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Part musician, part politician, part radical theorist, Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti was a towering figure in the global music scene. Sometimes referred to as the Bob Marley of African music, Kuti was prolific, confrontational, magnetic and uncompromising, both in his music and his personal life.

Born in a small town outside the Nigerian capital of Lagos in 1938, Kuti came from a middle-class family that had roots in anti-colonial politics, which radicalized Fela from his youth. Upon reaching college age, Fela traveled to Great Britain for what his parents had hoped and assumed would be training for a career in medicine. Fela, though, had other ideas and pursued a musical education instead.

By 1961, he had formed his first band in the UK, and returned to Nigeria in 1963 with a head full of ideas about a style that became expressed as Afro-beat, incorporating polyrhythmic Nigerian roots music with American-inflected soul. As the Sixties drew to a close, Fela took his sound to America, where he was influenced both by the music scene and the growing African American political consciousness. Having been introduced to the writings of the key African American theorists of the day, Fela decided to rename his band Nigeria 70 and incorporate more political lyrics into his compositions. After a confrontation with the American immigration authorities, Fela returned to Nigeria to continue and extend his musical journey with his once-again renamed band, Africa 70.

His confrontational style led him into difficulties with the Nigerian military government, who jailed him numerous times. In 1977, the military even attacked his walled-in residence, throwing his mother out of an upstairs window and fracturing Fela's skull; his mother later died of complications from the attack. His house was set on fire, destroying his recording studio and all the tapes and instruments it contained.

The Eighties started out more kindly for Kuti, but when Nigeria's short-lived civilian government was once again replaced by military rule in 1983, his struggles with the authorities continued. Sentenced in 1984 to a decade in prison for currency smuggling (a charge that many believe was fabricated), Fela spent the better part of a year in jail before being released, largely due to the aid of Amnesty International. Kuti and his band of the era, Egypt 80, resumed their searing musical indictments of the Nigerian government and what he perceived as the Thatcher-Reagan axis.

The Nineties saw a downturn in Kuti's musical proliferation, as he recorded just a couple of albums before being sidelined due to the effects of AIDS, to which he succumbed in 1997.

Fela's musical legacy has remained vital, and his influence is still widely felt throughout African music. His beats and grooves have also been discovered by the hip-hop generation, and his recordings are still much in demand on the dancefloor all over the world.

Did You Know? Fela formed a political party called M.O.P. [Movement Of the People] in the late Seventies.