Title:
RE- INVENTING FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI: RADICAL MUSICOLOGY AND POLITICAL EXPRESSIONISM, A DIALECTICAL INTERROGATION

Authors:
Adu, Funmilayo Modupe (Ph.D.)

Abstract:
Most African music explores folklores, histories and culture. They promote African ideas and ideologies and teach lessons and castigate offenders. African music is an exploration and exploitation of African culture, society, history and proverbial explorations; to tell tales, teach the young and old, divulge secrets, praise dignitaries and heroes, and divulge important coded information to the people. Music in Africa is a way of life; the man, his music, and society are synchronized to a point where you can barely understand one without a good understanding of the other. African and Nigerian music express the society; provide corrections and tech history and lessons. Some local dialectical conceptions are more realistic, sometimes with contradictory innocence as presentations become hash enough to connote meanness and impact( i.e. elicit shame, enough to make the offender commit suicide or go into self-exile).This interesting dimension is taken to a higher spatial spiritual and international dimension by Fela, who was born in Africa; Nigeria, and trained in England. Fela, a mixture of Afro European trained entertainer, but with a rebellious opposition to European cultural domination, termed his musical genre afro beats or afro pop. A combination of the European jazz and African cultural musical innovations, Fela’s music was one unique beauty in both composition and lesson and leaning. Fela’s music castigated the military, opposed human rights violations and promoted African traditional religion. It was a pattern originated from Yoruba cultural musical practices of making music out of societal ills and histories, a way of repository Knowledge, castigating offenders, praising heroes and redefining politics and society. This paper interrogates the ethnomusicology of Fela’s composition in redefining politics and society in Africa.

Keywords:
Fela Anikulapo, Dialectical Interrogation, Radical Musicology, Political Expressionism