What can I say? What can I write? I can’t think of a single thing that can explain the musical wonder that was Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His enduring legacy of musical composition and experimentation from the African point of view has blasted me sideways and forced a complete re-analysis of all I believed about music. The steady beat carries one into an auditory vision of a land long past. A look into the very core of what it means to be African. Needless to say, he was not popular with the powers that be.

Let’s start at the beginning of this aural voyage. It started with Nneka. I had gotten her album No Longer at Ease while in San Diego. This album became the soundtrack to the last 2 months I spent in San Diego. On track 15, titled “Deadly Combination”, Nneka samples Fela Kuti’s “Kalakuta Show” from the album Kalakuta Show. I specifically remember the first time I heard the horns blast through my speakers. I immediately restarted the song. I spent about the next 3 minutes simply listening to the intro of that specific track. It would not be until months later that I would find out the name of the tune that she sampled.

 I read about this peculiar man on Wikipedia and several other sources in order to get an understanding of his impact on the musical continuum. Plus, several artists that I hold in high regard mentioned him before I was aware of who he was. It was time to get in the know. It pains me to state this, but the discovery of Fela’s music did not take place for some time. I have a friend to thank for that final push over the edge into a harmonious collective dream. Shout out to Abel.

The next step was Pandora (Sidenote: I want to thank whoever it was that started the Music Genome Project. One of the greatest music discovery tools I have ever come across.). I opened up the Fela Kuti station and spent the next hour being thoroughly thunderstruck at the sounds flowing from my headphones and into my auditory input organs. Reverberating within the very quintessence of myself, prompting my memory to a universal serenity once known, but now forgotten. Aurally witnessing his compositions was a spiritual awakening of the likes I have experienced very infrequently in my 24 years. This is some intense shit.

The influence of his voice, through his very special revolutionary style of music, cannot be measured in any form that I can think of at this moment. All I can say is that Fela belongs at the top of the list of the many African men and women who have opened the minds of countless people across history and cultural barriers. My words do not have the capacity to accurately describe what it is like to sit down in a quiet place with a decent pair of headphones and immerse one’s self within the melodious resonance of Fela Kuti. Just listen to it and you’ll hear what I mean.