Music
Seun Kuti and Egypt 80: the youngest son who kept Fela’s band alive
After Fela Kuti died in 1997, his youngest son Seun took over leadership of his father's band, Egypt…
afrobeat
Arts + Culture
Six Grammy nominations and a new Shrine: Femi Kuti’s decades out of his father’s shadow
Femi Kuti, Fela's eldest son, formed his band Positive Force in 1986 and opened the New Afrika Shrine…
Arts + Culture
Ebo Taylor made his first international album at 74 and died at 90: the Saltpond guitarist who bridged highlife and Afrobeat
Ebo Taylor, the Ghanaian guitarist, composer and arranger who blended highlife with Afrobeat, was born on 6 January…
Arts + Culture
Lagbaja means “somebody” in Yoruba. Why Bisade Ologunde hid his face to make Afrobeat
Lagbaja, the masked Nigerian musician born Bisade Ologunde in Lagos in 1960, performs with his face covered to…
Arts + Culture
“Zombie no go walk unless you tell am to walk”: the Fela song that Nigeria’s soldiers never forgave
Fela Kuti's Zombie, released in Nigeria in 1976 by Coconut Records, mocked soldiers who obey orders without thinking.…
Arts + Culture
“Without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat”: the drummer who built Fela’s rhythm
Tony Allen, the Lagos-born drummer, created the rhythmic foundation of Afrobeat with Fela Kuti in the Africa 70…
Arts + Culture
Cream’s drummer drove across the Sahara to Lagos and played with Fela: Ginger Baker’s African years
In the early 1970s, Ginger Baker, the drummer of Cream, drove a Land Rover across the Sahara to…
Arts + Culture
Afrobeat or Afrobeats? One letter separates Fela’s revolution from Burna Boy’s stadium tours
Afrobeat is the style Fela Kuti and Tony Allen built in Lagos in the late 1960s and 1970s.…
Arts + Culture
Every October, Lagos throws Fela a birthday party that lasts a week. The New Afrika Shrine and Felabration
Fela Kuti was born on 15 October 1938. Every October, the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, opened by…
Arts + Culture
A thousand soldiers, a burning house and a mother thrown from a window: the Kalakuta raid that shaped Fela
On 18 February 1977, about 1,000 soldiers stormed Fela Kuti's Lagos compound, burned it and threw his 77-year-old…