Book Smart

Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics
Tejumola Olaniyan, professor of African languages and literature
Indiana University Press, 2004

Nigerian Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was one of the world’s most militant and controversial political musicians. He endlessly attacked both African and foreign leaders, as well as multinational corporations for what he saw as their exploitation of Africa.

His weapon? The “afrobeat,” composed of Yoruba rhythms, chants, jazz and James Brown.

“Roaring saxophones and cavernously reverberating drums cut deep grooves beneath and around catchy satirical swipes at oppressors,” Olaniyan says. “I myself was always a Fela fan, beginning in high school. I would save up my lunch money to buy his records. I began teaching him in some of my classes over a decade ago. I looked around for material on him and was deeply disappointed with what was available.”

The book that Olaniyan came to write indeed renders Fela in a more complex way than world music scholars previously had done.

This semester, Olaniyan is teaching a critical survey of African literary theory and a graduate course in postcolonial cultural studies. Regardless of who reads his new book, however, Olaniyan hopes that they realize through it that Fela was an organic intellectual, complex and multidimensional.

“I hope that the book shows its readers that people everywhere are actually much closer and socially related than geographical distance might suggest,” he says. “Fela was a musician who broke down barriers of musical traditions and political ideologies — you might not agree with him most of the time, but you won’t doubt the validity and necessity of his project, no matter where you live and what you believe.

“Great art and passionate politics can mix, in the hands of an ingenious artist.”