Femi Kuti: Afrobeat’s undisputed heir

When Femi Kuti was 18 years old, his father, afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, gave him the opportunity to perform a solo. The Nigerian musician had been playing with his father’s band since he was 16, so was no stranger to concerts. Today, Femi, now 49, inspires other types of shaking. His music enthrals listeners with its universal appeal, thanks to funky melodies, conscious lyrics and highly danceable rhythms.

Born in London and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Femi quit school in 1978 to play alto saxophone in his father’s band. This was the heyday of Fela and the genre he created – afrobeat. Femi essentially launched his career in 1985, when he was forced to front Fela’s 40-piece band, ‘Egypt ‘80’, during a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in the United States. His father had been arrested. Femi stepped up that night, wowing the packed crowd by blowing his saxophone in that rude, muscular and over-confident style that Fela fans had grown to know and love.

Distinct, with a familiar fervour

Femi ended up leading the band for the next two years but broke away to form his own group, ‘Positive Force’, upon his father’s return in 1986. A major turning point in Femi’s life was in 1997, when his father died of complications from AIDS. Since that day, Femi has been the foremost standard bearer of afrobeat, bringing it to new audiences.

Comparisons to Fela are inevitable. Like his father, he is a dynamic multi-instrumentalist and exuberant performer but with his own distinct afrobeat sound. Like his father, his lyrics are fuelled with socially conscious, anti-establishment fervour, albeit less controversially. Songs such as ‘Sorry sorry’, ‘Truth don die’ and ‘Day by Day’ lambast corruption, shed light on rampant poverty and other social ills and call on the African masses to strive for change and never forget their past.

Fela would be proud.

Okechukwu Umelo