Fela “The Black President” as Grist to the Mill of the Black Power Movement in Africa

Abstract

On November 23, 2009, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who created the music genre afrobeat, was celebrated by Broadway with a production called FELA!, produced by “Jay-Z,” Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett-Smith. Patrons of music and performing arts, who thronged the venue, paid homage to the memory, person, and life of the talented composer, singer, and instrumentalist who died in 1997. His legendary status, in the realm of music, indubitably has outlived him. Fela was a social commentator, whose critical comments often made the government of his country persecute him. Moreover, he advocated for a political, cultural, economic, and social renaissance of Africa and people of African descent and encouraged, through his music style and lyrical composition, and non-musical speeches, the idea of Blackism, which fundamentally corresponded with the nationalist ideological sentiments that the Black Power Movement, in the U.S., had projected from the 1960s onward. This study, stepping away from the traditional biography and hermeneutics of Fela as a prodigy of music, harsh critic of Nigeria’s nation politics, and an enigmatic phallocentric, discusses him and his musical career as bridges for the Black Power Movement to Africa. It examines Fela as a charismatic continental African who, as a proponent of the empowerment of the diaspora and continental African community, advocated key ideas and sentiments of the Black Power Movement in Africa—a movement that took its genesis from the varieties of that African/Black nationalism tradition and the nationalist sentiment of the African (Black)-American community of the U.S. in the 20th century.