My name is Anikulabu. I have death in my pouch. I can't die. They can't kill me. This is Fela Kuti, Fear No Man. I'm Jad Abumrad. Chapter 10. Death in his pouch. You write that being with Fela gave you the feeling of being an immortal. Being with an immortal. Yes, and even being immortal too. If you're with him, you won't die. That is John Collins speaking with producer Ruby Walsh. John is a musician and a scholar. He's written a book about his time with Fela Kuti. He was the guy in a previous episode who woke up vomiting in November of 1974. We thought we'd eaten some bad food or something. As it turned out. We opened the windows and tear gas wafted in. It was yet another raid on Fela's compound, which was across the street from where he and his band were staying. I've never been tear gassed. That was the first time. I've now been tear gassed three times. I mean, the thing is with Fela, he went from one violence to another. And nobody felt that they could possibly die because Fela was there. I mean, his braveness rubbed off onto even somebody like myself who's not very brave. And what was it about him? I mean, was it just the fact that he kept bouncing back that gave you that feeling? It was the immediacy of the moment. At that moment, a precise minute or second of time, you were safe. whatever happened. I mean, one day we were coming back from Abekuta and a policeman on a podium, Crossroads was too slow or something for Fela. So Fela passed the guy and didn't like the way the guy behaved so he reversed back at high speed and he looked at the policeman took a huge puff of marijuana and blew it in his face and drove on. I mean, why did he do it? And you could see the policeman was very, he didn't know what to say. He's dumbfounded. Off he went. It was totally unnecessary. But it was all part of the excitement of the moment. Wow. But he had a belief in destiny. This is a thing that you often hear from messianic figures. That they are men of history touched by destiny. Fela believed that about himself. And so in 1975, at a time when he was constantly clashing with soldiers and the police, when he literally was covered in scars from gun butts and soldier boots, he changes his name, Fela Ransom Kuti. That was his name for the first 37 years of his life, and it was his family's name going back generations, given to them by Christian missionaries, which he then came to see as kind of a slave name. Changed it from that to... My name is Anikulakbo. Which means? I have death in my pouch. I can't die. They can't kill me. But of course, death comes for all of us. So what happens when the pouch spills open and it's not heroic and it's not pretty and it's not funny? Will the grand wave of history leave you behind like a chunk of foam on the shore? For Fela, the shine of immortality rubbed off in three discreet blows. Starting in 1977, the first blow was the burning of his compound. What I witnessed is a sin of war. The sights that we saw, we were not prepared to see. We were brutal. We were brutal. Fela responded in classic, defiant fashion. After the raid, he was interviewed by a French documentary crew, and there he is on a couch practically naked, only in his beige undies, with a joint in one hand and a saxophone strap around his neck. One thing I want to assure them, if they think I'm going to change or compromise in my attitude, in my way of life, or in my expression, or in my goal, They're making me stronger. And I'm much more stronger now. And you want to see the police beating. It's terrible. I'll show you. You must see it. Look at it. He stands up, turns around, flexes his shoulder blades, and you can see five, six massive pink scars. Here. See? Look at my ears. Right over my ears. And then he shows him a really gnarly one on his right butt cheek that looks like a bullet wound. and it's at this point that he smiles at the camera and says the I have death in my pouch line which we've already played twice so I'm not going to play it a third time problem for Fela at this point was that he was not in control of his own destiny in addition to soldiers burning down his house raping many of his dancers throwing his mother out of a window the government repossessed the land where his home had been before it was burned. And they also shut down his club, the Shrine, so he couldn't perform. The Nigerian Herald reports, I'm broke, fella. That's our field producer in Lagos, Feifei Odudu, reading from an article in 1978. His financial crisis, he said, was caused mainly because since his residence was burnt down, he had not been able to receive any reasonable income. Fela had reached his zenith because he was deceived. In 1977, he thought of sacrificing so much, giving so much of his energy to Nigerian people, and none of them could even lift a finger to defend him when they were burning his house. Aidee, one of Fela's lieutenants in the Young African Bioneers, along with many in his circle, often returned to the scene of what happened outside the house when his house was burning on February 18, 1977. There were, according to some estimates, 60,000 people lined up outside on a bridge watching the house burn. Fela had built this massive youth movement. He'd become known as the black president. The way ID sees it, if ever there was a moment when the movement could have sparked into a roar, it was that moment. But no one did a thing. So he was, that shock was there for him. He rested in his head for years. He struggled for two, three years where he was banned from working. He could not earn a living, not even sustain his organization. At the time, Aidi says that Fela had moved his entourage, well, many of them had scattered to different places, but moved a group of his wives, his bandmates, into a very small apartment that one person told us sometimes didn't even have running water. He tried to get his career back on track by organizing a tour of Ghana, but... Fela kicked out of Ghana. Afrobeat music star Fela Anikulakwokuti has been declared an undesirable character, persona non grata, by the Ghanaian government. The Ghanaian government didn't want him stirring up dissent, so they kicked him out. Meanwhile, many of Fela's musicians were peeling away. And all those young women who'd flocked to him in the early 70s looking for a new life, who'd then become his dancers and backup singers, after the violence of the burning, they were leaving in droves. And so he does something that you could see as the beginning of a downward slide. Daily Times, February 21st, 1978. Wedding bells ring. Almost exactly a year after the burning of Calakota, Fela publicly marries 27 women from his entourage on the same day. The women are all members of his Africa 70 organization. You married 27 wives. This is him talking about it to the BBC. Is that all part of your lifestyle? I don't want to call it a lifestyle. To call it a lifestyle will be removing the traditional concept of what we are. It's a normal African way of living. So you married 27 wives because you felt this was part of the tradition here? No, because I needed 27 wives. And my tradition was not against it. I like a lot of women around me. I liked the women. I wanted to sleep with them every day. And they've been with me for a long time. And there was no point of us not getting married because it was getting ridiculous just staying, living without plans. This is an event that is very often debated in the Felaverse. Many people we spoke with, surprising number actually, told us that... These women, many of them had left their homes and needed protection. This was him actually trying to protect the women. Anytime these women went out, people used to harass them. And Fela was determined to correct that. Others. He was protecting. I think, maybe he think that's why he was doing it. Say, no, no, no. If you're protecting them, do they all have to be dancers? Like, could they have done something else? This is just misogyny run amok. But one way to understand the wedding, according to Professor Dotun Ayubade, who is one of our advisors, is that at this moment is bleeding talent. He was desperate. People came and people left, but the band was the thing that Fela dedicated his life to sustaining. At some point, his son even leaves, right? Family could go, but the band was Fela's life. So it's hard for me to then not read the wedding as a HR move. So that's a crude way of saying it. And the truth is, Lara Shosayan, one of Fela's dancers, who was one of the 27 he married that day, she agrees. Fela married his work. We married for his work. Because if I left, we would stay there to dance. She said he wasn't marrying them. He was trying to marry them to the band so that they couldn't leave. We are the, like, we are his weapon. Anyhow, the band did stay together. He would reform it, call it Egypt 80. But just two months after the wedding, two months later, April 13, 1978, arrives the second blow. Fela's mom in a coma. Sources close to the family yesterday hinted that her health had been deteriorating since the incident of February 18 last year, when her house was burnt down. She had not been able to eat Doctor were battling to save her life but she was rushed to the operating theater yesterday afternoon April 14th, 1978. Fela's mom is dead. The voice of women is dead. Fela's mom passes away. It was terrible. The real change came after Granny died. That one hits him here. Hits him hard. Yeni says this is when she really noticed a shift in her dad. Before she died, she was in a coma for a long time. You know, so he didn't even get to talk to her. He spent the rest of his life trying to communicate with his mom. So a lot of charlatans could come to him and tell him, ah, fella, I'm communicating directly with your mom, and he would listen to them because of that need. In his song, Unknown Soldier, which he released right after the burning, he sings about his mom and you can hear his voice break. Out of front window, them kill my mama. Them kill my mama. Them kill my mama. Them kill my mama. Them kill my mama. Them carry everybody go. His mother was the person who gave him his sense of belief that you could harness spiritual power to depose the king, and now she was gone. And as a consequence, his belief system started to slowly reshape. And thus began what is sometimes referred to as Fela's spiritualism phase. He brought in a couple of Ghanaian stage magicians who claimed to be traditional African priests and diviners. One particular one called Professor Hindu. In the world of Fela, this is a name you hear a lot. Who is Professor Hindu? All I can tell you is, the professor, on more than one occasion, blew my mind. This is Ricky Stein, Fela's manager throughout the 80s and 90s. He was so good at whatever it was the hell he did. On the most basic level, Professor Hindu was sort of a David Copperfield-style illusionist. And at first, says Ricky, Fela invited him up on stage to do harmless tricks in between sets. You know, like grab a guy from the audience, tell him to take off his hat. Suddenly there's a pile of cigarettes falling out of his hat. Overflame the cigarettes. And me, I'm just like, what is going on here? But occasionally the tricks would get pretty intense. I do know. That's Sandra Isidore again, the woman who radicalized Fela. That Vivian Goldman, who's a writer, journalist, was a witness to a man's throat being cut. And Ricky Stein, too. He was there. This happened in England. that cut the man's throat on stage, dug a hole, put the man in the hole. This was on the Friday night. And then let him be there for three days. We were supposed to come back there on the Sunday. I was a bit worried. We all went back. Professor came up and he was banging his feet on the ground, mumbling. And suddenly, this hand came out of the earth, man. He was fine? Yeah, he was fine. Clearly they had given the guy a breathing tube or something. That was part of the illusion. But Fela started to actually believe it. Professor Hindu was able to convince Fela that he could actually raise people from the dead. And he began to hold seances to summon the spirit of Fela's mother from the grave and then ask the spirit to appear in one of Fela's wives. If Sewa would go into trance and supposedly his mother would come through Sewa. I mean, it was traumatic. I called him aside, Fela, they think you are going crazy. Aidee says it was at this point the guys like him, who were there for the movement, the politics, started to get disenchanted. When Fela started to leave our ideological clarification of our ideas to spirit, he has to consult the spirit. That was why I tried. On many occasions, talk to him, Fela, this spirit thing you are talking about is not correct. Looking back today, I can understand why. The only breathing space left for him was to consider everything as spiritually predicted. Go and listen to his song, Look and Laugh. In that song, he explained everything. He said, I sacrificed for this country. I did everything. They burnt my house. They killed my mama. So what do you expect me to do? So I told him, Fela, since there's no basis for trust between us anymore, I would like to withdraw my services from the organization. Aidy walked away in 1983, seven years earlier when he'd gone to live at Fela's compound. His mother had told him if you ever lose faith, get in a taxi, come home, I will pay for it. And that's what he did. Let's get now into another on-the-ground spiritual again. Throughout the spiritualism period, Fela continued to make music. Some people say it is his best stuff, but it is a distinctly different sound. Not nearly as upbeat or James Brownie. The music became much more layered and complex, where a song might have seven, eight, nine different sections. He started disowning the term Afrobeat and instead wanted his music to be known as African classical music. And in the 80s, the music started to get a lot slower. I think that the sound, like, sonically, it got heavier. Like, if you kind of, by the time you get to Beast of No Nation, it's just, you know. Pretty brutal. It's really hard for me to listen to that stuff, the later stuff. That's Hanif Abdurraqib, poet, writer, one of our advisors. As he characterized it, 80s fela is the sound of a man in a dark room looking for a light switch and not finding it. I think as someone who is involved, it has been for a long time involved with community organizing. The idea is that you're dreaming a world that you might not be alive to see, but you're still dreaming and working towards it. But there are harsh realities where at some point you have to take a measure of how many feet, inches, miles you've come. And if it is, in fact, inches, that's devastating. Meanwhile, Fela's behavior became more erratic. Then he came out and held court in his living room. Professor Lisa Lindsay remembers visiting Fela's compound with her husband, sitting on mattresses with dozens of other people and just listening to him rant. He just held court and he was out of his mind bonkers. He was saying crazy things that made no sense. The shape of the world is a rabbit or the shape of a continence is a rabbit. We actually got our hands on an unreleased interview done with Fela in the late 80s. And it is filled with these really weird. meanders. vibration against the human vibration. So that metal vibrating is disturbing and diminishing your age. Fela was losing his mind. This is Fela's biographer, Carlos Moore, speaking to the BBC. He started losing his mind as early as 1981. That's when the first discernible signs that something serious was happening. And I discuss, you know, Fela seeing a specialist in Europe because it would have been embarrassing for him to do so in Africa, especially in Nigeria, where they said he was mad anyway. Because at that time, Fela was accusing practically everybody of being agents of the CIA. He saw plots to kill him. We're talking about 1981, 1982. And as the years passed, it became worse and worse. It was a very serious thing, and none of us knew how to deal with it. One of the complicated things is that we now know that the CIA was meddling in various countries across Africa, the DRC, Ghana, and people were after him. As an example, 1984, he goes to the airport. He's about to fly to the U.S. to start a U.S. tour. He's got roughly $1,000 of cash on him. He's arrested on charges of currency smuggling. Completely ridiculous, but he's thrown in jail for two years. So the threats were not entirely made up. And yet they were also not what he thought. Because underneath it all, there was an enemy that was far worse lurking. This is Fela Kuti, Fear No Man. We're telling the story of Fela's immortality, rubbing off in three discreet blows. And we have arrived at the third and ultimately final blow. We all saw that Fela was sick. He was very sick with the rashes and all these things. Some of us who were going to the shrine even stopped going there. Netsa's son Femi. There was once... Daughter Yeni. I can't forget that day. We were coming from shrine. This is 94, 95, she guesses. I think that was when I made peace. I didn't make peace, but I knew that he was going to die soon. We were coming from shrine because we used to go and watch him every Friday, sometimes Friday and Saturday. So we were coming from shrine and he was wearing this white outfit and he had blood on his trousers and by the end of the day the trousers were filled with blood On our way home my sister and I we cried We said, ah, he's dying. And he wouldn't accept it. He wouldn't accept it. He didn't believe in the disease. He didn't believe he had AIDS. A friend of mine told me that when he, first of all, his colour started to change to bleach, to a sort of yellowish colour. I think with AIDS, sometimes you lose some of your pigmentation. He thought that God or the gods were blessing him and it was being turned into a golden person. Sunday Times, July 20th, 1997. Journalists and friends of the Afrobeat creator Fela Anikulak Bakuti have been keeping vigil at his Abelkota residence since the news of his ill health broke last week. Fela has not taken any solid food for the past two weeks. You know, in 14 years of living with him... This is Fela's youngest son, Sheyoun Kuti, who now leads his band. He was 14 at the time. I'd never seen him sick like that. Like that. So I was scared, man. Even if my friend couldn't do anything. We just kind of all just sat in the room with him. He was just lying in bed. You can't do anything. Because if you did anything and it got better, man, you would pay for that shit. Because Federer had a strict rule, and he talked about this in that unreleased interview, that no Western medicine could enter his body at all. See, anybody can treat him. I treat him. I don't need a doctor. I was beaten by police. My wounds were healing by itself. You see, because I was setting my mind for my wounds to heal. You know, people can do things by themselves, man. You know, without waiting for a doctor and all these retrogressive things. You see, having a hospital is retrogressive. It's a waste of time. He refused hospital. He refused any medicine at all. So we see kind of just had to wait for him to tell us what he wanted us to do. So we started to bathe him and everything because he was just lying there. But then one day, apparently, I wasn't there. He told my brother he wanted to go to the hospital. This was after how many weeks? Listen, the whole house. I've never seen the house move that fast. But by then it was too late. Fela, unconscious, was driven to the hospital. He was immediately taken to room 7 on the first floor of the Victoria Island Consultancy and Hospital Services. Fela stayed in the hospital for a week, mostly unconscious. As his condition worsened, Fela's brother Koye, who was a doctor, took Fela's two oldest kids, Yeni and Femi, aside. Ngokwe said, look, I'm going to announce that Fela has AIDS. And we fought him to a standstill. We said, you cannot. No, no, no, no, no, no. No way. It's hard to overstate the stigma that AIDS carried at that moment. Though the epidemic had ebbed in the U.S. and Europe, in Africa, deaths were at their peak. It was also a moment when people, most people who were surveyed, believed that victims of AIDS got what they deserve. So it was considered almost a moral illness. And Fela himself propagated those kinds of messages. One of Fela's latest songs was Condom Scaliwag, where Fela was propagating, do not use condom. That's Fela's bandmate, Dele Susimi. Fela in the shrine, when condom scaliwa comes on, everybody peels a condom, blows it up and, you know, playing pranks. For Fela, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome AIDS still did not exist. Fela actually said it does not exist. He believed white people invented AIDS to discourage the healthy pastime of sex. We fought it at first. I'll be very honest. Yeni says she told her uncle. As his doctor, you are supposed to keep quiet. So please just keep quiet. We said that. then he now died. August 2nd, 1997. One of the kings of African music, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is dead. Nigeria's most successful international music star died in the Lagos... Fela dies at 59. Death corked itself from Fela's pouch and sneaked in on him. It was the end of an era. Yeni says she was... not even in shock, it was before that she couldn't even comprehend that her father could actually die. And in that fog, her uncle came to her once again. Uncle Kwe said, I'm going to announce that fella died of AIDS. The following day, at a press conference in front of a few hundred journalists, her uncle made the announcement. He died yesterday in a hospital located in Victoria Island at approximately 5.30pm. The immediate cause of death was heart failure, but it had many complications arising from the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Ah, Femi and I were so mad. We were livid. We were crying. Why should you tell that our father had it? Why? What was making you? I think what made me, I thought that it would bring, it would diminish what he stood for. By announcing that he died always would diminish what he stood for. A lot of people thought that Fela was unpopular anymore. And the announcement of that would kill his popularity totally. I have to be very honest. It was the best decision. I went later to tell Uncle Koei that you could not have made a better decision. And I even regret fighting you. Because she says it stopped speculation about Fela's death. And that press conference that her uncle gave touched off one of the first public discussions of AIDS in Nigeria's history. we also have to say that while denying that he had AIDS and encouraging people not to use condoms Fela slept with countless women at least one of whom that we know of would eventually die of AIDS herself that's just a fact so when he died this question hung in the air Fela had lost his disciples contracted this horrible illness and the stigma that went along with it, and his music had become so ornate and complex that it was no longer speaking to the youth of Nigeria. Was this it for him? There are so many people who we don't remember anymore. They don't speak to us past their moment. Maybe because of how they lived, or maybe it was out of their control, but we don't remember their name. Did history pass him by? So everybody thought this was the end of Fela. That was the possibility that his family had to stare down in the wake of Fela's death, especially Femi and Yeni, his oldest kids. We'll hear from them in a second. 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 Vela Kuti for your no man. And we rejoin the story with the question, did history pass Fela by? In the wake of his death, that was one of the questions facing his oldest kids, Yeni and Femi. Yeni and I kept telling them that we better let him lie in state at TBS. That's a very big stadium. A million people would turn up for this man's burial. And they were like, it's madness. Why will a million people turn up? Femi says this became a huge fight. People close to the family kept telling them, lying in state? Are you insane? Fela might have been popular once, but not anymore. Nonetheless, a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by his eldest son, Femi, said the burial of the deceased musician would be preceded by a lying in state of his remains starting at 9 a.m. at the Tafawa-Balewa Square. Just for context. Yeah, so now this is the front of the place. We actually visited TB Square with Durot, who's part of Vela's inner circle, while we were in Lagos. He walked us around the grounds. We're standing at a place called the Tafal Balewa Square. And it's huge. Describe how big it is. Three football fields? Yeah, that's about right. Imagine a Beyoncé concert, that size stadium, now triple it. That morning of the burial, I go to TBS maybe about 8 in the morning. everywhere was quiet. She says no one was there. Does it feel strange to you to stand in the middle of it? And it's empty? It looked like nothing. People started to trickle in. Just a few. Like three, five. So Femi and I looked at ourselves and said, have we miscalculated the last popularity? By 10-11, there were maybe 100 people in. I mean, CBS is huge. And this is hours into the event. This is going to be a disaster. He said there are people who are murmuring, 100 people all, by 12.31. He says something happened. Like a switch flipped, or like when you pull the pin on a grenade, but instead of a few seconds it goes off a few hours later. It was like... People just said coming. People just said coming. Where are all these people coming from? When the floodgates opened, the people went crazy. Anything to catch a last glimpse of their hero. We were now overwhelmed. The ground was full. You couldn't walk. I suspect what happened is that there were people there from the beginning. They couldn't get in. Maybe they were lined up at the gates And eventually they just pushed their way in We found one video of thousands of people pushing against the gates and soldiers not being able to hold them back And it was such a wonderful sight. The soldiers, when soldiers would pass, they would remove their hats and bow. The police would pass, they would remove their hats and bow. Surreal. This is a man who is going to live forever. His name has more or less been imprinted in the sands of time. It's amazing. It's amazing. The whole of this place was filled with people. The whole road was blocked and they put the coffin just where you see there. Duros says Fela was all the way on one side of the stadium in a see-through coffin. Made of glass so he could see his body. And they put a jumbo by his... They put a what by him? A jumbo. A jumbo. Oh, like a screen? No, no, no, no. Oh, joint. Oh, got it. Ah, Jad. He's saying they had a three-foot joint laying next to the body. One big joint as big as my whole arm. There are some people that will even go to the body and say, he's going to wake up. He's going to wake up. Look, his eyes moved. So I will go and tell Eddie that, he says his eyes move and she can't say it's because he has come out of the fridge. You know, we can laugh today. But then it was so emotional because it was like disbelief to know that fella would die. And then just to add an extra little mythic cherry on top of the whole affair, you have some estimated a million people crammed into this stadium. And at some point, they all look up. At exactly 2.55 p.m. at the Tafawa-Balewa Square. This account was carried in all the major papers. The inestimable crowd shifted their gaze from their music idol to behold a strange phenomenon. The crowd sighted a moon. The half-moon appeared in the clear afternoon sky at the venue of the ceremony, promoting the idea that Fela Anikulapokuti had truly joined the immortal. The moon stood facing the sun and the crowd watched in bewilderment. One man announced to the crowd that it was an indication that Fela was an extraordinary being, and he was indeed of the chosen few among men. One of the most wonderful details of the burial to me is when Femi and Yeni tried to leave with Fela's coffin. They wanted to take his coffin all the way across town to the shrine. This is the club he owned and where he performed. pay their respects there and then bury his body a short distance away at the compound where he lived, the Kalakuta Republic. Problem was, six hours into the ceremony, people were still lining up to pass by the coffin and pay their respects. So we planned to sneak his body. We just quickly put it in the van. They screeched out of the parking lot. Suddenly, we just saw all these people chasing us. Stop them! Stop them! And they jumped in front of us. No, we are not going anywhere. They stopped. They stopped the convoy. They stopped the hearse. According to one newspaper account of this moment, I love this moment, a few hundred students from Lagos University approached Femi and told him, his body is as much ours as it is yours because of what he stood for, what he fought for. We are going to walk. We are walking with you. And not just that. They said, go this way. They pointed to the right. To Broad Street. to one of the busiest streets in Lagos, and maybe the world. So Femi looked at them and said, you want us to go this way? They said, go this way. That's through Broad Street. The crowd, they took also. Broad Street's on the right, yes. This is Broad Street. This is the way the crowd diverted them. We drove with Durot down the route that the students demanded they take with the body, and as we did, he pointed out all these landmarks. Down this road, yes. That's where Fela first performed. That's where Fela got his start. And over there? On the right, there's a prison. That's where we were put in jail and tortured. You see this building here? Yeah. This is the court that brought to us. He pointed to another spot and said that is where the first colonial settlers landed in Lagos. And over here? Music also started from this area. This is where a style of music called juju music was born. It felt like the recapitulation of a life in a city. And it must have felt that way to the people marching. Seven hours. We were walking. Femi got down from the house and started working with them. They took us and each stop, every junction, more people were joined. Every time we got to a junction, they would stop, dance, sing, play fellas' music. We get to another junction, they will stop again. We go to the stadium, stopped again. Go to the joint leg back, stopped again. Jibowu, stopped again. Ah, this is madness. The crowd, I've never seen this before. I'm sure a million, at least one million people, maybe two, walked with that body to shrine. Ah, people were leaving their shoes and walking. Yeni says, seven hours later, when they got to the shrine, which was on a narrow street. The crowd parted, let the family through. They were so peaceful. The family stayed inside the shrine for the rest of the day and then slept there. Like, I woke up about 2, 3 a.m. Femi says he looked outside. And I said, wow, they had blocked the streets and were sleeping in the gutter all around. And in the morning, the funeral march resumed. It was an experience. It was an awesome... I don't want to use awesome because it's as if I'm happy that my father died. I'm not. But I have to use that word because it was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. It was a people's funeral. It was a people's funeral. The only other burial that I'd seen that was so... was a people's burial was my grandmother. My grandmother... When we were burying her, we took her body from the same hospital that Fela was at. We went in a convoy to Abekuta. Abekuta is her town. When we got to the border of Abekwacha, there was this mammoth crowd of women. Mammoth crowd of women. We had to stop. They took her body from us and they walked with her and they honored her as the voice of the women. So hers was the only burial I'd seen that was so fantastic. Fela's was the next. because he's the reference point. When government is going bad, he's the reference point. Anytime they protest, it's his music they play. It's his music. One of Fela's most famous quotes. Fela said, music is a weapon. Music is a weapon. Music is the weapon. Music is the... Of the future. Weapon of the future. What I take that phrase to mean now is that obviously he knew he would die despite the name change and all that. He was talking about something else, something much simpler. I think the reality of Legacy is simply a person being aware that they will not live forever in acting in a way that might allow for their life to live on in the hearts, minds, mouths, in the broader ideas of the world on an endless loop after they've gone. That's poet, writer, music critic Hanif Abdurraqib. How do you chip away at the world as it is and make a place for yourself to kind of rest eternally in it? So there's kind of like a Phala-sized corner of the world where he is still active. So when he said music is the weapon of the future, what I think he meant is that he has sent something into the future that is going to outlast his enemies. that inside his music is some kind of pure, undiluted strain of resistance that will allow it to repeat over and over. Now, how it would repeat, when and where it would repeat, many, many years after he passed, that is a pretty amazing story. And that is next. 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 Mutubele. Ruby Heron-Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefe Odudu and Foluakemi Aladiusui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help Carla Murphy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Nif Abdurraki, Michael Veal, Moses Ochunu, and Judith Byfield. Big gratitude to Fouad Luwal, Chika Eheerim Mo, and Esther Eze from archive.ng. They created an archive of Nigerian newspapers for us. 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. Huge thanks to ID for all of his research and connections and help with these stories. 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 To Melissa O'Donnell, 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 Creative Development and 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 We'll see you next time.
