Abàmì Èdá: Personhood and Socio-political Commitment in Fela's Music

Abstract

Nigerian Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is a political maverick not only because of the depth of his musical oeuvre, but also because, as a human rights activist, his personhood unreservedly engages the tempered socio- political space of Nigeria's post-independence phase. Fela's artistic commitment emanates from the genre Afrobeat through which he entrenched his musical ideology of Pan-Africanism and a materialist engagement with the leadership predicament of Nigeria's socio-political milieu. In addition, his performance space called Kalakuta Republic is a symbolic space from where he constantly conscientised his audience about the array of post-independence maladies afflicting the African continent. Through an examination of specific childhood events, I show that Fela's iconoclasm and creative oeuvre are catalysed through his parental inheritance. I then further my argument that, while operating within Nigeria's geographical microcosm, Fela's artistic and humanistic commitment transcends such borders and approximates the predicament of post-independence Africa as a whole. To expand my discussions, I investigate the deployment of his peculiar linguistic tool and vituperative poetics termed Yabis. The article in the end suggests that Fela's personhood significantly evokes how his celebrity life mediates between the state and individuals, and how this personhood has been absorbed into the contemporary Nigerian cultural space.