Terry Gross

Now, Jad has a terrific new series of episodes about the life and music of Fela Kuti.

He's known as the father of Afrobeat, but music was also Fela's weapon against the colonial values that tried to civilize Nigerians, erase African culture, and inflict punishment, often brutally, to keep Nigerians in line.

With Fela's danceable, almost trance-like grooves and political lyrics, he started a youth movement that rebelled against the repressive post-colonial government and military.

For that, he was jailed about a hundred times, beaten frequently, enduring multiple broken bones, leaving scars all over his body.

The military breached the electric fence that protected his compound, threw his mother out a second-story window, and burned his home to the ground.

He's also a problematic figure.

He fashioned himself into what you might describe as a cult leader.

He had 27 female backup singers and dancers and married all of them in one day.

He didn't believe AIDS was real, advised men not to use condoms, and even wrote a song about it.

And when he contracted AIDS, he denied that was possible.

We'll talk about all that and how his music continues to get people listening and dancing and rebelling against injustice.

Chad, welcome back to Fresh Air.

I really love this series, and I really learned a lot from it, so thank you.

You know, Phelous music was dance music, it was trance music, and it was music that creates Afrobeat, and it inspires a rebellious youth movement, rebelling against colonialist thinking, standing up against the authoritarian government, the police, the military.

I'd like to ask you to describe those elements of his music.

Yeah.

And part of the reason why his music made such a profound effect on young listeners was that this is stuff you weren't taught in school because the schools didn't emphasize or teach about African history or colonialism.

So here's what I'd like to do.

To give listeners who aren't familiar with Fela's music, I want to play something that will show the repetition, the layering, and then segue into his most political song that got him into the most trouble, which is called Zombie.

So to set it up, we're going to start with authority stealing.