Fela Kuti: African Freedom from Afrobeat to Afrobeats

Miles Davis famously described Fela Kuti (1938-1997) as “the future of music.” Beyoncé’s attempt “to do something that sounds like Fela” saw her compose an unpublished 20-track album. Arguably Africa’s most prolific and controversial artist of the twentieth century, Fela continues to be invoked as musical genius and as icon of popular struggle. This course invites students to explore the complexities of Fela’s art and activism. We mobilize his life/work as a springboard for examining emergent debates about African identity—from postcolonial masculinity to the creative logics of African cities, from contemporary African youth culture to the gendered politics of cultural memory.