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November 27, 2009

Fela Kuti's Long Road to Western Acceptance...

The Root | Read Full Story >

The Root:

It’s been a long, slow dance between the United States and Fela Anikulapo Kuti, one that started 40 years ago when the Nigerian musician first toured America and is finally picking up tempo today, with the Broadway show Fela! opening to raves this week and a movie biopic reportedly in the works.

That the Afrobeat star and political firebrand is reaching the wider American consciousness only now, 12 years after his death from AIDS, is just one more piece in the complicated life story of an exceedingly complicated and controversial man. Suffice it to say that the Broadway show didn’t spring out of nowhere. Rather, it’s the culmination of a number of factors: U.S. interest in the Nigerian superstar grew slowly, fed by the creation of new Afrobeat bands (led by the New York-based Antibalas), artistic exploration like 2003’s Fela Project and “Black President” exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the wider availability of his recorded music.




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