Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti started out studying medicine in London, before turning to music and leaving it in a much better place than it was when he found it.
Along the way, he revolutionized world music, started his own political party, ran for president, survived torture and much more in his native Nigeria. Now award-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones has taken the larger-than-life legend and squeezed him into the comfy confines of New York’s 37 Arts.
And it’s about time.
Fela Kuti has yet to receive the type of homage he is due, although it sounds like Jones’ off-Broadway show Fela! is doing a pretty good job of getting the 21st century up to speed on his towering influence and political activism. This 1977 documentary did a stellar job of it last century, although it is definitely not as safe for work as Kuti’s 1983 jam session, at right, with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Cream’s Jack Bruce.
After all, Kuti was a crusader who so threatened the power structure that the Nigerian army tried everything it could to cow him, including throwing his mother out of a window to her death. That, and the fact that he had more wives than you have fingers, doesn’t ordinarily make for a crowd-pleasing musical.
But Fela wasn’t an ordinary man, which is why Jones’ dense, balletic biography of the man is as good a place as any to understand his mind and music.
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