After a successful run on Broadway where it garnered two Emmys, the musical Fela! has now started a national tour. I missed it during a trip to New York earlier in the year (tickets were too difficult to obtain), so I was thrilled to hear that it was coming to DC. Based on the life of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, the musical recounts how he developed his popular Afrobeat sound and used music to protest the corrupt Nigerian government. After the mass popularity of songs like “Zombie,” which lampooned the methods of the military, the government felt so threatened that in 1977 it attacked Kuti’s commune, beating men and women and killing his mother.
Music has a long history of use as political protest, often at great risk to performers. During the early years of the 20th century, Joe Hill rose to prominence with songs protesting the right to unionize and seek fair wages. During the 1960s, cultural upheavals from the civil rights movement and Vietnam War brought together the protest history of folk with the burgeoning youth-oriented music of rock, creating widely popular songwriting that questioned the status quo. The popularity of this music inspired Latin American musicians. In Brazil, Tropicalia fused rock with Brazilian musical elements and became a form of resistance to authoritarian rule. Caetano Velosa and Gilberto Gil were jailed, then in 1969 exiled for their “radical” music. It was also in 1969 that Kuti traveled to the United States and met Black Power organizer Sandra Isadore, which inspired him to turn his music into a form of protest.
Sahr Ngaujah brings Kuti uncannily to life in his spot-on performance. He nails the swagger, the defiance, the intense musicianship. In “Breaking It Down,” he describes the essence of Afrobeat, how it starts with the drums and the calling down to earth of the orishas — the Yoruban gods. The music is hypnotic and infectious, built out of repetitive patterns, powerful horns, call and response singing, and breathtaking breakdowns. It doesn’t so much go anywhere as build like a wave.
The musical is fashioned as a concert in the late 70s at The Shrine, Kuti’s club in Lagos, Nigeria. Kuti will mock the military, tell stories, dance with his beautiful dancers (many of whom he will later marry), and try to change a corrupt, oppressive society. Fela! captures the exuberant spirit of this music that risked everything to try to make a difference in the world.
