Fela Kuti has been the subject of at least half a dozen documentaries, a Broadway play, a shelf of books, and at least one richly lauded podcast series. It’s hard to imagine a time when Fela would have been considered an obscure musician from a largely unknown continent. But that was very much the case in the seventies when bassist Melvin Gibbs heard his music blasting out of a record store on Nostrand Avenue in his native Brooklyn. The number of Americans who had even heard of Fela, already a superstar in his homeland, Nigeria, was vanishingly small.
But a penny dropped. This experience launched Melvin Gibbs on a musical and cultural journey. He has spent half a century exploring the topic of his new book, “How Black Music Took Over the World.”
This Monday (4/27), Melvin Gibbs returns to the WKCR studios for a Deep Focus on Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, with host Mitch Goldman. Will Mitch find live, unreleased recordings of Fela in the WKCR archives? Come on! We all know the answer to that question.
Tune in this Monday from 6pm to 9pm NYC time on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD or wkcr.org.
Or join us when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/. It will join over 400 promo-free episodes. Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted. It’s ad-free, all free, sponsor-free, totally non-commercial. We won’t even ask for your contact info.
Find out more about Deep Focus at https://mitchgoldman.com/about-deep-focus/ or join us on Instagram @deep_focus_podcast.
Photo credit: Fela Kuti on stage – promotional photo 19 July 1986 – Source- Billboard Jul 19, 1986 p. N-3 – Distributed by Celluloid Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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