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You are here:Home arrow Entertainment arrow Remembering Fela…eleven years after…in style
Remembering Fela…eleven years after…in style Print E-mail
Written by Abraham Adegoke   
Saturday, 09 August 2008
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Some people are living but they are dead, some are dead and they are dead while some others are dead but they are still living. The subject of this piece falls into the last category of people.

Not many people would claim not knowing the man, Fela Anikulapo Kuti {also known as Baba Seventy and the Black President}. Even some youngsters who were born after his death know him more than they know some living persons.

There is this belief that works of art do not die…it is really true especially in the case of Fela.

Fela was known all over the world for creating the Afro beat style of music, he was known more for using that style of music to spearhead the crusade against white domination of the black race which may justify the 'Black President' title.

He preached the unity of Africa and the black nation in general. He also campaigned for the propagation of the African culture as against the acquisition of the white man's.

All these and more could be pointed out as the reasons he would continue to live…or what else could be responsible for the remembrance of somebody who is not a member of your family and had died eleven years back.

He is worth remembering and he was remembered in memorable fashion in a two day event that took place on the Island and the mainland in Lagos.

Day one of the event was staged at the Jazz Sessions on Ozumba Mbadiwe st, Victoria Island. This edition was, according to Peterson Agu, highlife musician and head of Zion Gate Africa which is in charge of the anniversary celebrations, organised to take the celebration nearer to those who love Fela on the island.

The audience on the first day was treated to first class renditions of some of Fela's greatest hits by a band called 'Roy de Africlasic' – the band plays regularly at the new Afrikan shrine. There was however a significant revelation there...one Uncle Shaggy...who claims to be an upcoming standup comedian. The guy thrilled the islanders so much that he was, as he later told me, was overwhelmed with the number of appointments he got after the event.

Day two took place on the mainland at the new Afrikan Shrine in Agidingbi, Ikeja. It was a more elaborate ceremony which had a host of upcoming artistes and some of those who are now proud propagators of the Afro beat Music including his sons.

Fela was born in 1938 and twenty years later he started a career that, at his death, had earned him worldwide fame and considerable fortune. When he started his musical career in 1958 one could rightly say that he didn't know it would turn out to be what it turned out to be.

He introduced the afrobeat music ten years later when he started taking the struggle for the nigerian enterprise as a personal one. And...mhen...what followed was no joke at all. He was jailed several times, especially during the military juntas that ruled the country. He was particularly not best of friends with former president Olusegun Obasanjo who, Fela claimed, had a hand in the death of his mother who was thrown out the window during one of several raids on Fela's home.

Fela died on the 2nd of AUgust 1997 at around 4 pm of 'AIDS related illness' according to his brother, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti. His popularity amongst the nigerian masses was never as about a hundred and fifty thousand persons attended his burial.

It is a well known fact that Fela will always be alive in our minds...that's why we here also join in remembering the Black President.


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1. Written by Vivian Olubosi on 10-08-2008 23:54 - Guest
 
 
The death of Fela Anikulakpo-Kuti as a result of AIDS was disclosed to the world by his elder brother the late Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti who was one time minister of health.
  

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