Jad Abumrad

He was the most popular Nigerian musician, most popular African musician at that point.

So they had to include him in some way.

He comes in and basically says, here are the nine things I need to be in place if I'm going to participate.

One of them was to feature Nigerian artists.

Another was to...

create a kind of educational curriculum around FESTAC that was all about African pride and African history.

There were all of these things that were basically around educating the people, not simply making this 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 Festak so that as Festak 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.

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.