12: Bloodline Covers

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Episode 12: Bloodline Covers
Host: Jad Abumrad (Higher Ground)
Release Date: December 17, 2025

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Overview of Episode

This episode, “Bloodline Covers,” explores what happens to the legacy and burden of a revolutionary when they die—and the profound, complicated, and sometimes contradictory ways their family and musical “bloodline” carry that inheritance forward. Focusing on Fela Kuti’s children and grandson, the episode uses their memories and choices to examine how the foundational tensions in Fela’s life—between public and private, freedom and responsibility, preservation and reinvention—echo through generations. The episode highlights how art and music serve as vehicles of legacy, trauma, and healing, and how those left behind forge their own paths amid immense familial and cultural expectations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Family After Fela: The Center Cannot Hold

• The Metaphor of Gravity: Host Jad Abumrad frames the episode with the image of a large family held together by a single patriarch. When Fela dies, all the “planets that orbited that one sun have to find new gravity.” (00:35)

  • “When the mix of art and activism got too hot, the state pulled out its guns, and literally opened fire.”—Episode description

• Setting the Scene: Jad’s journey to visit Yenny Kuti in Lagos—visual contrasts of the bustling city and the peaceful family compound, symbolizing the split between public legacy and private pain. (01:40–03:40)

2. The Children’s Memories: Shared and Divergent

Yenni Kuti: The Queen Mother

• On Fela’s Role as a Father:

  • “Fela was a father to everybody... There was no special treatment. As a child, you are treated just the same as everybody else... Not because you are his child, you are special.” —Yenni Kuti (04:16, 04:57)

• Bittersweet Nostalgia:

  • She recalls simple joys, like Fela taking the kids swimming, contrasted with later years when fame made their father unreachable. (05:41–06:55)

• Conflicted Reflection:

  • “I would not have it any other way because I listened to his lectures. They opened my mind. So I idolized him as well. Loved his ideas, I loved his teachings.” —Yenni (07:27)

Sheyoun & Femi Kuti: Chaos, Danger, and Survival

• A Childhood of Excess Freedom and Danger:

  • Femi remembers driving to school at age 12 and learning to evade police. (11:27, 11:36)
  • Sheyoun talks about growing up “walking through a haze of marijuana smoke every day,” and knowing “what every kind of gun sound like” by age ten. (12:04)

• Trauma and Self-Awareness:

  • “Come and tell me how I am normal. Come and tell me that I'm truly normal.” —Sheyoun Kuti (12:38)
  • Femi’s reflection: “My eldest son, he believes I'm traumatized like Yenni.” (12:44)

• Generational Divide:

  • Both sons express, “I would never…” in reference to letting their own children endure what they experienced (13:08–13:18).

3. The Death of Fela: A Family, a Commune, and a Band in Crisis

• After Fela’s Death: Emergency Family Meeting

  • Vivid scene of an enormous family meeting: “The whole family and the whole band…40 or 50 people.” (16:02)
  • The difficulty of forging unity among children of different mothers, and the politics of representation within the family. (16:14–16:41)

• Closing the Commune; Disbanding the Band:

  • Sheyoun: “Two meetings were held. One was held to tell the people in Kalakuta Republic that they had to leave…The next meeting was that the band had to leave.” (17:19–17:59)

• Sheyoun’s Bid to Keep the Band Alive:

  • At only 15, he volunteers to lead the Egypt 80 band, insisting that “we still had the shrine, we had the equipment.” (18:27–21:32)
  • “So my dad didn’t have an opener. That was him seeing his opening act.” (20:31)
  • His motivation: out of both loyalty and defiance—“It was my way of doing something for him. And also giving him the finger. Both things can be true at the same time.” (22:13–22:14)

4. Inheritance and Evolution: Afrobeat's Future

Sheyoun Kuti: The Conservationist

• “Afrobeat is a movement...We are just like...at best, custodians.” —Sheyoun (24:31–24:53)
• He sees his role as conserving the tradition—but also experiments with side hip-hop projects under an alter ego (“Fuck Them Kids” project). (25:40–26:06)

Femi Kuti: Self-Taught Survivor

• “I set out a path for myself...then it seemed like a horror movie, you know.” —Femi on his disciplined, insular approach (10:26–11:07)
• He describes learning music by necessity, teaching himself everything because Fela was unavailable or uninterested in formal instruction. (30:17–31:22)
• “If my children are not better than me, then as a father, I believe I failed.” —Femi, reflecting on his hopes for his son (36:36)

Maday Kuti: The Next Generation

• Maday—Femi’s son—embodies a new, gentler mode of transmission:

  • “My dad is the opposite. His kids are the most special people. He's protective…supportive to his children first and then the world comes after that.” —Maday (34:04)

• Maday recalls his own rebelliousness and how his father insisted he finish school (contrasting Fela’s laissez-faire approach). (34:38–34:50)

• On legacy:

  • “It feels almost like communicating something that is more than myself…I am carrying their message.” —Maday (37:52)

• Onstage, Maday performs the music of all three generations:

  • “You're not just doing covers, you're doing bloodline covers. It’s very special.” —Maday (38:27)

5. Legacy as Choice: The Episode’s Closing Reflection

• Persistent Contradictions:
  • Jad’s final thoughts highlight “the coexistence of struggle and joy, suffering and smiling…All of these contradictory realities coexisting and then repeating endlessly, like the cycles of the music.” (end)
• Hope Amid the Struggle:
  • The image of Yenni and Femi play-fighting, like children, in the old family compound — a moving emblem of resilience and hope despite hardship.
  • “Maybe this is Fela’s true legacy, that we all still have a choice…Which part of the story are we going to focus on? The downward spiral or the persistence that’s always there with it. Which part of the groove are you going to move to?” —Jad Abumrad (closing)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Yenni Kuti, on her father's universal paternity:

  • “Fela was our father, not just your father. The only difference between you and I is you have another father that you can go and meet and call father or daddy. I don't have another father. That's my only father.” (04:57)

• Sheyoun Kuti, on abnormal childhood:

  • “Come and tell me how I am normal. Come and tell me that I'm truly normal.” (12:38)

• Femi Kuti, on self-reliance:

  • “Fela left a lot of things to chance. He took me out of high school…He used to rehearse in the sitting room…He was supposed to teach me the trumpet, but he never had the time…So nobody ever taught me.” (29:20–30:14)

• Sheyoun Kuti, on Afrobeat preservation:

  • “…At best, custodians.” (24:53)
  • “Classical music has not changed much in 500 years. Afrobeat is 40 years, 50 years old. I don't want to make it something else.” (25:18)

• Femi Kuti, on his hopes for his son:

  • “If my children are not better than me, then as a father, I believe I failed.” (36:36)

• Maday Kuti, on generational message:

  • “It feels almost like communicating something that is more than myself. … I am carrying their message.” (37:52)
  • “You're not just doing covers, you're doing bloodline covers. It’s very special.” (38:27)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:35–01:40: Opening metaphor: family as planets around Fela.
• 03:39–04:57: Yenni Kuti on growing up as Fela’s daughter.
• 11:20–13:18: Femi and Sheyoun’s childhood memories; trauma and “I would never…”
• 16:02–17:59: The family gathers after Fela’s death; decisions to disperse commune and band.
• 18:27–21:32: Sheyoun’s bid to lead the Egypt 80 band.
• 24:28–25:40: Sheyoun on being a “custodian” of Afrobeat and musical conservation.
• 29:20–31:22: Femi’s self-taught journey in music.
• 32:24–34:04: Introduction of Maday, third generation, softer mode of inheritance.
• 36:36–37:37: Femi on his children surpassing him and on teaching Maday.
• 38:27: Maday on “bloodline covers.”
• End: Closing reflections—hope and coexistence of struggle and joy.

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode balances reverence, candor, and vulnerability. The Kuti children speak with both admiration and ambivalence about their upbringing. Jad Abumrad brings a poetic, inquisitive narration, weaving personal observation with broader cultural and historical context. Conversation flows between humor, pain, pride, and philosophical reflection—underscoring the enduring complexity of inheritance, music, and resistance.

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Conclusion

“Bloodline Covers” is a profound meditation on what it means to inherit a legacy of rebellion—and whether it’s a gift or a burden. Through intimate interviews, the episode reveals how Fela’s children and grandson shape their identities in the shadow of a singular, world-changing figure, and how they each fashion new meanings from the contradictions left in his wake. The legacy is not simply preserved—it is reinterpreted, resisted, and played anew, echoing both the sorrow and the joy at the heart of Afrobeat.

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Key Voices:
Yenni Kuti (eldest daughter), Femi Kuti (son), Sheyoun Kuti (youngest son), Maday Kuti (grandson)
Host: Jad Abumrad

(For reference to specific segments, see timestamps above.)

Transcript

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Listen, take me to court at some point, you know, we discuss how when I was a kid, I was just walking through a haze of marijuana smoke every day, all day, from the time I was born. Come and tell me how I am normal. Come and tell me that I'm truly normal.

[Femi Kuti]

Brothers and sisters, the secret of life.

[Chad Abumrad]

Is to have no fear.

[Femi Kuti]

We all have to understand that.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is Fela Kutifierno, man. I'm jad Abumrad. Chapter 12 bloodline covers. Here's a situation many of us will recognize. You are part of a family, a large, unruly family. Like all families, it's dysfunctional. Doesn't make any sense, except that it is centered around one person, a matriarch or a patriarch. And as long as that person is there, things hold. But then one day, you lose that person. They pass away. And suddenly all the planets that orbited that one sun have to find new gravity. This is that story about a moment a parent dies and all the siblings gather in a hospital room to try and figure out what to do now. And because it's a hard decision, and because they all experience different sides of the person who's no longer there, they don't really agree. Now, imagine in that hospital room, one of the walls has flown off into space. And on the other side, you see millions of faces peering in who are also ready to weigh in. How do you move forward in that situation? Let's start with Yenny. Yenny lives in a different part of Lagos. Getting to her was interesting. Coming in from the mainland, you go over a small bridge, and then there's a significant vibe shift. Suddenly the roads go from concrete to very bright red dirt. And in the middle of these red roads are sinkholes the size of. I don't know, they could swallow a car. They actually do swallow the motorcyclists, at least temporarily, that zip by us on either side and invariably come to our window and wave. And then say, hello, hey. They'd say, hey, oyimbo, which means, hey, white people. Spoken with no malice. And then they would disappear out of our view, go down into the crater, into the muddy water. A few seconds later, come back up, back into view. And then they'd say again, oyimbo, it's me. They can see. It was like a game. Disappear. Come back up, Oyimbo. Disappear. Come back up. Made me realize, oh, this is not a neighborhood where people like us come. It was chaotic. It was noisy. Not the place I would expect to find Fela's eldest daughter. But then we turned off the road gate swung open and so quiet. We were in another world. Courtyard, big tree, bunch of friendly dogs. When Fela died, his eldest daughter, Yenni Kuti, stepped in to help the family decide what to do.

[Yenni Kuti]

Hi, Jack.

[Chad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Yenni Kuti]

How are you?

[Chad Abumrad]

Very well. Nice to meet you. It's an honor to meet you. Meeting Yenny, you feel like you're meeting a queen mother. Even if you didn't know who she is, there's something about her presence. Everyone in our crew started using honorifics when speaking with her. She was dressed that day in a blue Nigerian print dress and matching headscarf that evoked water as though she had wrapped herself in the very seas. And even they bent to her will. How was he as a father? Wow.

[Yenni Kuti]

I think, honestly and truly, I think that Fela was a father to everybody. Not if I don't think he should have had biological children. I think he should have just continued to be a father to the nation because everybody. There was no special treatment. As a child, you are treated just the same as everybody else. Not because you are his child, you are special. So I think.

[Chad Abumrad]

That must have been very confusing.

[Yenni Kuti]

What I tell people today is for me, because when you say, oh, if Fela was my father. No, Fela was our father, not just your father. So I would tell them, I'll say, that's the problem, Fela. It's your father and my father. The only difference between you and I is you have another father that you can go and meet and call father or daddy. I don't have another father. That's my only father.

[Chad Abumrad]

At this point, producer Ruby Walsh chimed in. When you think about your fondest memories with your dad when he's being a father to you, is there something that stands out?

[Femi Kuti]

A memory that you look back on especially fondly?

[Yenni Kuti]

He used to take us swimming, that we used to love it. We were kids then. We. I mean, he made a point of taking us swimming every week. And I remember once when he couldn't afford. Afford it. And he was so sad, he was so broke and he couldn't afford to pay the tickets to get into the pool. And we were so sad. And I had a penny and I said, ah, fella, look, I have one penny. And he just looked at me and smiled. No, that penny won't work.

[Chad Abumrad]

This was before he became.

[Yenni Kuti]

Before he became famous for calico, everything. Yeah. By the time he became famous, you go to a place with him and he's mobbed, besieged, bam, Taken away. They've carried him and they've carried him out of your sight. You are looking. You can see your father far away. You can't reach him, you know, you can't reach him. Used to be very. Ah, man. Wow. This is surreal.

[Chad Abumrad]

It's hard to describe the stillness around Yenny as she says that when she gets quiet, everything around her gets quiet. As if her nerves run through the room, out into the courtyard, into the two other buildings of the compound. Even her dogs get still and then whimper when she's lost in a thought she doesn't want to be in. It felt to me in that pause, that she was silently assessing conflicting memories and figuring out which to weight heavier in the balance.

[Yenni Kuti]

I don't know if as a child I resented it. I don't think so. I think. I would not have it any other way. I would not have it any other way because I listened to his lectures. They opened my mind. And so I idolized him as well. Loved his ideas, I loved his teachings.

[Chad Abumrad]

You know, I took in what she just said. Dad shouldn't have had biological kids, therefore I shouldn't exist. And yet I wouldn't have it any other way. That tension, whatever it is, I would hear it echoed in a very different way when we met her brothers.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

You guys want something to drink?

[Chad Abumrad]

I'm okay.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Beer, water? Whiskey?

[Chad Abumrad]

Whiskey. Shane Kuti is Fela's youngest son.

[Femi Kuti]

Jed or Jed.

[Chad Abumrad]

Jed. J A D Femikuti. Thank you. It's Lebanese. It's just short. Stands for Jad. It's his oldest. They're 22 years apart. Both lead their own Afrobeat bands. Both play around the world. They are endlessly compared to each other and contrasted with each other in the Nigerian press. And they do carry very different energies. If Yenny is stillness, Seyoun, who is.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Out there disturbing these dogs is the opposite. Is the dog outside.

[Chad Abumrad]

He's like a. He's like a wire that can't quite contain its electricity. The day we visited him at his house in Lagos, he had a giant dog chained outside. Hundred pound dog that had just put someone in the hospital and taken a big bite out of his car. That sounded like some angry dog right there. Like a dinosaur.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I'm saying when I look at what we call the music industry and periodically.

[Chad Abumrad]

Through our conversation, he would say something in answer to a question.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

In a world where the oppressed people's income is diminished, the music that spread speaks for them, becomes more and more niche, more and more out of reach.

[Chad Abumrad]

He would say a thing, hear himself say it.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Uh oh.

[Chad Abumrad]

Lyrics and then bolt up off the.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Couch where's my pen. I just came up with the greatest rhyme. More and more niche, more and more out of reach. Bring my pen, bitch. Oh my God, another one. I'm inspired. This girl, when you hear it in the song, you're like, ah. He came up with that during our interview. Check on that table, there should be just, just a little notepad. I just scribble in it.

[Chad Abumrad]

Femi different temperature. When we went to see Femi, he actually lives in one of the adjoining buildings in the compound where we met Yenny. He came out with a towel wrapped around his neck, a trumpet in hand and a dour look on his face because he just had a mediocre practice session. How are you feeling today?

[Femi Kuti]

I'm always tired. I'm always tired because I still try to do my physical exercise and keep fit every day. I still try to practice every day, six hours, any day I don't do it. I feel completely lost and helpless. And then I got seven children who bother my life. So I'm always very stressed. I set out a path for, for myself and I don't like going out of that path because then it seemed like a horror movie, you know.

[Chad Abumrad]

Femi struck me as the middle ground between Yenni and Chaeyun. The live wire that he has managed to insulate through sheer force of will. Can we, can we talk about your childhood? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I like talking about my childhood.

[Chad Abumrad]

Okay. Where they converge. Tell me about your childhood is when they start to reminisce growing up. That's Femi.

[Femi Kuti]

And I see my 12 year old sons. I'll say, must have been madness. I was driving a car at 12, man.

[Chad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Femi Kuti]

I was driving a car to school. Everybody will know me. I still remember the horn of the Volvo. I still remember that one. I know police will chase me. And Kalakuta had this big gate. I would run, put two pillows, help. I won't. Then they open the gate, I'll just drive. Screeching to the command, they'll lock the door. Police will say, one day we'll catch you. You know, the freedom was just too much, you know, interesting, too much.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Take me to court at some point, you know, we discuss how when I was a kid, I was just walking through a haze of marijuana smoke every day, all day from the time I was born, you know, I mean, by the time I was 10, I knew what every kind of gun sound like by living in my dad's house. Can't tell you how many times the police army park in front of our house surrounded and Open. This is not tear gas. Like live ammunition. Like riddle the house with bullets. Just, oh my God. So come and tell me how I am normal. Really, come and tell me that I'm truly normal.

[Femi Kuti]

My eldest son, he believes I'm traumatized like Yenni.

[Chad Abumrad]

There's this thing that seems to happen when Seyoun and Femi think about their upbringing. They remember their childhood. Then they think about their own kids. Now they put the two childhoods next to each other. And then they make a proclamation which usually starts with the words, I would never.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I would never let my daughter.

[Femi Kuti]

I would never even think of letting my child. You know.

[Chad Abumrad]

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[Chad Abumrad]

This is Fela Kuti. Fear no man. August 2, 1997. The Planetary Realignment begins. Fela dies. The family is caught off guard. Even though he'd been sick for a while, his unearthly confidence had allowed the family to pretend that nothing was wrong. And so they'd been robbed of the time to prepare. In the wake of the news, Yenni calls an emergency family meeting.

[Yenni Kuti]

All of us were in the room. We had a meeting with the mothers and the kids.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

This meeting was before his funeral. Oh, my God, that was a crazy time.

[Chad Abumrad]

Who was in the room, by the way, for that meeting?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

The whole family and the whole band.

[Chad Abumrad]

Which was a lot of people. There were six kids there, his wives, members of his band. So in total, probably about 40 or 50 people.

[Yenni Kuti]

And Kunle was nominated to represent the younger kids because there was this distrust of Femi and I. So Kunle was now going to represent the younger kids. Femi and I represented everybody. But they just still thought, maybe because we were so much older, I don't know politics.

[Chad Abumrad]

One of the complexities in the room was that everyone was born to different mothers. Yenni and Femi were born to Fela's first wife, Remy, the. The woman who was there before it all. When the commune started and Fenla started taking on all these girlfriends, she moved out into her own house and took Yenny and Femi with her and tried.

[Femi Kuti]

To protect them, protect us from the environment he created. That was. That created itself around him.

[Chad Abumrad]

He says she gave them the ability to separate when they needed to. Sheun and the other kids were born to wives from the commune era, so they didn't have that. So between the young kids and the old kids, there was a difference.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Two meetings were held. One was held to tell the people in Calakuta Republic that they had to leave because nobody was going to pay for their upkeep in Kalakuta anymore. You know, only the essential staff that they needed to keep the house going.

[Chad Abumrad]

If Fela was everyone's father, this was the moment that they, as a family, would take him back. Coming out of the meeting, Fela's commune would be shut down. The. The newspapers would fill with sad accounts from the hundreds of people who lived there and who'd been on Fellah's payroll for years and now were suddenly homeless.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

And also that the band. The next meeting was that the band had to leave. This was like a week after his death.

[Chad Abumrad]

Many of the members of his Band Egypti were in the room for that meeting. Some of them had been with fellah since 1960 in Kululubitos. When the question came up of what to do with the band, Koye Fela's uncle made a speech about how it is time to shut down the band. They can't afford it, it's run its course. And many members of the band nodded in agreement. When he finished, 15 year old Shayun raised his hand.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

You know, my dad always took us on tour. Every time, everywhere, every show. I'd been around the band so much, you know, and had been around him, you know, and there's nothing more inspirational than seeing an artist backstage after a show, you know, nothing beats that energy of just being the man. Everybody wants to say hello. This person is the center of the world at this moment, you know, And I'm like, this is. That's the guy. I want to be that guy. How hard can it be? What is, what is he doing? He's not doing anything. He goes on stage, he sing, he dance around. I can't do that shit, you know. And by the time I was eight, I wanted to do it, you know.

[Chad Abumrad]

When he was eight, about seven years before this particular meeting, he had gone up to his dad and said, listen.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Fella, I want to start singing too. I want to sing. I'm ready to start now. He's like, okay, wait. We're on tour to like wait. In fact, he gave me an audition when I. Can you sing? I was like, yeah, okay, sing a song.

[Chad Abumrad]

Wait, wait. Take me into that moment. What did you sing?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Sorrow, Tears and Blood.

[Chad Abumrad]

Do you have any recordings of you singing?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Funny enough, there's a video of me that has been going viral. Let me see. I'm sure somebody.

[Chad Abumrad]

He pulled it up on his phone. Oh my God. On the screen, an eight year old Chaeyoun in baggy pants jumps around the stage.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

See the bounce, fam. Look at that bounce.

[Chad Abumrad]

It is a uniquely strange thing to see an 8 year old sing a song about how his father and his entourage were beaten and raped. Did you have a. I mean, did you have a sense of what you were singing?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yeah.

[Chad Abumrad]

I mean, you understood the lyrics?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I understood very well. Maybe many 8 year olds didn't, but I did. So that's how I got my first job, you know, it was some nepotism.

[Chad Abumrad]

What was the job? So that from that moment that was me.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I. So my dad didn't have an opener. That was him seeing his opening acts. Right now, before we bring Fela on stage.

[Yenni Kuti]

We want to present to you.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I started opening the shows for him, the youngest sensation.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is from a concert in Atlanta in 1984. And you would you always sing that song?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yeah, so. But I added to my. Come on, man. I added to my repertoire as time went on, you know.

[Chad Abumrad]

So getting back to that meeting where.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

He raises his hand, I just stood up and objected. I just said, what if? What if I kept playing with the band, you know, because we still had the shrine, we had the equipment and the family was unanimous and say, even if you are in, the band doesn't want to invest money in the band or pay for it. So you just have to keep what you make. I can keep what I make. Keep what you make.

[Chad Abumrad]

Okay, wait. So just so I understand, that means that the band is now fully independent.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yeah.

[Chad Abumrad]

Means you pay for the band. Did you have a sense of how you would do that?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I play music.

[Chad Abumrad]

Was Femi in the room for this conversation?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yeah, everybody. Femi had his own band. He had the positive force going, you know. I don't think he was interested in the Egypt 80 as well. My dad had always, like, said that the band was the most important thing to him in his life. And he used to say it and intentionally spite me by saying, even more than my children. That thing he said was what inspired me to work with the band after he died. It was my way of doing something for him.

[Chad Abumrad]

Can you like.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

And also giving him the finger. Both things can be true at the same time. Like, you know, even my children. We are one of your children going to keep this, your important thing going. Dickhead band shrunk out. Maybe 13 or 14 people. Everybody left because nobody thought the band.

[Chad Abumrad]

Could, you know, I'm trying to imagine the first shown Kuti Egypt 80.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I remember it vividly.

[Chad Abumrad]

What was that?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

10 people in the shrine. I counted them from the stage, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, minus my friends, you know. And I'll just close my eyes all through the show and just imagine that the shrine was full of people and I would perform like that.

[Chad Abumrad]

All of this brought up an interesting question for me as a dad. Let's call it a question about patrilineal lineage. Fela very consciously broke with his father and his father's father, his grandpa, remember, recorded the first album in all of Nigeria. And what did he release? Hymns taught to him by British missionaries. Fella wanted to undo that in every possible way. His lifestyle, his music was surgically designed to alienate the past. If you're the son Of a patrilineal destroyer. What do you do? Do you destroy like your dad? That is, destroy him or do you do the opposite? That question came to mind talking with both Seyoun and Femi. With Sheyoon, it was about the music. After that first empty show, the crowds did start to show up. We actually saw him play in Brooklyn to thousands of people. Cha eun has recorded six albums with Egypt 80 and been nominated for a Grammy. He's collaborated with Lenny Kravitz, but Brian Eno, Carlos Santana and the sound. Like his sound. It's interesting. I asked him about that. Like, how does he think about his music versus his dad's?

[Femi Kuti]

How.

[Chad Abumrad]

What is Afrobeat to you?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Uh huh. Listen, Afrobeat is a movement.

[Chad Abumrad]

But I think we.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

We are just like. I think really. I don't want the world to see it as ours in the sense that we own. It is ours in the sense that we protect custodians. We are at best, custodians.

[Chad Abumrad]

Custodians is an interesting word.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yes.

[Chad Abumrad]

He talked about his responsibility towards his dad's music as something like a museum curator.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I'm a conservationist.

[Chad Abumrad]

Or like an orchestra that only plays Brahms. Like nobody questions that orchestra because they're European. And you just assume classical music, it's worthy of being preserved. Well, so is Afrobeat. That's his point.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Classical music has not changed much in 500 years. Afrobeat is 40 years, 50 years old. I don't want to make it something else.

[Chad Abumrad]

That's not what I thought you were going to say.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

That's interesting, but that's what it is. So that's. That's duty.

[Chad Abumrad]

But then as soon as he said that, he grabbed his phone and played us one of his side projects.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I need to play you my hip hop project.

[Chad Abumrad]

So that's not Egypt 8.

[Femi Kuti]

That's just.

[Chad Abumrad]

What do you call that project?

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Fuck Them Kids. That's the name of the ep. I'm talking to my PR to see how we announce. I can't announce Ashe on Kuti because he's going to fuck up my other project. So I have to create like a alter ego to do this project.

[Chad Abumrad]

It sounds like you're. You're two musical minds at once.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Yeah.

[Femi Kuti]

You scaled the sheer cliff face, battling frostbite, running low on oxygen. The wind pierced your skin and every inch was agony. You reached heights no other human had.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

Before.

[Femi Kuti]

While getting nowhere at airport security. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best selling action titles on audible.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is Felikuti Fear.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

No, man, I don't want to make it something else.

[Chad Abumrad]

That's not what I thought you were going to say.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

That's interesting, but that's what it is.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah, that was sheyoun. Our conversation with Femi went somewhere quite different. We spoke to Femi many times while we were in Lagos. And each time he would start out very, very frosty with us and then warm up and start to laugh and then immediately berate himself for letting his guard down.

[Femi Kuti]

I don't want to talk anymore. I don't want to talk to anybody about nothing anymore. I'm tired of talking because I'm sounding like a crack record and I don't want to talk anymore.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

I.

[Chad Abumrad]

We have a lot of questions, but you tell me. You tell me. You.

[Sheyoun Kuti]

You.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is your. You kick us out whenever you're. You're done. You get the sense with Femi that like his mother, I am very, very.

[Femi Kuti]

Much like my mother. Paranoid or very, very careful with many.

[Chad Abumrad]

Things, like his mom. In every situation he imagines the worst thing that could happen and then does anticipatory damage control to prevent it from happening. And the more we talked with him, the more that attitude made sense.

[Femi Kuti]

If I used to hear the sirens, I used to panic. I just knew. I don't even know how I know. And when I moved to Calacuta, every time the arrest comes to arrest. Oh, they're coming to arrest us. We are going to get beaten today.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yay. Similar to Seyoun, who sang about things no 8 year old should have to think about, much less sing about Femi, from the time he could stand, would go over to his dad's house.

[Femi Kuti]

It was like a big party every day. 200 people having fun to join in the fun.

[Chad Abumrad]

And then inevitably a raid would happen and he'd end up getting the snot beaten out of him. One story he told us that I can't get out of my mind is after a raid, some soldiers told him to lay down on sharp gravel. Ah.

[Femi Kuti]

They now told me to swim on.

[Chad Abumrad]

Gravel and pretend it's a swimming pool.

[Femi Kuti]

Oh yeah? What are you seeing? I said stones. He said, hey, stone. This is not stone. This is swimming pool.

[Chad Abumrad]

He seemed to like to tell those stories, but his mood shifted noticeably. When I asked him what I thought was a pretty simple question about school.

[Femi Kuti]

He kept saying we didn't need this western education. Don't worry, he'll find his way. You know, he was always. Fela left a lot of things to chance. He took me out of high school Baptist Academy in protest because Obasanjo put soldiers to flog the students or discipline the students. He took me out in protest, so I didn't go to school for about some months.

[Chad Abumrad]

He took you out of school to protest the government?

[Femi Kuti]

Yes, for other parents. And we fell way, way back in school. And when we asked for teachers, he would never look. Fela was so rich. The tuition fee was ten naira, but Felaw refused to pay, you know, till they brought us out of assembly. The children that have not paid their school fees, you know, I'll be one of the first, you know, and to get him to pay was, please pay, you know. So as we grew older, I said to question, what. What am I doing with my life? He used to rehearse in the sitting room. He used to play the trumpet. At that time, he was supposed to teach me the trumpet, but he never had the time. So his cousin Okola started to teach me the scale of C and then he disappeared. So nobody ever taught me.

[Chad Abumrad]

When he was 18, he says he kind of played the sax barely.

[Femi Kuti]

I was such a terrible saxophonist.

[Chad Abumrad]

Couldn't get a good tone out of the instrument, couldn't read music. Didn't know what a time signature was. That year, 1980, Roy Ayers comes to town. Roy Ayers, as in the My Life, My life, My Life in the Sunshine. That song, Massive Star. He and Fela decide to make an album together. And on a whim, Fela pulls Femi into the studio.

[Femi Kuti]

He just assumed I knew how to play the sax. I don't know how. He said, oh, yeah, play, play, play how? Oh, you can do it, you can do it. And I'm there shaking like a leaf. Then he gave me another very complicated one. One perambulator. Ah, you know, you know. So probably it was his own way of education. Just say take. You must know it. I must know it. Yes. I must know it. Okay. I must know it. I must know it. Yes. So I started to listen to my jazz. Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. Decided to try to teach myself how to read music. Made it point to always do a minimum of six hours practice on my sax. I taught myself everything.

[Chad Abumrad]

In 1984, when Femi was 22, Fela gets thrown in jail on trumped up charges of currency smuggling. Desperate to keep the band together, he sends word that Femi should now lead the band, which he does. Fellow would stay in jail for almost.

[Femi Kuti]

Two years by the time he came out. I was too far, independent. So I left, started my band, Positive Force Set.

[Chad Abumrad]

Your son.

[Femi Kuti]

Positive Force has been going since then.

[Chad Abumrad]

Since then? He's released 14 albums, been nominated for a Grammy, toured the world many times over. And in 1995 he and his wife Funke gave birth to a son, Maday. In here we come to a patrilineal break that's arguably no less radical than anything Fela did. It hits you the moment Maday walks in the room. How are you doing today?

[Maday Kuti]

I'm good, thank you. My voice is very soft, so you might. Okay.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah, it looks good. I was actually going to say you have a very good radio voice.

[Maday Kuti]

Do I?

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Maday Kuti]

I don't know if you consider it.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah. Made is Femi's son and Fela's grandson. We met him in a green room at the shrine. He walked in and got settled on the couch for our interview with an ease that was kind of shocking actually. A few days before meeting him, I had actually read the book Unbearable Lightness of Being. And in that book there's a description of a moment when a woman walks into a room, takes her hat off, I believe, and does it with such casual self possession that as the author put it, an entire oppressive political reality was destroyed by that one gesture. There's something about Maday, his presence, that called that description to mind. If Yenni is the Queen Mother, Maday exudes a delicate nobility.

[Maday Kuti]

As a child, I think I was very troublesome. I used to skate around the shrine. I used to skateboard in between people's tables. I used to jump over tables that weren't in use. I was a nightmare for every adult except my father.

[Femi Kuti]

He was wild.

[Yenni Kuti]

Wild.

[Femi Kuti]

He was a child, you know, and as he grew older, he became subtle, you know, very peaceful being. Even with that, I still let him be. Just hoping one day he'll be able to defend himself on the streets. One day he'll be able to grow up and be his own man. But at the same time he's so humble, he's so relaxed. Definitely is much better than I am.

[Maday Kuti]

I always tell my dad that I could not have survived as Fella's son. Everybody had to call him by his first name, including his children, because he didn't want preferential treatment in the. In the house. My dad is the opposite. His kids are the most special people. He's protective, he's support supportive to his children first and then the world comes after that. So it's. It's very. I can survive very well under my father, under Fella. I don't think that I've lasted a year, maybe.

[Chad Abumrad]

Ma Day also told me that he hated school, was constantly Getting in trouble like his grandfather didn't understand the point.

[Maday Kuti]

School was truly hell for me and I tried to leave many times. My dad didn't let me. I think it was because he thought it was. It was important that I finish it because he knew I would want to do higher education in music. So I needed those qualifications.

[Chad Abumrad]

I mean, part of your dad's insistence on you going to school feels to me maybe in reaction to his dad being very sort of hands off.

[Maday Kuti]

Yeah, it was worse than that. My dad wanted to study music and Fela just didn't provide the means for him to do it. So my dad is entirely self taught. He taught himself every instrument he plays and how to make and compose music. And there's an interview of Ella being proud about that, saying something about I don't teach him anything. I didn't teach him anything but see his sound, you know. Very proud about the fact that he taught my dad nothing my father and I would discuss. There's still things that he could have learned that would allow him apply himself even better.

[Chad Abumrad]

Did you give Madhe lessons? How did you treat music with him?

[Femi Kuti]

I taught him everything I knew. I still teaching. If I marry, if I just wake up. Oh, I didn't tell Mary this. I said, Mar, ah, you have to do this workout, said daddy. You already told me that. I said I did. Okay, you know, I'm always very frightful. I might not be here tomorrow. So I understand life, I understand death. I've come across death so many times that any day could be on last day. And the beauty of my life is I want to ensure Maddie is the eldest of my children. He is capable of handling anything. He has to know everything, every single story, every single how I work my way on the sax, on the trumpet. What happened, where I stumbled, where I fumbled, where I think I got it right.

[Chad Abumrad]

As we were talking, Femi thought back to a moment from 1995, two years before his dad died.

[Femi Kuti]

They wrote an article. I had a very big huge track called Wonder Wonder. And the paper magazine Sfemi, the new king of Afrobeats. Fela got quite upset. I couldn't understand why he was upset. Jonas, if somebody said to me today Maddie is better than me, you know, I'll be very happy because my objective is life. That's my desire. If my children are not better than me, then as a father, I believe I failed.

[Chad Abumrad]

Femi, like his mother, has become the insulator. The result is one generation removed. Maday can walk into a room unencumbered, seemingly free of worry. That's the inheritance he's chosen to pass on.

[Femi Kuti]

It's him. It's his destiny. It's his destiny to take the Afrobeats and. And heritage to that next level. It is meant to be that way. I'm just passing that information to him.

[Maday Kuti]

It feels almost like communicating something that is more than myself. It feels like I'm not exactly embodying them, but I am carrying their message. And I'm the person that is now the I don't like the town cry. I have to now say that thing that they said so many years ago today that it was happening then and it's still happening now. And it's me that is still telling you three generations later.

[Chad Abumrad]

In his sets, Maday makes a point to play his music alongside his father's, alongside his grandfathers.

[Maday Kuti]

Being able to travel through time on stage is really special. And you're not just doing covers, you're doing bloodline covers. It's very special.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah, bloodline covers. That phrase kind of. It gives me chills. We'll end where we started. We spent the whole day at the Kuti compound because after our interview with Yenny, Femi came in, started berating us, but then began to tell us hilarious stories that went on for hours. And overall, there's something about being in that compound that. Where time and space sort of collapse. It's the kind of environment that is so completely its own world that you forget there's anything else outside. But as we were leaving and pulling away from the compound and the gate opened, there was the red soil on the road, Red like terracotta pots that had been pulverized into tiny grains of sand. And there were all of the families crowded onto motorcycles, descending into the craters filled with muddy waters. For some reason, it surprised me, like, oh, it's all still there. All the things that Fela had been railing about. Poverty, lack of infrastructure, state neglect, all those problems are still there. But then I look back to where we'd just been. Yenni, Femi and Maday had gathered in the courtyard to wave us off. And Femi And Yenni, the two original Kuti kids, now grew grown adults in their 60s, started play fighting like they were kids again. There was something about that scene. Think about it all the time. There's something about it that was profoundly beautiful and hopeful. And it occurred to me in that moment, maybe this is Fela's true legacy, that we all still have a choice. His music is about struggle and joy, suffering and smiling. All of these contradictory realities coexisting and then repeating endlessly over and over and over like the cycles of the music. The choice we have to make is which part of the story are we going to focus on? The downward spiral or the persistence that's always there with it. Which part of the groove are you going to move to? This has been a Higher Ground and Audible original produced by Audible. Higher Ground Audio. Western Sound and Talkhouse series was created and executive produced by me, Chad Abumrad, Ben Adair and Ian Wheeler. Written and hosted by yours truly. Higher Ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukta Mohan and Dan Fierman. Jen 11 was creative executive and Corinne Gilliard Fisher was executive producer. Executive producers for Audible were Anne Hepperman, Glenn Pogue and Nick d'. Angelo. Our senior producer was Gofan, but Ruby Heron Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fei Fei Odudu and Oluwakemi Aladusui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Neef Abdurahib, Michael Veal, Moses Achunu and Judith Byfield. I want to give a very special thanks to Guad Law, Chika, Hirim Moore and Esther Eze from Archive NG that's A R C H I V I N G they created an archive of Nigerian newspapers going all the way back to the mid-1960s. It is an absolute treasure. Thank you to Duro Ikugenyo and his band Age of Aquarius. Search up Duro and the Age of Aquarius to hear his new record which is out now to ID for all his help with research and connections. Our fact checker was Jamila Wilkinson. Alex McInnis was the mix engineer. Also SP special thanks to Knitting Factory Records and BMG to the Kuti family, Yenny, Femi Shayun and Ma Day. They gave us so much of their time and access to their lives while we were in Legos and we're so, so appreciative. Thank you to Melissa o', Donnell, Dick Nadell to Inside Projects and Maggie Taylor for marketing support. And big thanks to Carla Murthy, Leah Friedman and Shoshana Scholar. We couldn't have done any of this without their support. The head of Creative Development Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio.