Jad Abumrad

Yeah, I mean, I think, Terry, it wasn't really, it wasn't even until much later, 2025, that history was mandated to be taught in schools.

It was always seen as a sort of superfluous subject.

You know, our producer, Feifei Odudu, who we used, a field producer in Lagos, after a lot of the interviews would say, I had no idea because history isn't really taught.

And, you know, one of the sort of

One of the sort of patented moves of the colonial authorities is to remove the study of history as a way to create the sense in the subjects that their experience, their culture has no value.

And so the long tail of that is still going.

I guess every artist has their sort of anthem, and for Fela, Zombie is that song.

It came out in 1976, and this was at a time when he was getting into repeated clashes with the authority.

A few years prior, the military dictatorship waged a war on indecency, and under that guise, they would raid his compound repeatedly.

And Zombie was really the thing that really escalated or caused the government to escalate, I should say.

This was a song that, first of all, musically, it's just propulsive.

It doesn't do the fella thing that a lot of his songs do where it builds slowly.

This song just comes out of the gate 100 miles an hour.

And when he sings, he sings about how the military and the army and the police are basically brainless zombies.

I mean, he is a case study encouraged like no other.

So I think part of it was just the chutzpah that he brought to the cause.

I also think part of it was...

This is a moment after a brutal civil war that ended right about 1970, 1969, 70, where the Nigerian government basically starved an insurgent movement to try and secede from the Biafran Republic.

They – it was a horribly brutal war of starvation.

And in the wake of that, I think there was a lot of disillusionment on the part of young people.