a showman, you know, could drivers would get out and raise a fist and yell, Fella, Fella. Anyway, then he starts playing. And I have never seen, I think, a performer quite as dynamic as that. He was absolutely incredible. Before we go back into the shrine, well, first, let me give you a picture. It is a open air club. It's about 500 people. There's this tin roof over the stage, but no roof over the dance floor. And to either side of the stage, our four studio 54-ish cages where dancers dance, also to one side, there is an altar where Fella had a picture of his mother, a picture of Malcolm X, and a picture of Kwame and Krumah, the first president of Ghana. But I'll be honest, what's most interesting to me is not so much the shrine itself. I mean, it was a club. But rather what happened to people when they went inside of it. Because do you know how people talk about psilocybin now? Right? We all have one of those friends who did some mushrooms and it changed their life and they can't stop talking about it. And there's a way to explain those experiences. You can say neurochemistry, right? There's something about these drugs. They rewire your brain. Fine. We ran into so many people who described listening to Fella's music at the shrine in the same way that it had the same effect on them, which is a little harder to explain though I will try in a moment. But first, let's re-enter the shrine from their perspective. Cheers. Cheers. And as you're listening, see if you can let yourself notice what are you paying attention to? How does that change over time? No. One AM, Fella arrives on his donkey takes the stage with 35 other musicians and he begins a riff that will last most of the night. My experience in being in the shrine was like, the music was inside of me, it was all around, it was just being hypnotized. Like you're all inside the music. I kind of have not a dancing. We're acts of music, dancing, the least way. The least way. I remember being lost in music. All the people I smoking around me are never in a mist. So you're in a different world. One day will be one day. One day will be one day. Once again, stay in the moment, once more. One day will be one day. This idea of the spiral. In the circle. The circle. The circle. The circle. The spiral. The spiral. It's another way to deal with time. The act of music. I will describe it as a swirl. You know when you have a spiral. The start of art has its little veil that builds up. And it builds up. The more you allow it to. The secret of it just starts to get bigger. The Fella starts this music to enchant this repetitive pattern the power of the musical ostivato is part of that enchanting strategy you've been captured I thought this is really an amazing new form of music it was almost like a field of sound that sits there for a long time and you explore it you kind of enter it and live in it this is a place this isn't a song the rhythm section is keeping going going going going going going going going going going going going going this is a place and when you start listening to it you're entering into that place I think the music is like inside of me it's all around it's just like you know big hypnotized by the whole side of our bones and kind of had gotten panicked and got into it and so the Fella you could tell that there was a different kind of intention behind this paradigm of groove the music is so nasty you have to dance but that's just the ground level because why would you play us all over 30 minutes or 40 minutes unless you really have something to say unless you really have something to say don't you know there's no section don't you know unless you really have something to say like don't you know you know that's great unless you really have something to say and then suddenly after half an hour 40 minutes he starts singing good if you know like you if you like it good if you know like you if you you go die you go die for my thing we go go go go list this show yeah when his voice came in I was like what the hell there are words too for them to be gree then to 15 years in jail after one year he's like hold up what is this he sings in a gravely low-pitched voice and sings about things that no one else ever even mentioned any newspaper, any columnist he talks about the United Nations he talks about thatcher he talks about Reagan like it's really it's really everything is like a history lesson you see it sinking in you could see ideas in the air floating from the stage like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull I just felt when has my mind been all you know all all my life complete surprise like I was immediately captivated why did we not notice why aren't we thinking about this stuff we fell asleep into a microphone I saw the the light I was just like you know what I mean he sucks you in and then he has that light bulb effect on you you come into yourself you know it's a moment of introspection too because you realize that you haven't been as attuned as you probably should have all this stuff he was singing was just new to me you know I was just learning so much about Nigerian history through Félath that I had not learned in school before we go on the voices you just heard in addition to Michael Ville and John Dartin were Stephanie Shonekan and Boide Omujola both professors of ethno music ecology at the University of Maryland and Mount Holyoke respectively musicians Dele Shoshimi and Duro Ikugenio activists film maker musician Saul Williams musician and producer Brian Eno artist Lemmy Garriolcu photographer Marilyn Nance designer Lorraine Animassen and our advisor Moses Aichuno who is a professor of history in my colleague at Vanderbilt University he was one of the last voices you heard and I asked him he said the music made you feel like you needed to tune in to things you hadn't been tuning in too like what you know when I was growing up in Nigeria you know we would hear about corruption about thousands of Naira being embezzled by some politician or government official and we would open our mouth in shock because our brains couldn't compute how one person would make off with thousands of Naira how would the person carry this money what would they put it in in some boxes in some cars you know physically how would they move this money you know we just couldn't father me and then over time we started hearing about millions not thousands anymore then billions and now as we speak the corruption numbers have entered the trillions to that over time has had a non-main effects a dulling effect as a child grew up in Nigeria the moral outtries that I felt that's gone that's long gone and that is what would come back when you heard his songs right exactly Moses said that Phyllis music would remind him of the insanity that he had been sane-washing to believing was normal and I think that there's something really interesting about how the music can move him to that thought music is all about structure right structuring the relationship between notes and chords and melodies but here you have structure on a an entirely different level phenomenological structure for the first 15 minutes it's just loops ostinato is going round and round the power of the musical ostinato ostinato in Italian by the way it means basically stubborn the loops stubbornly repeat and at first it's not so bad it's kind of grounding actually but then the natural response is then to want some change can we go to the next section now? please please no this is what the Buddhist call our monkey mind our monkey mind wants distraction it wants anything to keep us from having to live with our own thoughts but the music doesn't give us that it doesn't change it only builds layers get added peace by peace instrument by instrument and at some point a few minutes in you arrive at this mysterious moment where you stop wanting it to change this is phase two now that part of you the once novelty starts to notice things like whoa listen to all the interlocking parts of this group oh the ostinato like machine gears they don't grind the gears are trying to in between each other so they just sockly fit onto the little gaps and holes like that the way that the kanga plays off the shaker calling response the way that the three guitar lines sped around endlessly like gears and higher level clock my god this group is a whole world this is the trance state usually when we talk about trance we mean a kind of dulling of our senses but actually it's the opposite it's a state of hyper focus you are noticing things you're hearing things you've never heard before because your neurons are rewired you are open and it is at this very moment that phyllo begins to sing I was like what the hell there are words too in comes his voice booming like the voice of god this is phase three and because you are open you really hear what he is saying you see it sinky in you could see ideas in the air floating from the stage like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull in that way as the final piece of this progression he gives you a new conception of what your life can be I saw the the lights that you can now dance to music my music my main my main preoccupation right now music is it's more part of it this is a clip from an interview phyllo gave in 1988 where he describes his musical form almost as this vehicle designed to move people step by step so that they can hear what he has to say this is your music kind of a tool it's a weapon it's a weapon to say so I can talk when I have the chance to consider music to be effective like a weapon to inform people my music is like a weapon to inform people it is an information side of the music that is important in that same interview he suggests that there is something else going on here too it has to do with time itself circle circle when a body tells me 20 years it's a long time I will tell him no time is meaningless unless you want to understand what time it's about there is time for everything coming up that idea of cycles it's going to become not just about the music but so much more cycles of history, of violence, of resistance we're going to follow all of the interlocking ostinatos of phyllo's groove cross time and space into the deep past to an incredible story of a rebellion that deposed a king that created a sound they continue to echo to this day on the streets of Legos in the world that's next okay so jad thank you the series is it is so special it is and yet there will be another magnum going despite trying to leave but it is so special it's amazing this is my people's house we'll see where else is the series going and where can people find it? what's it called? so the series is going to go all kinds of places it's called phyllo kutti fear no man the next one is my fave it's a story about phyllo's mom oh yeah who is so extraordinary that you're so you're like why are we talking about him? you could flip it you could do the 12 episodes series about her exactly because what she accomplished is so bananas and again just with music so yeah that episode is next and can you share the title of that episode? it's called vengeance of the vagina head and it was it's not a title we made up it's called the revolt that she led at the time they called it vengeance of the vagina head just let that be a tease this has been a higher ground and audible original produced by audible higher ground audio, western sound and talk house series was created and executive produced by me Chad Abemrod, Vanidad and Ian Wheeler written and hosted by yours truly higher ground executive producers were Nick White, Mook Tamohan and Dan Fehrman Jenna Levin was creative executive and Corinne Billiard Fisher was executive producer executive producers for audible were Ann Heperman, Glenn Pogue and Nick D'Angelo our senior producer was Gfefn Uhtwale Ruby Heron-Walsh was lead producer and researcher our producers were Fefe O'Dudu and Borlokemi, Allegusui, Vanidad was our editor with editing help Carla Murphy consulting producers were Borlo Babilola, Dottun Ayubade, Niabdu Raki Michael Veal, Moses Huchuru and Judith Bifield our fact checker was Jemila Wilkinson Alex McKinnis was the mix engineer also special thanks to knitting factory records and BMG to the Kutti family Melissa O'Donnell to inside project Magtaylor and big thanks to Carla Murphy Lea Friedman and Shoshana Scholar the head of creative development of audible is Kate Naven, chief content officer Rachel Piazza, copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC sound recording copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC Hi, I'm Shavantra Muri and I'm from Mumbai and here are the staff credits Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasar Soran Wheeler is our executive editor Sarah Sandback is our executive director our managing editor is Pat Walters Dylan Keef is our director of sound design our staff includes Simon Adler Jeremy Bloom W. 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