LAGOS – The spirit of Nigeria’s legendary musician and activist Fela Kuti comes alive in Lagos this week with a Broadway musical putting the late Afrobeat icon back on the stage in his proud motherland.
The timing turns out to be perfect: President Goodluck Jonathan was declared winner of Nigeria’s elections on Monday, and Kuti was a harsh critic of the ruling elite in a country long held back by corruption.
From runs on Broadway and in London that drew rave reviews, the musical “Fela!” now comes home to raucous Lagos, aiming to invoke the passion of a man who was married to 27 women at the same time and formed a commune he declared independent from Nigeria.
“Fela is a tornado of a man,” said actor Sahr Ngaujah, who plays one of Africa’s most well-known musicians and introduced the world to a funky jazz style still popular after his death in 1997.
“He was unique… I have loved Fela and his music since I was a child,” the gap-tooted Sierra Leonean told AFP before a weekend rehearsal for the show opening in a luxury Lagos hotel on Wednesday for a six-day run.
As a tribute to Kuti and his fans last week, the show’s organisers put on a concert version of the production at the New Afrika Shrine, the club run by the musician’s family and which replaced his own now-defunct Shrine.
Tickets for that show sold for about seven dollars but they will go for a hefty 33-233 dollars for the upcoming ones, earning criticism in an impoverished but oil-rich country where Kuti was among the loudest defenders of the poor.
At Sunday’s rehearsal for the main run of shows, Ngaujah’s vocals and superb grasp of Kuti’s mannerisms and skill with the saxophone drew enthusiastic cheers from 200 invited guests — from fashion designers to academics.
