Biography
Born October 15, 1938 in Abeokuta, Nigeria and died August 2, 1997 in Lagos Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, also named Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti is Nigerian musician and activist who pioneered a modern style of music called Afro-beat, which fused the traditional Yoruba music, Jazz, American blues, and funk.
Being a young enthusiastic person, Fela would run for miles to go to conventional celebrations within the range, as of now feeling that the true African culture of his precursors need to be protected. His parents sent him to London in 1958, but instead of studying medicine like his two brothers and his sister, Fela chose to enroll within the Trinity School of Music, where he was to spend another five long year. During his time as a student(aged 23), Fela married a Nigerian girl called Remi and they both had three children.
The anti-Fela sentiment within the government reached a new peak at this time, prompting him to establish his own political party in 1979 - the Movement of the People(MOP), and was unsuccessful during his run for the Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Five years afterward he was imprisoned for 20 months on charges of smuggling money. He turned away from dynamic politics upon his discharge from prison. His child, Femi, was left to carry the burn of Afro-beat music. Fela was imprisoned once more in 1993 for killing, but the charges were inevitably dropped. He passed on as a result of complications from AIDs-related illness at the age of 58.
Activism
After his return from Europe, he moved to Ikeja and set up a new club, which became a hotbed for drug activities. The torch vocalist, who spun over the console as he sang in English and Yoruba, struck a chord among the unemployed, impeded, and abused. His politically charged melodies, which censured persecution by Nigeria's military government, incited authorities to raid his club routinely, searching for reasons to imprison him. Close there he moreover set up a communal compound, which he announced the autonomous Kalakuta Republic. For over twenty years, he got to be celebrated as a representative for the awesome mass of individuals, in Nigeria and somewhere else in Africa and the African diaspora who were embittered with the period of post-independence.
His health began failing in the early 1990s. After being arrested in 1993 again, for murder, with three of his 'Afrika '70' bandmates, Kuti slowed down and began producing less music, leaving his son, Femi to continue his legacy. He will live until the end of time! Fela was maintained by the unrestricted adore and regard advertised to him by the millions of individuals whose lives he touched all through his life. In passing, he holds the amazing status to which he was lifted by the throngs of individuals who came to pay their final regards at his laying in state in Tafa Balewa Square.