FACT ABOUT FELA KUTI









 Early Years, Musician and political activist Fela Kuti was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti on Octomber 15, 1938, in Abeokuta Ogun State, Nigeria. Kuti was the son of a Protestant minister, Reverend Ransome-Kuti. His mother, Funmilayo, wads a political activist.
  His father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, an Anglian minister, and school principal, His father was the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers.
  Fela is the first cousin to the Nigerian and Noble laureate Wole Soyinka, the first Africa to win the Noble Price for Literature.
  He attended the Abeokuta Grammar School in Abeokuta and later he was sent to London in 1958 medicine but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music.















 The trumpet was his prefrred instrument.
He first called his music Afrobeat in 1969.
He said that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name.
 In 1967, he went to Ghana to think up a new musical direction.
 Fela married to his frst wife, Remilekun Taylor, with whom he had three children(Femi, Yeni, and Sola).
 In 1963, Fela moved back to Nigeria and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corportion.
 Fela formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune, a recording studio, and a home for many people connected to the band that he later declared independent from the Nigerian states.
 He changed his middle name to Anikulapo(meaning "He who carries death in his pouch", with the interpretation ; "I will be the master of my own desting and i will decide when it is time for death to take me").
  He made the decision to sing Pidgin English so that his music could be enjoyed by individuals all over Africa, where the local language were spoken are very diverse and numerous.











He set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel, first named the Afro-spot and then the Afika Shrine, where he both performed regularly and officiated at personalized Yoruba traditional ceremonies in honour of his nation's ancestral faith.
 In 1977, Fela and the Afrika 70 released the album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian Soldiers using the zombie mataphor to describe the method of the Nigerian military. The album was a smash hit and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severaly beaten, and his elderly mother(whose house was located opposite the commune) was thrown from window, causing fatal injuries.
  Fela response to the attack was ato deliver his mother's coffin to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo's residence, and to write two songs "coffin for Head of State" and "Unkown Soldier".
  Fela and his band took residence in Crossroads Hotel as the Shrine had been destoryed along with his commune.
 In 1978, Fela married 27 women, many of whom were his dancers, Composer, and singers to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Repulic.














 He did not perform songs again after he had already recorded them.
 In 1979, he put himself forward for President in Nigeria's first eletions for more than a decade, But his candidature was refused.
 In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari's government, of which Fela was a vocal oppoenet, jailed him on a charge of currency smuggling which Amnesty International amd others denounced as political motivated.
 He was released from prison by General Ibrahim Babangida after 20 months.
 Amensty International designated him a prionser of conscience and his case was also taken up to by other human rights groups.
 On his release he divored his 12 remaining wives, saying that "marriage brings jealousy and selfishness".
 In 1989, Fela and Egypt'80 released the anti-apaertheid Breast of No nation that depict on its cover U.S. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and South African State President Pieter Willem Botha.
He was arrested 200 times and endured numerous beatings, but continued to write political lyrics, producing albums before he died on August 2, 1997.