Arrest the Music

Fela Kuti was born on October 15, 1938 in Abeokuta, Nigeria to a middle-class family. His mother, Funmilayo, was Nigeria's foremost feminist activist, and his father was the first president of the Nigerian Union of Teachers. A mischievous child, he frequently found himself in trouble with both family and civic authorities for minor difficulties. Although his parents sent him to London in 1958 to study medicine, music became his "obsessive focus" (Olanyian, pg. 20) and he decided shortly thereafter to study music at the Trinity College of Music. It was in London that Fela was exposed to racism, and the antiestablishment of his youth was nurtured.

The 1960's saw much of West Africa in revolutionary turmoil. More than twenty countries had become independent by the time Fela returned from England in 1963. The heady essence of freedom, however, was very short-lived. Neighboring Ghana's first pres

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t. "It is my desire to create a new trend worthy of emulation in the music sceneàwhich will be a pride to the black race." Afrobeat drew on the influences of indigenous Youruba rhythms, highlife, salsa, American soul and jazz: scat singing, the use of primarily Pidgin, and long solo instrumentals were introduced. (Olaniyan pg. 24). The following year, 1969, he took his new sound on the road to the United States, and his metamorphosis was well under way. In the U.S., Fela struck up a relationship with political activist and former Black Panther Sandra Smith Isidore. It was through her that Fela was exposed to the history and struggle for black civil rights, and most significantly, to the writings of Malcolm X. His social consciousness was almost immediately transformed from that of a mediocre musician to that of an inspired artist that would transform the fabric Nigerian culture. Afrobeat became the instrument that would successfully appeal to the working class and to the multitude who were disenfranchised by the military regime in power by relentlessly attacking the monumental injustices and inequality that were their regular practices. Fela and his band, renamed "Africa 70", returned to Nigeria. He created a recording studio
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1326
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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