2: Becoming Fela

Summary

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Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Episode 2: Becoming Fela

Host: Jad Abumrad
Podcast: Higher Ground
Release Date: October 15, 2025

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Overview

This episode, "Becoming Fela," explores the formative, globe-spanning journey that transformed Fela Kuti from a "colonial boy," classically trained musician, into the revolutionary artist and architect of Afrobeat. Host Jad Abumrad guides listeners through Fela’s upbringing in Nigeria, musical education in London, spiritual search and artistic crisis, and his pivotal time in Los Angeles where he met Sandra Isidore—a partnership that catalyzed his political awakening and musical revolution. The episode weaves together interviews, archival audio, and incisive commentary to trace how Fela’s identity, music, and activism were forged in the fires of race, diaspora, colonialism, and African-American radicalism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of Defining Fela Kuti (00:11–01:42)

• The episode opens with the difficulty of summarizing Fela's persona, as guests liken him to a fusion of musical and political icons:
  • “Fela is like Bob Marley and Mandela combined... Jagger and James Brown... protest element of Dylan... Malcolm X.” – (B, 00:14)
  • Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers) notes the revolutionary energy in Fela's music, comparing it to the hardest hip hop, jazz, and punk, emphasizing its significance and danger to power structures.

2. Early Life: Colonial Nigeria & Classical Education (02:46–05:55)

• Fela’s childhood in a middle-class Nigerian family, British missionary schooling, and sparse documentation of his formative years.
• Rare archival interview (1967) with a young Fela: His parents pushed him to piano at age 9, led the school choir, and then attended Trinity College of Music in London.

3. London Years: Isolation, Jazz, and the Contradictions of Empire (05:55–07:45)

• Visits to Trinity: Fela is among the few Black students in an institution steeped in colonial and classical tradition.
• Host reflects on Fela’s paradox: railing against colonialism while mastering its musical forms.
• Sandra Isidore's voice foreshadows the ideological awakening to come.

"He was still walking around with colonial mentality. He hadn't become Black." – Sandra Isidore (D, 07:02)

4. Musical Growth: From Highlife to the Search for Identity (08:52–11:16)

• Fela’s return to Nigeria in 1963. His early music (with his band Koola Lobitos) blends jazz with highlife and Latin American influences—searching, commercial, and not yet radical.
• Early songs like “Ololufe” focus on romance, revealing a Fela in transition.

“He was just a gentleman. He was singing love songs, you know... folklore. It wasn’t complete gentlemen.” – Baba Ani (B, 09:30)

5. Turning Point: The Impact of James Brown and Black Power (13:08–14:25)

• The arrival of funk, especially James Brown, electrifies West African youth, laying a cultural and rhythmic foundation for future Afrobeat.
• The irony: Fela suspects James Brown has appropriated his style, years before Brown actually visits Nigeria.

“James Brown turned Africa upside down inside out.... That music actually gave Africans a point of reference and cultural redefinition.” – Michael Veale (B, 13:08)

6. Crisis in Lagos and the American Odyssey (15:31–17:14)

• Fela, frustrated and unsuccessful, laments cultural disconnect; is invited to the US for a tour aimed at exposing Americans to "authentic" African highlife.
• Arrival in the US; chronicles their struggles—financial hardship, expiring visas, and cultural disorientation.

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7. The Pivotal Encounter: Sandra Isidore (17:26–33:44)

Sandra’s Story and "Black Realness"

• Sandra, raised in Watts and Compton, California, is shaped by both generational silences around racism and the awakening fires of the Watts riots and Black Power.
• Her introduction to radical Black music (Nina Simone, Ray Charles, etc.), Malcolm X, and a hunger to “meet a real African.”
• Parallels drawn between Black Americans’ search for African authenticity and Africans’ own search for identity complicated by colonialism and diaspora.

"In order to know the real story, I'm gonna need to meet a real African." – Sandra Isidore (D, 24:29)

Fela and Sandra Meet (27:16–33:44)

• Their electrifying first encounter at a Hollywood Gardens event: immediate mutual fascination, Fela’s boldness, and Sandra’s realization about preconceptions of Africa and Africans.
• Early days: Fela’s music is still apolitical—e.g., songs about soup rather than liberation.

“You’ve been doing all this and you singing about some soup. At that point I said, why would you do that when you can use your music to educate people, uplift people?” – Sandra Isidore (D, 33:10)

• Notable moment of honesty: Sandra confesses she'd rather have faced slavery than colonialism—a controversial sentiment that sparks further discussion about the erasure and brutality of colonialism as compared to the visible horrors of slavery.

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8. Awakening: Dialogues of Pain, Solidarity, and Transformation (36:22–44:45)

• Fela, at his lowest, is taken in by Sandra’s family and absorbs Black struggle in America—firsthand and through history. Sandra educates him about the legacy of American racism, lynchings, and civil rights.
• The pivotal act: Sandra gives Fela The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It shatters his worldview and redirects his sense of purpose.

“Everything about Africa started coming back to me. He would later tell the New York Times, ‘It was incredible how my head was turned. Everything fell into place.’” – Jad Abumrad quoting Fela (A, 44:09)

“Sandra taught me a lot about blackism. Gave me books to read: Malcolm X... I had to sit down and think about myself. Say, what am I doing? Am I already playing African music? ...I have to start to rethink and re-analyze myself. I started to write new music.” – Fela Kuti (B, 44:13)

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9. Transformation: The Birth of Afrobeat (45:06–51:42)

• Fela rebrands his band to Nigeria 70, then Africa 70, and debuts a new radical sound—Afrobeat—honoring both Yoruba tradition and global Black struggle.
• The first song of the new era, “My Lady’s Frustration,” is written for Sandra and launches a string of sold-out LA club dates.
• With the release of “Jin Koku” (1971), Fela explodes in popular consciousness back home; his blend of James Brown’s funk, jazz, highlife, and Yoruba drumming creates a Pan-Africanist musical language.
• Analysis of Afrobeat’s unmistakably diasporic, unifying groove—accessible and revolutionary for both audiences in Africa and the diaspora.

“You could bring my mother, who has never been to the US... and bring an African American person who has never been to Nigeria and the two of them can actually interface because this music brings them together. Fela is like a magician trying to create a kind of Pan Africanist musical language.” – Olabode Omojola (B, 51:12)

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10. Coming Home & Legacy (52:01–end)

• Sandra follows Fela to Lagos, experiencing both exoticization and celebration.
• Fela, emboldened and liberated in fashion as well as politics, cements himself as an iconoclast and leader.
• The two do not become the fairytale partnership they envisioned, but their impact together cannot be overstated.

Blackness, Diaspora, and the Illusion of "Realness"

“African Americans look to Africa for a past. Folks in the diaspora look to the African Americans in the diaspora for a vision of possibility... So we look to them for the past, they look to us for the future.” – Louis Chude-Sokei (C, 52:22)

• Final reflection: Black identity, like Fela’s music and myth, is always in flux—performed and constructed, yet still meaningful.
• Powerful statistic: More Africans migrated to the US since 1990 than during the slave trade—a reminder that identity is continually evolving.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Defiance:
  “If you think I’m going to change or compromise, they’re making me stronger.” – Fela Kuti (B, 02:42)

• Sandra on Cultural Identity:
  “You want to check me? My voice carries.” (D, 07:06)

• On Afrobeat’s Power:
  “Fela is the epitome of a musician whose music matters. In fact, his music was so dangerous to the people in power ... they threw him in jail. Not once, not twice, but a hundred times.” – Jad Abumrad (A, 01:42)

• On Transformation Through Malcolm X (Sandra’s Memoir):
  “It was during this discussion, I showed him news clippings and pictures of blacks being hung from trees ... He didn’t know our real story.” (D, 42:11)

• On the Roots of Afrobeat:
  “The key says Bode, is that Fela found a precise blend where everyone can hear what they want.” (A, 51:12)

• Identity and Diaspora:
  “Blackness is up for grabs in the same way that whiteness is being transformed by immigration. So is blackness.” – Louis Chude-Sokei (C, 55:09)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• (00:11) — What is Fela? Icon comparisons and opening question
• (03:43) — 1967 Interview with Fela on early years and Trinity College
• (05:27–07:02) — Tour of Trinity, colonial contradiction, Sandra’s foreshadowing
• (09:30–12:08) — Early band years, "Ololufe," and searching for a voice
• (13:08–14:25) — Influence of James Brown and the new African sound
• (17:26–24:29) — Sandra Isidore’s coming-of-age, Watts riots, and Black consciousness
• (27:16–30:46) — First meeting: Sandra and Fela’s instant connection
• (32:33–33:44) — Sandra confronts Fela’s apolitical lyrics: “You’re singing about soup”
• (36:22–44:45) — Fela’s education in American Black struggle & the impact of Malcolm X
• (45:06–51:42) — Birth of Afrobeat, “My Lady’s Frustration," and international recognition
• (52:22–52:31) — Louis Chude-Sokei on diaspora’s mutual gazes: searching for past/future

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Thematic Takeaways

• Fela Kuti’s emergence as a revolutionary artist was as much a product of the diaspora’s crosscurrents and ideological exchanges as it was of his musical genius.
• Afrobeat is not only a genre but a signifier of resistance, blending the languages of jazz, funk, soul, highlife, Yoruba tradition, and radical Black consciousness.
• The search for ‘realness’—in Blackness, in Africanness—is shaped by layers of trauma, misunderstanding, and the longing for connection across the Atlantic.
• Sandra Isidore’s role was transformative—her “Blackism” was the ignition for Fela’s awakening.
• Fela’s journey is emblematic of how the collision of personal, political, and artistic forces can spark a revolution that transcends borders.

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Closing Reflection

The episode closes with a recognition that all identities, like music, are constructed and shifting, yet they have power when believed and performed. Through the lives of Fela and Sandra, the episode paints a vivid portrait of the birth of Afrobeat as both a personal and political awakening—a sound where the diaspora finally meets itself, dances together, and becomes more than the sum of its past.

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Transcript

[A]

How do you describe Fela to someone who doesn't know?

[B]

I've played around. I've done it a million times. I don't know if any time has worked. Like, I'll go. Fela is like Bob Marley and Mandela combined.

[A]

Well, he was kind of like Mick.

[B]

Jagger and James Brown, definitely with some Ahmed Ali thrown in and then with the protest element of Dylan. Don't forget Malcolm X. You want to be Malcolm X. Brothers and sisters, the secret of life is to have no fear. We all have to understand that.

[C]

He was the hardest you've ever heard in your life.

[A]

This is Felicuti Fear. No, man. I'm Jad Abumrad. Chapter two, Becoming Phylla. Here's a question. How do you become that person.

[C]

That.

[A]

Flea was just describing?

[B]

You know, it's as hard as the hardest hip hop track, the hardest jazz track, the hardest, deepest punk rock or metal or death metal. Whatever it is that you're into as a kid, whatever music you love and you think captures the, like, spirit of.

[C]

Rebellion and of caring about, you know, a scary world that you can get.

[A]

Lost in and hurt in. It's all there for Flea is Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's magical music. Fela is the epitome of a musician whose music matters. In fact, his music was so dangerous to the people in power in Nigeria that they threw him in jail. Not once, not twice, but a hundred times.

[B]

I want to see the police beating. It's terrible. I'll show you. You must see it.

[A]

Look at it in this famous clip, Fela is dressed only in his bikini briefs. He turns and shows the camera his back, which is covered in wounds and gashes, almost a hash pattern, over and over. The Nigerian police and army broke his arms, his legs, his face.

[C]

You know, they threw his mother from the roof of her house and she died.

[B]

Threw my mother out the window. He went and took his mother's coffin.

[C]

And put it on the doorstep of the government building, the Capitol building.

[A]

No matter what they did, he never backed down.

[B]

If you think I'm going to change or compromise, they're making me stronger.

[A]

I mean, he was wild. What a rebel. So that's the question. How did he become that guy? The story of Fellas transformation is a big one. It spans many continents, involves many forces that are way beyond him, that have to come together in just the right way to form the Marxist musical coup plotter that he would become. And I'm quoting from a Nigerian newspaper there, let's start simple. We know that he grew up in a middle class household in a town north of lagos in the 1950s. This is when the British were still in power. We know that he went to a school set up by British missionaries. But in terms of story shaped objects, we don't really have much from his childhood. We don't have much detail. But we did find this one rare interview where he does touch on a few things from his early years. Here he is in 1967. He's 29 at the time, talking to a guy named Sean Kelly.

[B]

We're speaking with Thaylor Ransome Kuti, one of Nigeria's young contemporary jazz musicians. Fela, how did you get started as a musician? Oh, my mother really and my father made me play the piano very early at age of 9, learning to play the piano as my hometown Abeokuta. And then after my school or in school, I was leader of the school choir for about five years. And then after that I went to England to study at the Trinity College of Music in London.

[D]

Hello, hello.

[B]

La la la.

[D]

And we're recording.

[A]

Interestingly, when Nigeria declared its independence From England in 1960, Nigeria's great day fellow wasn't even there. He was here in London studying classical music. So I'm recording now. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves?

[B]

My name is Olaulo Akinukwe, graduate of Trinity Lobon. I'm Nigerian clarinetist.

[A]

I'm Alex Schramm and I'm the director of music at Trinity Laban. Alex and Ola were nice enough to give our producer Ruby Walsh a tour of the grounds. Yeah, we've got a lot of places to see. I started my undergraduate in the old building which is where fellas studied in the 1950s. Trinity is a place that is obsessed with architecturally. It is the epitome of the white western world. Big stone archways, classical architecture. It's right on the water. Fela would have been one of the few black students to attend. And we kept trying to imagine him walking the halls around the room. I think what I might show you is the harp room.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

It's a forest of harps. What an organ. Yes, this is an organ for playing Brooklyn. Alex, the director demonstrated. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

For me, I'm trying to remember my first day walking in here. It was a bit surreal for me actually.

[A]

Olu Alua, our student guide, plays the clarinet and he is about the same age that Fela was when he came to study the piano and the trumpet.

[B]

I'll tell you this. Yeah, when I was coming because I'm Nigerian, obviously, it Was like going to study music. Of all the things to do in England, then I would go. Fela studied there. And then what you're going to study with Fela studied, you're going to come back. So great. Don't know how good I am yet, but yeah.

[A]

So we're here in the reception now and straight away we have to point.

[D]

Out we have the plaque here for Felakuti.

[A]

Oh, wow. Oh, it's right here.

[B]

It's right here.

[A]

Can I actually get one of you to read what's on the plaque?

[B]

Yeah. It says Felakuti, father of Afrobeat, who challenged colonial politics in Nigeria.

[A]

Reading that plaque was interesting. Here is a man, America and England.

[B]

Trying to brainwash Africans. You are the colonialists who are the slave riders.

[A]

Who would spend his life railing against the white world, who would become known as the soundtrack of African independence. Here he was studying the music of the colonizer. He.

[D]

He was still walking around with colonial mentality. He hadn't become black.

[A]

That's Sandra Isidore. She plays a huge part in what happens next.

[D]

You want to check me because my.

[A]

Voice carries more from her in a second.

[B]

I went to study at the Trinity College of Music in London. And there I did my college course. But really I was not interested in classics. My aim was to play jazz. So I studied classics in college and went out to listen to jazz on my trumpet too. I was trying to play some jazz. I was trying to listen to some great men like Miles and Dizzy at Trinity.

[A]

After class, Fela would go to places like the Flamingo Room, a basement club that hosted all night jam sessions. And he would sit in. This is at a time in London when all kinds of musicians are rolling through. Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald played some shows. Sarah Vaughan, Count basie, Duke Ellington. 1960, when Felau was in his second year. Miles Davis comes to town, plays a few shows. I like to imagine Fellow was in the audience. Cause a few years later, Fellow would release this tune. That's him on trumpet. He called it Ameche's Blues. And it sounds a whole lot like Miles's Freddy Freeloader off A Kind of Blue. They're almost the same tune.

[B]

I was trying to listen to some great men like Miles and Dizzy, people like Clifford Brown and things like that. And then I came out back here in Nigeria to play music.

[A]

Fella arrived back in Nigeria from London in 1963.

[B]

Has it been successful? Quite. What would you say was the present jazz scene in West Africa? Straight jazz as it's played in the States is not working Here I found out when I came back from England, West African countries, I'll say they're not interested in jazz. What they like. There's Latin American music.

[A]

At that time in West Africa, Latin American music was all the rage. And this tape, I gotta say, I love it when you get to hear a person before they've figured themselves out. This guy, this fella, he's looking for something, but he hasn't found it yet.

[B]

He was a gentleman musician when we started the band. He was just a gentleman.

[A]

This is one of Fela's early bandmates, Baba Ani.

[B]

He was singing love songs, you know, funky songs, folklore. And he wasn't drinking alcohol, he was not taking marijuana. It wasn't complete gentlemen.

[A]

At that point, Fellah was working a respectable job in Lagos at the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission. And he had formed a band, a dance band called Cula Lubitos, which is just a made up word meant to sound Latin.

[B]

Because, as he said, what delights Latin American music? Well, at the beginning, before he traveled to America, he was basically playing a jazzy form of high life. It's high life time.

[A]

That's John Collins, musician historian. Would you define high life?

[B]

High life goes back to the 1880s. It's a very old type of music. Africans at that time, they were colonized. So they had to learn the white man's culture, but they had their own culture.

[A]

He says that high life was a little British, a little West African. When the British came in and colonized Nigeria, they had all these troops and they needed to entertain them. And there was this craze at the time for ballroom dancing, like European style ballroom dancing with the foxtrot and all that. So Nigerian and Ghanaian musicians who were conscripted into the colonial forces learned to play that stuff, but also added their own flavors to it. This was the kind of music the fellow was playing two years before he came to LA and met Sandra. He's trying to figure out how to take this already hybrid form and layer jazz on top of it.

[B]

For me, this musicality gave me a lot of joy.

[A]

This is Benson Idonije, who managed Fela and Kululobitos at the time. Is there a song that you think of specifically that means the most to you from that early period?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Take Ololufe, for instance. Do you have it here?

[A]

We have it somewhere. I think my phone is somewhere.

[B]

Yeah, this one.

[A]

Can you translate in real time?

[B]

Yeah. My lover, you are the one that I fancy. You are the one that I love. I love her, you are the one That I. I love.

[A]

It's a vibe for sure. If you notice, compared to later Fela, it's very smooth.

[B]

Come and rub your body on me.

[A]

You can almost see him in his button up shirt and loafers just crooning out this love song. And Benson says, it wasn't really working.

[B]

We are playing to art communities, schools, students and all that. We are not making money. It was not small crowds. Yes, it's not working here. We started to play, people wouldn't listen. The music was exciting and all that, but we had nothing to show for it.

[A]

Making matters worse, in the late 60s, Fela loses his job, his radio job at the NBC. And it was right at this moment, according to musicologist Michael Veale, that a musical asteroid hit the continent.

[B]

You're kidding. That music turned sub Saharan Africa upside down. James Brown turned Africa upside down inside out. You start from the structure of his music. You know, that was a very powerful rhythmic construction and it was full of black pride and black power. That music actually gave Africans a point of reference and cultural redefinition.

[A]

He says it was around this moment when James Brown records just fell on.

[B]

West Africa between 64 and 69. Brown consciously trying to bring out the Africanist elements in his music.

[A]

What he means is that shift in the mid-60s when James Brown went from gospel, R and B to percussive rhythms, chick and scratch guitar, call and response. That's when he blew up in Africa. And as Michael puts it was almost a kind of alchemical transmutation. He was taking in African rhythms from across the Atlantic and then sending it back to the continent in a new form.

[B]

It's like hearing your own voice come back at you, but you recognize it as having been transformed in some profound.

[A]

Ways, whatever it was. Now, the Nigerian kids just did not want to hear high Life. All they wanted was funk and soul.

[B]

Play soul, play soul.

[A]

Benson says they would hear that over and over at gigs.

[B]

Play soul.

[A]

Play some James Brown.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And Fela didn't want to.

[B]

Fela was not ready to compromise his music.

[A]

Frustrated and at a loss for direction, Fela apparently thought about giving up. He gives an interview to a Nigerian newspaper where he complains. He says he heard from a friend in America that James Brown was covering one of Fela's songs. And how is that fair? He sort of suggests that James Brown had stolen his music. It's a fascinating moment. James Brown hadn't been to Nigeria yet, probably hadn't heard Fela yet. But in just a few years he would come to Nigeria. He would hear Fela play. His drummer Clyde Stubblefield would apparently sit in the corner at one of Fela's shows and notate the rhythms of Fela's drummer Tony Allen. So there was something going on there. He had an intuition, but it was maybe out of time or something. In any case, he gives this interview suggesting that if Americans want African sounding music, wait till they get the real thing.

[B]

Listen to us. Americans like us. That's one of the reasons why we travel.

[A]

Right after that article was published, Fela got an offer to take his band Kula Lobitus on a two month tour of America to expose the American public to their brand of high life. Hey everybody, what if you had a magic power where you could find whatever it is you're looking for at any given moment right away? Parking spot right there. Holiday gift shopping. Done. Pants that actually fit perfect. Boom. Imagine how much time you would save. While you may never instantly find these things, if you are hiring, you can find qualified candidates right away time and time again with ZipRecruiter. And today you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fela ZipRecruiter. Seemingly magic technology matches you with top talent fast. And that is why ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Want to know right away how many qualified candidates are in your area? Look no further than ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And right now you can try it for [e-mail] Fela again, that is ziprecruiter.com Fela ziprecruiter the smartest way to hire this is Fela Kuti. Fear no man. May 1969. Kula Lobitos sets off on a 10 month US tour. They perform in Washington D.C. boom. Chicago.

[C]

Boom.

[A]

San Francisco. Boom. But by the time they get to la, they're broke and their visas have run out.

[D]

Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't easy for Fela here.

[A]

And this brings us to Sandra Isadore, who is often called the Queen of Afrobeat. If Fela is the king, she's the queen.

[D]

You want to check me?

[A]

I'll put her at number four. How do I sound to you right now?

[D]

You sound okay to me. How do I sound to you? My voice carries.

[A]

The day that I sat down with Sandra in la, her afro was dyed bright sunny yellow. She wore deep blue lipstick, had massive galaxy earrings and had a Swirling constellation of tiny diamond stars affixed to her face, which caught the light as we talked. She is very striking. In other words, Sandra is a singer and a composer. Her meeting Fela would profoundly shape and change both of their lives. Their politics, their music, their trajectories, and also, in the process, music history. So I want to go into her story for a second.

[D]

I'm a country girl that grew up.

[A]

In the city Sandra grew up in, Watts, California. She was born in 1938, same year as Fela. She showed me a picture of her when she was 6, standing in front of a mirror holding a doll.

[D]

That's a happy little girl growing up, you know, and in a perfect world. Beautiful neighborhood. We lived on a corner house. We had a nectarine tree, apricots, oranges, pomegranates, lemons.

[A]

Wow, it sounds idyllic.

[D]

And you see my little white doll, don't you?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

They didn't have black dolls back then.

[A]

When she was 6, Sandra and her family moved to Compton, which was then an all white neighborhood.

[D]

Compton was beautiful then. Fields and pastures, horses, you know, we were the first black family to move into that area.

[A]

And.

[D]

And my friends then, all my friends were white. It made me start looking at myself in the mirror. And then I wanted to know, well, when is my eyes gonna turn blue? My hair is gonna be long and stringy, and I'm gonna have white skin? When is that gonna happen?

[A]

How literally did you take that thought?

[D]

I was thinking I was gonna turn white, so that's how deep it was.

[A]

I asked Sandra about her parents. Like, did they ever talk to her about any of this?

[D]

My parents were what you would call from the secret society. That generation. I'm a baby boomer, but before me, they kept secrets, Things they didn't want their children to know. My parents never taught me about racism in America. They never shared with me that people would hate me because of the color of my skin. They just never taught me anything. And I think one of the reasons why they came to California was fleeing the South.

[A]

They grew up in the South.

[D]

They grew up in the South. And it was a lot going on in the families that they didn't tell us about. Things happened. They kept it quiet.

[A]

They never sort of took you aside and said, this is our journey. This is how we got here.

[D]

Absolutely nothing.

[A]

I have to say, I was really struck by this. The way that Sandra talked about it. This entire generation, that wasn't given context, really, because their parents tried to protect them with silence. In some ways, this was also true. In my family for many years, my folks didn't talk about where we came from because it was too painful.

[D]

Well, your parents, then, are part of that secret society.

[A]

For Sandra, despite the firewall, she says some things did slip through which made her uneasy.

[D]

I would see my parents, you know, they would whisper, and they were talking, and the things that they were whispering about was Martin Luther King. They didn't want me to know about the dogs and all of that. I learned that later.

[A]

You can only hold information at bay for so long. And for Sandra, things started to leak through when she was a teenager. Do you recall what awoke you to the. To the reality?

[D]

I think it was the civil disturbance in Los Angeles.

[A]

You talking about the Watts riots?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

White people driving through the riot area.

[B]

Were considered fair game. Their cars were battered. The driver is stoned.

[D]

When I saw the fires, even at a young age, I was questioning.

[B]

I threw the firebomb right in the front window.

[D]

Why are you burning up your own neighborhood?

[B]

The cry in the streets was, burn, baby, burn.

[D]

You start asking questions. And it was around that time that my cousin Aubrey, who had just been released from prison, he did five years because he had a joint. He came to stay with us, and he always had a black leather jacket, and he wore a black beret. And he was friends with Bunchy.

[A]

Bunchy?

[D]

Bunchy Carter from the Panther Party.

[A]

Oh. She says her cousin Aubrey was the first person to really break through the firewall. He started answering her questions. Why are they burning their neighborhood? Because they're tired of being beaten and harassed by the police.

[D]

You know, he was always talking this black liberation and everything.

[A]

More importantly, he started to play her music.

[D]

Nina Simone.

[B]

Alabama's got me so upset.

[A]

Georgia.

[D]

Ray Charles, Miles Davis. Oh, Billie Holiday, Big Mama Thornton. So I'm getting all this whole music, and it was in their lyrical content.

[B]

Breaking up big rocks on a chain.

[D]

Especially Oscar Brown Jr. That, you know, started me thinking.

[B]

Eventually taught you to hate the texture of your hair.

[A]

Her cousin turned her on to Malcolm X.

[B]

Who taught you to heat the color of your skin to such extent that.

[C]

You bleach to get like the white man.

[D]

It was like my eyes started opening. And around that time, getting back to the music. Hugh Masakela came out with the Americanization of Ooga Booga.

[A]

The title was sort of a play on words. Ooga Booga was a racist slur used about Africa in the West. While Americanization nodded at Hugh Masakela trying to blend South African and American sounds together. This was actually an album that his record label thought was too African for American tastes.

[D]

But it was my favorite, and I would play it over and over.

[A]

Over.

[B]

And over.

[D]

It was at that point I said to myself, in order to know the real story, I'm gonna need to meet a real African.

[A]

I have to meet a real African.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

Why?

[D]

Because.

[A]

At this point in our conversation, Sandra just broke into a big smile, sort of laughing at her younger self.

[C]

Love it. A real African. A real African.

[A]

Now, obviously, the sentiment that she was expressing was not just her thinking this. At this point, on college campuses, there was a whole Back to Africa movement that was asking questions about realness and authenticity. I ended up extending this conversation and bringing a few people in, including Louis Tutusoki, who is a professor of English at Boston University.

[C]

I'm also the director of the African American and Black Diaspora Studies program and.

[A]

Wrote a fabulous memoir called Floating in a Most Peculiar Way that offers a whole different spin on this idea of African realness. Now, he is, on paper, a real African, but he says growing up in Nigeria, then Jamaica, nobody wanted to be that.

[C]

No, Everyone telling me I was African, it was always an insult for him.

[A]

Black culture coming out of America, that was what he was into. That felt real. It felt cool. So he was surprised when he actually got to America to find that it was all upside down, that the black people he met here were fascinated by him and treated him like he had some kind of secret knowledge.

[C]

There was this moment in the 80s.

[A]

We'Re skipping forward in time for just.

[C]

A second when hip hop becomes Afrocentric. I'm sure you remember there was the Africa Medallions, and everyone's like, all the.

[D]

Way to Africa, AKA the Motherlands, Motherland.

[C]

The Jungle Brothers and Tribe Called Quest with the multicolored. And for me, Jed, I'll be straight up. I was like, oh, shit, I'm getting laid now.

[D]

Opportunity, okay, Africa is cool.

[C]

I'm there. But you had to pretend to be that kind of Africa. It's not the Africa that's in my house. It's not my uncles or my aunts, because my uncles and my aunts and the actual African community I was a part of wanted no part of that shit.

[D]

So I started dancing with Sawaba African dance troupe.

[A]

Getting back to Sandra, she goes to college, joins the Black Student Union, starts dancing in a dance troupe.

[D]

I thought I was really doing something on the African dance moves.

[A]

One day, the guy who ran the dance troupe, whose name was Juno Lewis, he says to her, come with me to this party at the Hollywood Gardens. It's a fundraiser for the naacp. And there's this new band that's in town from Lagos.

[D]

It was a very hot day. I really didn't want to go. And it was Juno Lewis who insisted. It's this ban from Africa. And I'm like, ugh. Because at this point I wanted to meet progressive Africans and I had only met. I'll use a term today that I'm making up now, missionary boys. And what I mean by that, Jesus is the way, Holier than thou Straight from very rural areas. They weren't impressive to me at all.

[A]

Like her parents, who were deep in the church, it was the center of their lives. A lot of the African immigrants to the US that Sandra met had grown up in Western churches and been educated in Christian schools. Cause you know, colonialism that didn't meet her definition of real African.

[D]

Sandra, you gotta meet him. You gotta meet him. And I'm like, uh, here's another one, you know. So we go to the Ambassador Hotel.

[A]

This was summer 1969.

[D]

On that particular day, I had on a blue and green haltered bell bottom jumpsuit with the back out. I walk in, and as I'm walking.

[A]

In with Juno on stage is a guy singing with this band behind him playing sort of bouncy brassy dance music. She can't remember what he was wearing. Probably a suit, trouser shirt, loafer, because that was his outfit at the time, no socks.

[D]

He was the first man I met that didn't wear socks.

[A]

But what she really remembers is that as she walked in and glanced at the stage, he looked right down at.

[D]

Her and our eyes locked and it was a very magical moment. It was like we were connected from day one.

[A]

Mm. I think what you wrote is something that you never experienced before and never did again.

[D]

No, it was like a spiritual chord. It just seems like we were connected. Something that was destined to be.

[A]

Sandra says later in the party between sets, she went searching for her friend Juno.

[D]

I look over to the bar and there's Fella standing next to him. So I go over to the bar and Juno makes the introduction. And the first thing that comes out of Fella's mouth in a very arrogant way. Do you have a car?

[A]

Whoa.

[D]

Yeah. Do you have a car? I said, yes, I do. Then you're going with me. And I started laughing. You know, he is so bold that he's telling me what I'm going to do in my car with him. Okay. And you see how you're laughing. That's what I did. And then, you know, I looked at the way he was dressed. And just him coming on to me like that let me know he was different.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And I said, interesting. He tweaked my interests.

[A]

They go to a party together. They sit down on the couch next to each other.

[C]

I'm.

[D]

I'm all in it.

[A]

Long story short, Sandra thinks, finally, I.

[D]

Finally meet a black man. African. He's gonna show me. He's gonna teach me all about Africa. Cut.

[A]

So Sandra gets to know Fela. They start to see each other every day. And at some point, Sandra goes and watches Fela and his band rehearse. She watches them play this one particular song that becomes kind of important.

[D]

He did this song called Abe. And I was able to really hear the band. And I was impressed. I liked the sound. It was different. So when the rehearsal was over, I asked him to translate because the lyrics are in there. In Yoruba.

[A]

Right, right.

[D]

Translate what he was saying. He was so proud to let me know. It's about my soup.

[A]

What does that mean?

[D]

Soup?

[A]

Like, it's a song about soup.

[D]

The whole song was about soup. What you eat.

[A]

Like actual soup. Not soup as a metaphor, but actually, no.

[D]

So up Soup. And I started laughing, and, you know, I was enhanced anyway. I thought that was the funniest thing, because how you gonna put all this energy and everything about some soup?

[A]

Oh, okay. So it's like it's a celebration of soup.

[D]

Well, it's not so much a celebration of it, but what he wants is in his soup. Okay. So I thought that that is so.

[A]

Wild to me, because knowing where he is about to go with your help. Yeah, that. That's where he started is kind of crazy soup.

[D]

That's what started the whole thing. You've been doing all this and you singing about some soup. At that point, I said, why would you do that when you can use your music to educate people, uplift people? I made the assumption that he was going to be my teacher because he was African. That's how naive I was. Because he was African. I made a lot of assumptions not knowing what colonialism did in Africa.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Between colonialism and slavery. I'll take slavery. Those shackles are still on the mines. That's even worse.

[A]

This moment, when I talked about it with some of our consulting producers.

[B]

Yes. Oh, yes.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Got a whole bunch of different reactions.

[D]

It was surprising to me that she said that she would choose slavery over canonism.

[A]

This is Bolu Babalola, a Nigerian writer and consulting producer on this project. And she says that caught her ear because it's an Argument she actually sometimes gets into with her black American friends.

[D]

A lot of people don't recognize the atrocity of colonialism. The word almost sanitizes it. I think it hides a lot of the rape, the beatings, the violence, Just the horror of it all.

[A]

And I think slavery is such a.

[D]

Visual word that you can imagine the.

[B]

Horror that comes with it.

[A]

Colonialism, just to de veg that word a bit more, as she suggests, it's a period that stretches for about 400 years. So it's happening before, during, and after the transatlantic slave trade. In most cases, where European countries just went on a berserker rampage throughout the entire world, Countries would come in like Britain came into what would become Nigeria and occupied the land and started extracting resources. You can find incredibly detailed accounting of this in these things called the blue books. This is the Lagos blue book from 1878, where the British would list to the pound how much cocoa they were extracting. Cocoa, £116,431. How much rubber? £592,309. How much palm oil, ground nuts, how many prisoners they were maintaining, Number of persons summoned or apprehended, 545. Punishments, whipping, executions. This is a rabbit hole I would just recommend you do not fall into because it just has no bottom. It just keeps going and going. Oh, there's a whole page called lunatic asylums book after book. And what you realize is that the way the British ruled was not subtle. This is Beau Liu's point. We're not talking about microaggressions here. The British set up prisons, labor camps. They brutally put down rebellions. They made people change their names. They enforced this code that basically said to the native people, your culture, your language, your religion has no value, has no meaning. They basically said, if you really want to get somewhere, you. You need to take on white culture with colonization.

[D]

I think it's just like, you know.

[A]

White people marched in and changed their.

[D]

Names and that was it. Where it's like the complete horror and destruction of it is completely erased.

[A]

So that was Bolu's reaction to what Sandra said.

[D]

Between colonialism and slavery. I'll take slavery for Lewis.

[A]

What's your reaction when you hear that?

[C]

I love her voice.

[A]

For him, it was less what she said than how she said it.

[C]

Her voice is just fascinating for me because for Fela arriving, he has not heard people talk like that. Not really. Certainly not in England. I'm just thinking about Fela, what he's.

[D]

In the clothing hearing.

[C]

Like, is he hearing A kind of authenticity that he couldn't or didn't hear in his own. He had to learn to perform a different kind of language. So I'm wondering what he's hearing when he hears an African American person who is definitely inhabiting it.

[A]

Whatever the case, the first half year of his stay in LA was rough for Fela. Sandro didn't realize it at the time, but the whole reason they played that garden party for the NAACP is that they had no other choice. They were scrambling for gigs.

[D]

He was going to meetings and meetings and meetings.

[A]

And when he said, do you have a car? Maybe part of the reason is that his band had no way of getting around.

[D]

I had this sports car, a two seater sports car. And I remember nine people got into that car.

[A]

In la. Kula Lobitos went from one botched opportunity to another. At one point, right before a big gig, his bass player skips town because he's worried about getting deported.

[B]

And after that, he was invited by Disneyland.

[A]

Disneyland.

[D]

They wanted him for Adventureland.

[B]

Welcome aboard the Jungle Cruise.

[D]

You know, at that time they had Adventureland where you go around with the little boat.

[B]

Look out, look out, another hippo.

[D]

The hippopotamus would come up out of the water and the alligators, all mechanical.

[B]

That scared him.

[A]

The Jungle Cruise was wildly popular, not so subtly racist, and inspired by the movie the African Queen, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Kathleen Hepburn.

[B]

We are now entering headhunter country.

[A]

They wanted Fela to be the sort of house band for that. Yes. Oh, that's a whole different reality.

[D]

Yep. They were gonna sign him.

[B]

He failed the audition.

[D]

Disney turned them down because their music wasn't African enough.

[A]

Wow. We attempted to confirm this with Disney, but they never got back to us.

[B]

That was when. That was when he felt very bad. You scaled the sheer cliff face, battling.

[C]

Frostbite, running low on oxygen. The wind pierced your skin and every inch was agony.

[A]

You reached heights no other other human.

[B]

Had before.

[C]

While getting nowhere at airport security.

[A]

There's more to imagine when you listen.

[C]

Discover best selling action titles on audible.

[A]

This is Fela Kuti. Fear no man. We rejoin the story with Fela getting rejected from Disneyland for not being, quote, African enough.

[B]

I was ready. He felt very bad.

[A]

At this point, Fela was deeply broke. Sandra says he was stuffing newspapers into his loafers to fill the holes.

[D]

When things got really bad, he came and lived with my parents.

[A]

How long was he living there for? Ooh.

[D]

I would. I would say a good six to eight months.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. So you spent every waking moment together.

[D]

Oh, all the time.

[A]

Fela stayed in a small guest shack at the back of her parents property.

[D]

Fortunately, my mom had a old upright piano. But anyway, it was that old upright piano. That fella wrote a lot of those songs and he used to chart the music. And at night, once they've gone to bed, I would bring Phila up to my bedroom and we would be talking. And in my bedroom at that time, I had posters all over the wall of, you know, the kings of Africa. I had Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Angela Davis.

[A]

This one night, she says they were talking. She forgets about what. Maybe fellow is telling her stories about Nigeria, which she really liked. Or maybe she was telling him stories about the time she got arrested and thrown in jail for kicking a policeman in a protest story he loved.

[D]

His thing was, look at this woman, she's a fighter.

[A]

Whatever it was, at some point she says she remembers him shaking his head and then getting real quiet.

[D]

And then he made the comment about how Africans are so stupid.

[A]

Mm.

[D]

He said they're stupid.

[A]

His basic sentiment was, why can't Africans on the continent be more like you, like African Americans in the U.S. and.

[D]

I mean, for someone who was just coming into knowledge, self knowledge and learning about myself. And you're gonna say that Africans are stupid? Oh, I must have been livid.

[A]

In her memoir, she actually writes that he struck a chord so deep that a panther sprung out and she sat him down and she said, look, let me tell you a few things about America. Can you read this and then just tell me a little bit more about it?

[D]

You want me to read it out loud or just.

[A]

Yeah, if you don't mind. I asked Sandra to read the passage in her memoir where she talks about that conversation with Fela.

[D]

It was during this discussion I showed him news clippings and pictures of blacks being hung from trees, burned alive and wearing scars on their back. He saw the pictures of slaves in chains and shackles being sold on the auction block. I made sure he saw too what was recently happening in the south with blacks being hosed and attacked, bitten by dogs. Whites attacking black demonstrated, marching for equal rights.

[A]

So you're showing him pictures of the civil rights movement. You're showing him pictures of lynchings.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Sit ins like you're showing.

[D]

You're giving him the history of America. See, he didn't know our real story.

[A]

What was his reaction?

[D]

Shocked.

[A]

Sandra says at some point in her rant, she went to her bookshelf and pulled out the Autobiography of Malcolm X.

[B]

Chapter one, Nightmare when my mother was pregnant with me. She told me a party of Klu Klux Klan riders galloped to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night.

[A]

She told him, you need to read this. And over the next few days, he did.

[B]

Philosophically and culturally, we Afro Americans badly need to return to Africa. Each day I live as if I'm already dead. I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form. I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say, that the white man in his press is going to identify me with hate.

[A]

Felal would eventually tell his biographer, Carlos Moore, this book, I couldn't put it down. This man was talking about the history of Africa, talking about the white man. I had never read a book like that before in my life. Everything about Africa started coming back to me. He would later tell the New York Times, it was incredible how my head was turned. Everything fell into place.

[D]

Everything fell into place.

[A]

Here he is himself.

[B]

Sandra taught me a lot about blackism. Gave me books to read Malcolm X. And I saw so many. When I was reading these books, I found out my analysis of myself. I had to sit down and think about myself. Say, what am I doing? Am I already playing African music?

[A]

That noisy interview done by a student at Lagos University while the band was rehearsing in the background. That is the only audio clip we have of fella talking about. About this moment himself.

[B]

And I said, I have to start to rethink and reanalyze myself. I started to write new music.

[A]

Shortly after that conversation in Sandra's bedroom, Filon made some changes. He changed the name of his band from Kula Lubitos, this made up word, to Nigeria 70. And he changed his sound.

[D]

He started writing differently here.

[A]

Sandra got him a gig at a club called Citadel de Haiti. And one of the first songs that he played at that gig, which he'd written in her house, was called My Lady's Frustration. My Lady Frustration, the song was apparently written for Sandra.

[B]

This was. This is the first song, the first African music song.

[A]

Benson calls this song. Very beginning of Fela's new genre, Afrobeat.

[B]

One more time.

[A]

Got it. According to Sandra, the first time he played that song at the Citadel, the crowd, they.

[D]

They went crazy. Oh, my goodness.

[A]

And within a few weeks, he was.

[D]

Packing that club and it was like we was balling. The Citadel de Haiti became the spot where the black who's who of Hollywood, they were all going to Bernie Hamilton's club and they were listening to Vela.

[A]

In March of 1970, Fela and the band returned to Lagos with a plan that Sander would follow him. A few months later, he renames the band again to Africa 70. And in 1971, he releases what might be the best fella song, at least according to me. It is called Jin Koku. And it blew up, Sam. So good. Do you remember the Junkoku moment yourself? Yeah.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I was in. What do you remember early college. We hear it on the radio everywhere.

[A]

This is Olabode Omojola. He grew up in Nigeria, was a young man when Junkoku came out. He's now a professor of music at Mount Holyoke College.

[B]

By that point, even my father was beginning to. Okay, maybe there's something sensible in this. In this rascal, rascal music, you know, I think I was in. I was in high school and it was all over the radio. It was. Everybody was playing and then the ways. Ready.

[A]

One of the crazy things was that at this point Lagos was still a pretty small town of about a million people. And apparently, I mean, we have no way of checking these numbers. But these are the numbers you see quoted. Apparently this record sold 200,000 copies. If that is true, that's one fifth of the whole population, which is wild.

[B]

Everybody, everybody know.

[A]

I asked Bode about what Fela's manager, Benson Idonice had said this was.

[B]

This is the first, first African music song.

[A]

Why, why isn't everything he makes an African song? Because he is African, so anything he makes should be African. What is it specifically about these songs? Curious. What. So I hear James Brown in there. What do you hear? I want to. I want to hear all the things.

[B]

Yeah, kind of James Brown. A little bit element of funk, a little bit element of big band.

[A]

He says, you got the James Brown, the jazz, the high life horns. Although interestingly, not high life chords, which is why the music sounds less jaunty and western. And on top of that, the groove.

[B]

This is Yoruba drumming.

[A]

Is it really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is it a. Is it that pattern?

[B]

Let, let it. My mother would just be dancing like that. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's so. It's so Yoruba ish. Then the melody. Call and response.

[A]

Call and response.

[B]

So there's call and response that is going on there.

[A]

The key says Bode, is that fella found a precise blend where everyone can hear what they want.

[B]

So you could bring. My mother, who has never been to the US is, you know, familiar with Yoruba culture and bring an African American person who has never been to Nigeria and the two of them can actually interface because this music brings them together. So Fela is like a magician trying to create a kind of Pan Africanist musical language.

[A]

He described it almost as the sound of a diaspora meeting itself. Locking eyes.

[D]

Our eyes locked. It was like a spiritual cord. It just seems like we were connected.

[A]

When I talked about this with writer and scholar Louis Judasoki, he had a really interesting way of interpreting that gaze.

[C]

This dynamic you're describing for me is because African Americans look to Africa for a past. Folks in the diaspora look to the African Americans in the diaspora for a vision of possibility.

[A]

Ah.

[C]

So we look to them for the past, they look to us for the future.

[A]

I've never heard it said that way.

[C]

That's how I see it. Right.

[B]

As a matter of fact, just like Miles Davis said when he had fella in 1988, he did say that Fela's Afrobeat was going to be the music of the future.

[A]

Miles Davis said this?

[B]

Yes, Miles Davis said it.

[A]

Wow. In 1970, as the Junkoku asteroid was about to hit as planned, Sandra arrives in Lagos and steps off the plane.

[D]

You know what? I hope I can find that picture. You can see from the expression on my face that, oh my God, I was, oh, coming off that plane. I mean, it was like I had arrived okay. And I was just happy to be there, you know, in the motherland.

[A]

How did the people in Lagos react to you?

[D]

I was. Headlines.

[A]

Really?

[D]

Yeah. Because, I mean, an American Negress. That's what they call me, a negress. I had never heard that terminology, but I felt special. From day one, I felt nothing but love from my ancestors. And it gave back in full.

[A]

Few notes before we close in Legos, Fela would immediately let go of his buttoned up trousers and pants style and he'd embrace polyester jumpsuits and fur coats or just hanging out in his undies, his bikini briefs. And Fela and Sandra did not become the love affair that either of them expected. For a lot of reasons that we'll get into in some of the next chapters. As a final, final note, I want to end with a clip from Louis Chudasoki that I cannot get out of my mind. We were talking about that idea of realness, right? Like in the Cross Atlantic diasporic game of telephone. How do you find the real you amidst all of the projections and the echoes of echoes? And he said, well, there's no such thing. It's always a performance, which may not reflect the reality, but still doesn't make it any less real as long as you believe it. And then he threw out this stat.

[C]

The single statistic that's changed my whole life was discovering in the New York Times in 1990 or so that more Africans have come to the United States since 1990 than at the height of the slave trade.

[A]

Shut up.

[C]

Look it up. Wow, that shook me to the core. And I'm looking around, I'm like, y' all hear this? All of that is a way of wrestling with the fact that blackness is up for grabs in the same way that we know that whiteness is being transformed by immigration. So is blackness.

[A]

Coming up, Fella is about to light Nigeria on fire. And we fly to Lagos to visit the shrine, his club temple, where it all went down. This has been a higher ground in Audible Audible Original produced by Audible, Higher Ground Audio, Western Sound and Talkhouse. The series was created and executive produced by me, Jad Abumrad, Ben Adair and Ian Wheeler. Written and hosted by yours truly. Higher Ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukhta 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 Utubele. Ruby Heron Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefe Odudu and Oluakemi Aled Yosui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help from Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Hanif Abdurra, Aqib, Michael Veal, Moses Ochunu and Judith Byfield. Our fact checker was Jamila Wilkinson. Alex McInnis was the mix engineer. Also special thanks to Knitting Factory Records and BMG to the Kuti family, to Melissa o' Donnell to Inside Projects and Maggie Taylor for marketing support. And big thanks to Karla Murthy, Leah Friedman and Shoshana Scholar. We couldn't have done any of this without their support. Oh, and a very big thank you to Sandra Isidore. You can find her memoir, Fellah and Me and her music. Music. You can find [e-mail] that's I Z S A D O R E.com Head of Creative development and Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Gyazza. Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, L.L.C. this is Tanya Mosley, co host of Fresh Air. You'll see your favorite actors, directors and comedians on late night TV shows or YouTube. But what you get with Fresh Air is a deep dive. Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish, Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Colbert, and so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYYY. I'm Dallas Taylor, host of 20,000HZ, a lovingly crafted podcast about the amazing world of sound. From music, from music and video games to science and history, the world of sound is full of great stories. The TIE Fighter was made with a car passing by a microphone on wet pavement and then layered on top of that are these elephant growls. You can choose between snares, you can.

[B]

Start chopping up the Amen break and.

[A]

Rearranging the individual beats into other configurations and this barely scratches the surface. We've also revealed the hidden stories behind the most iconic sounds to ever be created to unlock your sonic world. Follow 20,000HZ right here in your podcast player.