Fela's last laugh

Fela Kuti would often perform with a painted face and thick chains draping his slim body's bare chest; he'd stalk the stage playing sax, keys and drums while chain-smoking enough cigar-size spliffs to make a Rasta village jealous. Scantily clad female dancers gyrated around him, while 15 or 20 drummers, guitarists, horn players and more wailed on anthems praising pan-African solidarity and lambasting corruption and colonialisms, tunes with evocative titles like "Zombie," "I.T.T. (International Thief, Thief)," or "Beasts of No Nation." He sang in Pidgin English so he could be understood across the African continent.

Offstage, Fela was an uncompromising social activist. He championed traditional Yoruban religion and declared his band's commune and recording facility, the Kalakuta Republic, a sovereign nation. After "Zombie," a 1977 attack on the Nigerian military ("Zombie no go think unless you tell am to think"), some 1,000 soldiers struck back and burned down Kalakuta, threw Fela's mother and brother from a window and beat the musician within an inch of his life. Fela's mother died from her injuries and he delivered her coffin to the residence of General Olusegun Obasanjo, president of Nigeria; the song "Coffin for the Head of State" memorialized the action. After the official investigation blamed an unknown soldier, he answered in the song "Unknown Soldier." His music made him a hero to the poor and downtrodden of Africa, but at best a cult figure for America. Until now. 

All those things that were Fela — the music, the politics, the outrageousness — are woven together in Fela!, the Broadway musical written by Bill T. Jones and Jim Lewis, which runs through March 4 at Detroit's Music Hall for the Performing Arts. It arrives two years after its Broadway premiere with three Tony Awards, following successful runs in London and Lagos, and tours in Canada and the United States.

Rikki Stein — Fela's manager for 17 years and a Fela! creative consultant — contrasts the show's reception in this country and back in Nigeria: "We took it to Lagos in February. It opened at the Shrine [a nightclub near Kalakuta]. It was phenomenal, the reaction of the audience. They know the words of the songs and laugh at all the jokes. In the United States, it's a story; in Lagos it's history. From the perspective of Nigeria's young people, it's revealing of the past. For the older people, it's a trip down memory lane. His lifestyle was so radical, particularly as far as the middle class was concerned. I really miss the guy, and finally the world is catching up on what he was doing."

Fela Ransome Kuti was born in 1938 in Nigeria's Ogun state. Claiming that Ransome was a slave name, he later changed his middle name to Anikulapo, which means "he who carries death in his pouch." He came to his activism through his family. His minister-school principal father helped organize Nigeria's first teachers union and became its first president. His mother fought against British colonial rule and helped Nigerian women win the right to drive. She met with Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah as well as China's Mao Zedong. Nobel laureate novelist Wole Soyinka is a first cousin to Fela.

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