Jad Abumrad

A good time, a good dance party, but let's actually make this an educational teaching moment about sort of African history.

And of course, the committee said, no, we just want you to play.

And so he stormed out and he created very famously a counter fest act so that.

As festec was happening across town, he would play every night at the shrine.

And, you know, if you are a black intellectual or a black musician at this moment and you're coming to Nigeria, the person you want to see is Fela Kuti.

And so you had all of these people coming to the shrine.

They had been flown in on the government's dime and they were suddenly going to Fela's shrine where he was talking badly about the government.

So from the dictator's point of view, this was terrible.

beyond enraging.

And it was only a day or two after the festival closed that you had this incredibly violent conflict between Fela and the authorities.

And many people that we spoke to point to that moment as a turning point, not just for Fela Kuti, but for Nigeria as a country.

The short version is that a few days after the festival closed, one of Fela's boys, one of the area boys as they were called, gets into a minor traffic conflict with a policeman.

He flees to Fela's compound.

The policeman chases him.

This leads to a standoff.

Fast forward, there are hundreds and then a thousand soldiers surrounding the compound.

Apparently, Fela gets on top of the roof

and he plays zombie down at the police on his saxophone.

And they fly into a rage.

They pour gasoline over everything, and they basically burn the house to the ground.