Jad Abumrad

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.

There was kind of, as it was put to me –

an eerie calm, and into that walks this guy.

As you have millions of young people looking for a new way, a new direction, in walks this guy with otherworldly confidence, making music that is just funky and danceable and trance-inducing and amazing.

And he becomes this instant magnet for lost souls and creates a compound almost overnight.

Hundreds of young people flocked to him.

And it's really hard to know how he got away with it because to declare your compound a sovereign republic a year after a civil war when a whole republic tried to secede and that was met with brutal force, it's kind of mind-bogglingly insane and courageous to do it.

But it's really hard to know how he got away with it.

I mean it's really – Fela's relationship with women is hard to wrap your mind around.

All I can say is that it was very important for us when we were reporting this series to speak with those women.

And by the way, I mean I see that particular marriage as a PR stunt and also kind of as an HR move.