Fela Kuti, the creator of Afrobeat as a voice of resistance

In the late 1960s, Nigeria was emerging from the ruins of the Biafran War, a civil conflict that lasted from 1967 to 1970 and left over a million dead, mostly victims of famine and ethnic persecution.

The promise of national reconstruction was quickly hijacked by successive military coups that plunged the country into a cycle of authoritarianism, corruption, and alignment with Western powers. Lagos, the capital by the Atlantic, pulsated between the fervor of an expanding metropolis and the weight of repression.

It was in this environment that a young saxophonist and keyboardist named Fela Anikulapo Kuti returned to the country after a stay in the United States with more than music on his mind; he brought a cultural and political project capable of reshaping the idea of African music in the 20th century.

Son of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, one of the most important feminist leaders in West Africa, Fela grew up in an environment where politics and art intertwined. Funmilayo was a suffragist, organized movements against British colonial rule, confrontated local dictators, and became a symbol of female resistance in Nigeria. His father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was an educator and Anglican minister, instilling discipline and intellectual rigor. But it was his mother’s fighting spirit that shaped Fela's attitude towards life and music.

In the 1960s, Fela studied in London, where he graduated in music, and later traveled to the United States. There, he lived through the peak of the civil rights movement and the radicalization of the Black discourse. His interactions with members of the Black Panthers and activists linked to the anti-colonial struggle prompted him to rethink not only the role of art but the role of the artist in society. He realized he could use music as a weapon of political awareness, creating something rooted in African tradition and sharp as a manifesto.

Thus, Afrobeat was born, a genre that fused Yoruba rhythms, Ghanaian highlife, jazz, funk, and elements of Cuban music, structured into long musical suites that could exceed 20 minutes.

Unlike the logic of Western pop, Fela's songs did not seek catchy choruses or quick cuts; they were hypnotic constructions, where repetition created trance and the lyrics emerged as discourses, fables, and direct provocations. The rhythmic kitchen, supported by African drums and percussion, was accompanied by powerful brass sections, cutting groove guitars, and continuous bass lines that pushed the music like a locomotive.

Lyrically, Fela attacked the military regime, denounced the collusion with foreign oil companies, criticized the Nigerian elite for adopting European values at the expense of local traditions, and satirized the blind obedience of the armed forces.

The track “Zombie” (1976) is the most famous example of this stance, where he described soldiers as zombies, obeying orders without thinking. The song spread as a public provocation and led the regime to retaliate violently.

In 1977, the army invaded the Kalakuta Republic, the independent and self-sufficient community created by Fela that housed musicians, family members, and activists, set the place on fire, beat dozens of people, and threw Funmilayo out of the second-floor window. She would die months later from her injuries. In response, Fela carried his mother’s coffin to the gates of the government headquarters and released “Coffin for Head of State,” turning mourning into a sound accusation.

The Kalakuta Republic and the Afrika Shrine, his nightclub in Lagos, operated as cultural and political centers. The shows were more than musical performances; they were rituals that blended dance, Yoruba spirituality, eroticism, and long political speeches. Fela took on the role of a spiritual and cultural leader, articulating pan-Africanism as a philosophy of liberation and refusing any form of co-option by the state or the cultural industry.

Esthetically, Fela's Afrobeat extended beyond sound. The covers of his albums, many created by the artist Lemi Ghariokwu, functioned as political cartoons, full of caricatures, symbols, and texts that visually narrated the content of the songs.

Fela himself cultivated an iconic image with patterned tunics, traditional African fabrics, a frequently exposed body, body paintings, choreographed gestures, and a defiant posture before cameras and audiences. This aesthetic was part of the message, the proud affirmation of an African identity unfiltered by the European gaze.

In the 1980s and 1990s, despite illnesses, constant imprisonments, and political persecutions, Fela maintained the discourse and music with the same intensity.

He refused to soften his work to capture external markets, even when artists like Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder publicly expressed admiration for him. His refusal to compromise on aesthetics and message made Afrobeat not just a genre but a territory of symbolic resistance.

Fela's death in 1997 due to AIDS-related complications did not end the movement. His son Femi Kuti and later his grandson Made Kuti continued to expand Afrobeat, while bands and artists from various continents, such as Antibalas (USA), Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 (Nigeria), and Kokoroko (UK), reinterpreted and carried forward his proposal. Today, Fela's influence is felt not only in music but in visual language, discussions about African identity, and cultural activism around the world.

Fela Kuti forged a political space within art. A place where rhythm, body, and word merge in resistance, where each drumbeat is also an assertion of autonomy, where Africa is not a theme or setting but an active and central subject. By transforming the pains and contradictions of his time into expansive and irrepressible music, he engraved his name in the pantheon of artists who understood that sound is also territory, and that, like territory, it needs to be defended.