Fela is still speaking

TWENTY-NINE years after his death, Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulap-Kuti has once again reminded the world that some voices do not expire. They linger, provoke, unsettle and instruct, sometimes more powerfully in death than they ever could in life. In 2026, the Recording Academy conferred on the Afrobeat pioneer its Special Merit Award, also known as the Lifetime Achievement Award, making Fela the first African artist to receive the honour. Presented posthumously at a ceremony held on the eve of the main Grammy Awards, the gesture was understated yet profound: a global institution finally acknowledging that Fela’s music has outlived not only him, but also the political eras he challenged so ferociously.

This recognition did not emerge from a vacuum. In 2025, Fela’s incendiary 1976 album Zombie was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, cementing its place as one of the most consequential records of the 20th century. Zombie, a blistering satire of blind military obedience, was never merely an album. It was a public indictment. It was journalism set to rhythm, protest sharpened by brass, and truth delivered without apology or cushioning. In an era dominated by military rule in Nigeria, Zombie named the logic of authoritarianism and mocked it mercilessly. That the album continues to earn global recognition nearly five decades later is proof that its political diagnosis remains unsettlingly current, and that its artistic brilliance has not dimmed with time.

Fela deserves all the accolades now cascading in his direction. He remains one of the greatest cultural forces Nigeria has ever produced—an artiste who refused, in principle, to separate art from responsibility. At a time when many musicians sought safety in abstraction, metaphor, or romantic escapism, Fela stood bare-chested before power and spoke directly. He named names. He indicted systems. He challenged institutions. And he paid dearly for that courage. His life as a radical activist was marked by relentless persecution: arbitrary arrests, brutal beatings, prolonged detentions, censorship, and the infamous 1977 military raid on the Kalakuta Republic, his self-declared commune and artistic sanctuary. The attack left his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, herself a towering nationalist and feminist figure, fatally injured, a wound Fela never truly recovered from. This was the price of dissent in a militarised Nigeria, and Fela bore it publicly, defiantly, and repeatedly. His activism was not performative or fashionable; it was dangerous, isolating, and often lonely. Yet he persisted, wielding music as both shield and weapon.

Historically, Fela’s significance lies not only in what he said, but in how and where he said it. He created parallel institutions when the state failed: Kalakuta Republic functioned as a cultural, political and philosophical counter-space; the Afrika Shrine became a weekly civic forum where power was interrogated before a live audience. In a society where the press was cowed and civil liberties were fragile, Fela’s music became an alternative public record, an audible archive of state violence, economic injustice and postcolonial betrayal.

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It is also worth remembering that Fela did all this long before the conveniences of the modern age. There was no artificial intelligence to generate ideas, no social media to amplify dissent instantly, no streaming platforms to bypass gatekeepers. What Fela had was raw intellect, disciplined musical training, and an almost superhuman creative drive. He was not merely a “musician of the streets,” as he is sometimes reductively portrayed. He was a formally trained composer, a Cambridge-educated trumpeter, a meticulous band leader, and a serious student of jazz, classical harmony, Yoruba rhythms, highlife, and African diasporic sound traditions. His genius lay in synthesis: the ability to fuse complexity with accessibility, theory with groove, and scholarship with rebellion.

Above all, Fela was adept at speaking truth to power: not cautiously or diplomatically, but boldly, sometimes brutally. His music functioned as a living archive of resistance, documenting corruption, military excesses, colonial hangovers, and social hypocrisy with ruthless clarity. Songs like Coffin for Head of State, Sorrow, Tears and Blood, and International Thief Thief were not metaphors; they were political essays set to rhythm. In this sense, Fela was operating on an elevated plane—one that transcended entertainment and entered the realm of historical testimony.

While the Grammy recognition is significant, it is important to remember that Fela was never without local reverence. Long before international institutions caught up, Nigeria and the African diaspora had already canonised him in their own way. Felabration, the annual festival celebrating his life and music, has existed for decades, sustained not by corporate sponsorship alone but by popular devotion. This grassroots recognition speaks volumes. Fela did not need external validation to be monumental; he was already woven into the cultural and political consciousness of his people. That the Recording Academy has now chosen to honour him is both welcome and overdue. It reflects a broader, long-delayed expansion of global cultural memory; one that acknowledges Africa not merely as an influence on modern music, but as an originator of enduring, world-shaping art forms. In recognising Fela, the organisers have recognised Afrobeat not as a passing genre or aesthetic trend, but as a philosophy: a sound rooted in defiance, intellect, discipline and freedom.

This award is less about closure than it is about continuity. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is still speaking: through Zombie, through the global Afrobeat movement, through every artiste who understands that music can be both beautiful and dangerous, pleasurable and political. His body may have left the stage 29 years ago, but his voice remains unquiet, insistent, and alive, reminding us that art, when fearless, does not die.