Fela Kuti

Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti; 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997) was a Nigerian musician and political activist, regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeat, which combines West African music with American funk and jazz (Wikipedia). Born in Abeokuta, he was the son of the women's rights leader Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. With his band Africa '70, featuring the drummer Tony Allen, he became a star in Nigeria in the 1970s, performing at his own club, the Afrika Shrine.

He was an outspoken critic of Nigeria's military governments and their target. In 1970 he founded the Kalakuta Republic, a commune that declared itself independent of military rule; it was destroyed in a 1977 army raid in which he was injured and his mother fatally hurt. He was jailed by the Buhari government in 1984 and released after twenty months; the Library of Congress country study describes his arrest as the symbol of that government's crackdown on critics.

His father, Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was an Anglican minister, school principal and the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers; his brothers Beko and Olikoye became well-known doctors. He was a cousin of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka: both descended from Josiah Ransome-Kuti, an Anglican clergyman and musical pioneer. He attended Abeokuta Grammar School, and in 1958 went to London to study music at Trinity College of Music, with the trumpet as his preferred instrument; there he formed the band Koola Lobitos, playing a fusion of jazz and highlife (Wikipedia).

He continued to record and perform through the 1980s and 1990s. Since his death his music has been widely reissued, and AllMusic has described him as "a musical and sociopolitical voice" of international significance (Wikipedia).