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But those are just the broad strokes. e particulars of Kuti’s
life, both musically and beyond, are wildly di erent from most
anybody else’s. Part of a deep legacy in Lagos, Nigeria, -year-
old Kuti has attained the status of royalty to his fans. Earlier
this year, he and his band, Positive Force, dropped their th
album,
One People One World
,
an up-tempo collection of
songs yearning for peace and
global unity. (It was released
in February by Brooklyn-
based Knitting Factory
Records.)
Although his own achieve-
ments have absolutely con-
tributed to his popularity, the
truth is he had a reputation,
even as a teenager, because of
his blood. Femi is the eldest
son of superstar Fela Kuti, the
famous Afrobeat pioneer.
It must be a strange ex-
perience, growing up with a
legend but not quite realizing,
as a child, how di erent that
experience is. Femi remem-
bers when his father had his rst major hit; the year was
and he was years old. “I can never forget that—the song was
everywhere,” he says. “ ey played it in all the record shops,
all the stores, everywhere we went. We just knew it was my
father’s song.”
As the decade unfolded, his oldest sister added to the atmo-
sphere by bringing music she loved from the other side of the
Atlantic Ocean into their home. Kuti recalls hearing a mix of
the era’s top talent: Donna
Summer, Bob Marley, e
Temptations, Earth Wind
& Fire, and Diana Ross. At
the same time, he admits, “I
focused more on my father’s
music. ere was always a
big competition in the house
of who would learn all the
lyrics to my father’s songs.”
A major gure in the
second half of the th cen-
tury, the late Fela Anikulapo
Kuti—known simply as Fela
to many—is best known as a
towering musician. His most
enduring worldwide legacy
is Afrobeat, the fusion of
Western jazz, soul, and funk
with West African musical
traditions, from centuries-old rhythms to modern beats such
as highlife.
An early alchemist of the Afrobeat sound that originated
Learning the trumpet,
I became frustrated
because I thought it was
going to be an easy task.
It was very difficult.
But the end result was,
it made me a be er
person, cooler, wiser.
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 19, 2018
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