3: Enter the Shrine

Summary

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Episode 3: Enter the Shrine

Host: Jad Abumrad
Date: October 22, 2025
Podcast: Higher Ground

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Overview:

This episode centers on “The Shrine,” the legendary club founded by Fela Kuti in Lagos, Nigeria. Through personal recollections, interviews, and insightful commentary, Jad Abumrad and guests explore how the Shrine became ground zero for Afrobeat and a sanctuary of resistance, creativity, and catharsis during Nigeria’s most turbulent political years. The episode investigates the transformative, even spiritual, effects of Fela's music as experienced live, unpacking the “hypnotic” power of Afrobeat as both an artistic revolution and a force for social awakening.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Significance of The Shrine (00:38 – 05:35)

• Purpose as Movement Epicenter:
  Jad Abumrad sets the stage, explaining that every movement needs "a place where you can experience the promise of that movement right here, right now in the present." The Shrine was that for Fela’s revolution.
• Michael Veal’s First-Hand Account:
  Veal, a Yale professor and musician, recalls the chaos and intensity upon arriving at the Shrine in the 1990s—"jam packed mob with people," darkness illuminated by "thousands of Sterno lamps," with live music as the pulsing heart.

  “It was very, very funky.” — Michael Veal (01:04)

• Context of Lagos:
  Abumrad describes Lagos as Africa’s most populous city, painting its extremes: lush islands vs. the dense working-class neighborhood Mushin, where a million people lived in seven square miles. This was where Fela chose to place his Shrine—the “voice of the people, the sufferheads.”

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Transcending Politics: The Club’s Sanctuary (05:35 – 08:33)

• Lasting Power & Fela's Spiritual Protection:
  Even decades after Fela's death, open weed smoking (normally heavily punished) was tolerated at the Shrine. Locals credit this to Fela’s “ghost” protecting the space.

  “Fela is like life after death. Evergreen.” — Vendor (06:13)
  “His sense was the ghost of Fela is still there protecting this one block.” — Jad Abumrad (06:24)

• Political Context:
  Under dictatorship, Lagos was dangerous at night, with military present and public executions occurring. The Shrine, described as "like a warehouse," was an alternate universe—crowded, smoky, seemingly safe.

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Ritual, Performance, and Myth (08:33 – 10:52)

• John Darton's Vivid Recollection:
  Pulitzer winner John Darton shares his coverage for the New York Times, including Fela’s elaborate pre-show ritual—"spoons up liberal doses" of Fela Gold (marijuana extract), dresses ritualistically, then emerges to hundreds chanting his name.

  “He was absolutely incredible.” — John Darton (10:27)

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The Trance of Afrobeat: Entering the Music (13:48 – 17:05)

• Psychedelic, Collective, Spiritual:
  The hosts and guests describe the psychedelic quality of entering the Shrine, likening the experience to “being hypnotized”—the music is immersive, the crowd lost in dance and smoke, a “different world.”

  “Like the music was like inside of me. It was all around… being hypnotized.” — Jad Abumrad (00:11) “Another way to deal with time: spiral, spiral, spiral, and spiral, circle, circle, circle.” — Michael Veal (14:02)

• Music as a Place:
  Rather than a song, the Afrobeat groove is “a place.” Extended compositions (30-40 mins) serve to entrance, to prepare audiences for the deeper, message-laden lyrics.

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Structure of an Afrobeat Show (17:05 – 20:16)

• Three Stages of the Experience:
  • Hypnotic Repetition: Ostinato (repeating musical loops) builds anticipation.
  • Lyrical Insight: Only after the trance does Fela sing—about injustice, state violence, and corruption.
  • Shocking Honesty:

    “He sings about things that no one else ever even mentioned in any newspaper, any columnist.” — John Darton (19:04)
    “He talks about the United Nations, he talks about Thatcher, he talks about Reagan... It’s like a history lesson.” — Michael Veal (19:15)

  • Transformation: New ideas “float from the stage like thought balloons…sinking into somebody's skull.” — John Darton (19:24). Listeners describe moments of intellectual awakening and introspection.

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The Consciousness Shift (21:59 – 23:02)

• Music Rekindling Outrage:
  Michael Veal and Moses Ochonu (historian) discuss how Fela’s music reignited moral outrage against corruption, counteracting the “numbing effect” of ever-escalating governmental theft in Nigeria.

  “That [shock] is what would come back when you heard his songs.” — Jad Abumrad (22:59)

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Musical Mechanics: How the Groove Works (23:19 – 25:52)

• Structure as Philosophy:
  Jad notes that Afrobeat’s “ostinato”—a stubborn, unchanging pattern—initially frustrates the part of the mind seeking novelty. But persistent repetition induces hyperfocus:

  “My God, this groove is a whole world. This is the trance state.” — Jad Abumrad (24:54)

• Opening Listeners:
  It’s at the height of this focus that Fela’s lyrics enter—seizing audience attention when they're most receptive, turning a musical experience into a political one.

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Fela on Music as Weapon & Time (26:28 – 27:45)

• Fela Speaks:
  From a rare interview:

  “Is your music kind of a tool? It’s a weapon…to inform people. My music is like an attraction to inform people. It is the information side of the music that is important.” — Fela Kuti (26:51)

• Time as Cyclical:
  Fela suggests “time is meaningless unless you want to understand what time is about. There is time for everything.” (27:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Michael Veal on First Arrival:
  “Total darkness, but thousands of these little Sterno lamps illuminating the place. The power went out all the time in Lagos…It’s like almost Woodstock.” (01:05)
• Darton’s Power of Performance:
  “I have never seen, I think, a performer quite as dynamic as that. He was absolutely incredible.” (10:52)
• Jad’s Trance Analogy:
  “The music was inside of me…it was all around, just like being hypnotized.” (00:11)
• Veal on Afrobeat’s Groove:
  “This is a place…this isn’t a song.” (16:25)
• Ochonu on Corruption:
  “[The moral outrage], that’s gone. That’s long gone.” (21:59)
• Jad on Political Art:
  “It is at this very moment that Fela begins to sing…In comes his voice, booming like the voice of God. This is phase three. And because you are open, you really hear what he is saying.” (25:33)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:38 - The purpose of the Shrine; movement and place
• 01:04 - First experience of the Shrine (Michael Veal)
• 06:13 - Fela’s legacy and spiritual presence protecting the Shrine
• 08:38 - Description of Fela’s pre-show rituals (John Darton)
• 13:48 - Hypnotic power of the music; entering the trance
• 17:05 - Three-stage structure of a Fela show
• 19:04 - Radical content of Fela’s lyrics
• 22:59 - Music reigniting outrage at corruption
• 24:42 - The mechanics of the groove, reaching trance state
• 26:51 - Fela defining his music as a weapon
• 27:25 - Fela on the meaning and cycle of time

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Conclusion & Look Forward

As Fela’s music builds trance, awareness, and political charge, the episode closes promising a deeper dive: exploring cycles not just in music but in history—resistance, violence, rebirth—anchoring the continued relevance of the Shrine and Fela’s legacy.

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If you haven’t listened, this episode is a vibrant, multi-sensory exploration of cultural memory, collective resistance, and the spiritual dimension of music's power to awaken, inspire, and protect—offering close-up intimacy with a revolutionary space and its enduring spirit.

Transcript

[Chad Abumrad]

My experience in being in the shrine was like, like the music was like inside of me was all around and just like, you know, being hypnotized, like you're all inside the music.

[Michael Veal]

Brothers and sisters, the secret of life.

[Chad Abumrad]

Is to have no fe.

[Michael Veal]

We all have to understand that.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is fel akuti Fear no man. I'm Jad Abumrad. Chapter three Enter the Shrine. One of the ingredients of a movement, necessary ingredients, is to have a place where you can experience the promise of that movement right here, right now in the present. Can you tell, can you tell us about your first visit to the shrine?

[Michael Veal]

Yes, of course.

[Chad Abumrad]

What do you remember about them?

[Michael Veal]

It was very, very funky.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is Michael Veal, musician, professor of music at Yale. He's also one of our advisors on the project.

[Michael Veal]

To hear that music in New York is one thing, you know, you listen to that music in New York, you're like, oh yeah, whatever. Look, the first night I was in Lagos, you know, as you're walking up the shrine, you hear that, then you get closer. You start. So you start getting. I remember that very clearly. And it was in the. It was at night and there was no power. Every blackout, it's like going to Times Square, but there are people all in the street, like thousands and thousands of people. It's a jam packed mob with people. It's total darkness, but thousands of these little Sterno lamps illuminating the place. The power went out all the time in Lagos, but there are thousands of these Sternos. So you imagine the scene, it's like almost like Woodstock of a kind of thing. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Michael Veal]

To hear that music in New York is one thing. You're like, oh yeah, whatever. But then if you ever get in a plane and go to Lagos. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to. They open a hatch and it goes with the humidity and the heat, you know, the minute they open the hatch, it's like blam. And then you walk out of the plane and you got to go down the steps and you're like, oh, now I get it.

[Chad Abumrad]

Welcome to Nigeria.

[Michael Veal]

That's the way reality feels in this setting, you know what I'm saying?

[Chad Abumrad]

That interview with Michael Veal was one of the many reasons why when we finally got to lagos after a 13 hour flight, the top item on our agenda was to go to the shrine. Let me fill in a few gaps. 1969, after the whole Sandra Isadore experience in La Fela, comes back to Nigeria, radicalized, steps off the plane and takes the country by storm. He becomes the Massive star that we know him to be. And then between 1973 and 1979, he releases this fire hose of music. Something like, by my count, 27 records in six years. Ish. One hit after another after another. Now the shrine. During that time, early on, he sets up a club that he calls the Shrine. And it's important to understand where Lagos. Lagos City, the most populous city in Africa. Lagos is on the coast, the Atlantic Ocean. And it consists of a giant landmass and mainland that curves around this bay. And in the bay are two major islands that connect back to the mainland with bridges on the islands. This is the sound you hear. Peacocks, golf. It's very lush, very beautiful on the mainland. Very different sound. You will find places on the mainland where the sheer density of people is just breathtaking. For example, this audio that you're hearing is from a market that we visited in a neighborhood called Mushin, a poor working class neighborhood where a million people are packed into seven square miles. In this neighborhood, not the island, this spot is where he decided to put the shrine. To say, basically, I am the voice of the people, the sufferheads, as he called them. When we visited the shrine at night, it was more or less as Michael Veal described it.

[Michael Veal]

People all in the street, like jam packed mob with people.

[Chad Abumrad]

He was there in 92. We were there 20, 24. And the shrine has closed a few times and reopened and moved around a bit. But it was kind of the same. It was dark. You had about 50 food cellars lining the block. This very long block in front of the shrine. People smoked weed openly, which in Nigeria can carry a heavy prison sentence. Our fixer in Lagos told us that even now, 28 years after Fellah died, this is the one place where that can happen. One of the sellers that was there explained it this way.

[Michael Veal]

Fela is like life after death. Evergreen. Yes. What do you feel like Fela still.

[Chad Abumrad]

Protects this street, this place?

[Michael Veal]

Yes, yeah, yes, exactly.

[Chad Abumrad]

His sense was the ghost of Fellah is still there protecting this one block. And as he said that, he nodded towards the end of the block where there were policemen waiting, standing almost like on the other side of an invisible line. You've done your research. You know that the. The shrine and also Fela's compound, the Kalikud of a republic he had kind of declared independent of Nigeria. That's Lisa Lindsay, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She specializes in the history of West Africa. And she brings up an important point, is that in 1970, when Fellah got back To Nigeria. He declared his club the Shrine and also his house nearby, which he called the Kalakuta Republic. He declared them a sovereign nation within Nigeria. Sort of like the Vatican is to Italy, that he was a country unto himself. Lisa Lindsay visited the shrine in the early 90s. It was just all this craziness that we saw. Well, okay, so outside there's a dictatorship that was shooting people at that time. And there are videos of this on YouTube. The government would hold public executions of criminals and dissidents on the beach. There were soldiers in the streets. It wasn't safe to be out at night. You go in and it's just this alternate universe. Describe what it looks like. It was like a warehouse, sort of everybody smoking, like a lot of weed smoking. Giant, giant joints. Joints the size of police megaphones.

[Michael Veal]

Keep in mind at that time, people, people were getting thrown in jail for 10 years for a half smoke joint.

[Chad Abumrad]

It's just this massive cloud up at the top of the thing.

[Michael Veal]

It's hot, it's humid. There are a lot of people in.

[Chad Abumrad]

There, people dancing and people stoned out of their minds. And it was such a contrast to how scared people were outside of the shrine.

[John Darton]

The Shrine was not far from his house, a couple of blocks.

[Chad Abumrad]

That's John Darton, Pulitzer prize winning journalist who wrote for the New York Times. Worked as a foreign correspondent based in lagos in the mid-70s. Wrote many, many articles about Fela, including this one where he watched Fela get ready right before he performed at the shrine. Would you mind reading this? This is you, you reading you. Because we, Ruby and I have been trying to find as vivid descriptions as we can of the atmosphere. And this is actually one of the more vivid that we've ever read.

[John Darton]

New York Times.

[Chad Abumrad]

That voice is Nina Darton, John's wife, also a longtime journalist.

[John Darton]

Fella's pregame ritual. The show begins at 1am Inside the nearby Calcutta Republic. Fella prepares for it laboriously from a jar. He spoons up liberal doses glitter, gooey substance nicknamed Fella Gold distilled extract of marijuana. Full length mirrors are brought before him and held by two young boys. He slowly slips into skin tight sequined pants and a white shirt open to the waist, arranging his strings of beads as if he were smoothing a necktie. Six bodyguards draw near. Let's go, Fella says. And the entourage moves outside where there is a crowd of several hundred people. Some have been waiting for hours, clinging to the barbed wire to catch a glimpse of him. A chant. Fella. Fella rumbles out of the dark.

[Michael Veal]

That is really good, John.

[Chad Abumrad]

It is really good.

[John Darton]

And as he walked and he's not on a donkey. Well, that was his second death.

[Chad Abumrad]

He's got on a donkey. What? Okay, wait, sorry.

[John Darton]

As he walked, he was a showman. You know, drivers would get out and raise a fist and yell, fella Fila. Anyway, then he starts playing. And I have never seen, I think, a performer quite as dynamic as that. He was absolutely incredible.

[Chad Abumrad]

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's 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. Before we go back into the shrine, well, first let me give you a picture. It is a open air club, fits about 500 people. There's a tin roof over the stage, but no roof over the dance floor. And to either side of the stage are four studio 54ish cages where dancers dance. Also to one side there is an altar where Fellah had a picture of his mother, a picture of Malcolm X and a picture of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. But I'll be honest, what's most interesting to me is not so much the shrine itself. I mean, it was a club, but rather what happened to people when they went inside of it. Because do you know how people talk about psilocybin now, right? Like we all have one of those friends who did some mushrooms and it changed their life and they can't stop talking about it. And there's a way to explain those experiences. You can say neurochemistry, right? There's something about these drugs they rewire your brain. Fine. We ran into so many people who described listening to Fellah's music at the shrine in the same way that it had the same effect on them, which is a little harder to explain, though I will try in a moment. But first, let's re enter the shrine from their perspective. And as you're listening, see if you can let yourself notice. What are you paying attention to? How does that change over time? 1:00am Fela arrives on his donkey, takes the stage with 35 other musicians. And he begins a riff that will last most of the night. My experience in being in the shrine was like. Like the music was like inside of me. It was all around. It was just like, you know, being hypnotized. Like you're all inside the music. A kind of hypnotic dancing.

[Michael Veal]

React to music. Dancing in listening. I remember being lost in music.

[Chad Abumrad]

All the people are smoking around me and we are in the mist.

[Michael Veal]

So you're in a different world. This idea of spiral, spiral, spiral and spiral, circle, circle, circle, spiral, spiral. Another way to deal with time react to music. I always describe it as a swirl. You know, when you have a cyclone, it starts off as this little thing that builds up and it builds up. The more you allow it to circulate, it just starts to get bigger, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger. Circle, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger. Circle, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger. Fela starts his music to enchant this repetitive pattern. The power of the musical ostinato is part of that enchanting strategy. You've been captured.

[Chad Abumrad]

I thought this is really an amazing.

[Michael Veal]

New form of music. It was almost like a field of sound that sits there for a long time.

[Chad Abumrad]

And you explore it. You kind of enter it and live in it.

[Michael Veal]

This is a place, this isn't a song.

[John Darton]

And meanwhile the rhythm sections keeping going, going, going, going, going, going, going.

[Michael Veal]

This is a place.

[Chad Abumrad]

And when you start listening to it, you're entering into that place. Like, the music was like inside of me. It was all around. And he was just like, you know, being hypnotized by all kind.

[Michael Veal]

And so with Fela, you could tell that there was a different kind of intention behind this paradigm of groove. The music is so nasty, you have to dance. But that's just the ground level. Because why would you play a song for 30 minutes or 40 minutes unless you really have something to say? Good. Unless you really want something funny.

[John Darton]

And then suddenly, after half an hour, 40 minutes, he starts singing.

[Michael Veal]

Whether you like or you don't like. After you hear this Digital talk. Whether you like or you know, like, after you hear this little talk, if you like it good, if you don't like, you hungry. If you like it good. If you not like, you hang. If you hang, you go die. You go die for nothing. We go carry your body. Go police station. You die wrongfully.

[Chad Abumrad]

Yay.

[Michael Veal]

When his voice came in and I was like, what the hell? There are words too. All of them. Kiwi, Kiri. 10 to 15 years in jail. After one year, he hold up. What is this?

[John Darton]

He sings in a gravelly low pitched voice and sings about things that no one else ever even mentioned. Any newspaper, any columnist.

[Michael Veal]

He talks about the United nations, he talks about Thatcher, he talks about Reagan.

[Chad Abumrad]

Like it's.

[Michael Veal]

It's really everything. It's like a history lesson.

[John Darton]

You see it sinking in. You could see ideas in the air floating from the stage like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull.

[Chad Abumrad]

I just felt, where has my mind.

[Michael Veal]

Been all my life? Complete surprise. Like, I was immediately captivated. Why did we not know this? Why aren't we thinking about this stuff? When Fela singing to a microphone, I saw the light.

[Chad Abumrad]

I was just like, you know, like.

[Michael Veal]

He sucks you in and then he has that light bulb effect on you. You come into yourself and you know, it's a moment of introspection too, because you realize that you haven't been as attuned as you probably should have.

[Chad Abumrad]

All the stuff he was singing was just new to me, you know, I.

[Michael Veal]

Was just learning so much about Nigerian history through Fela that I had not learned in school. 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.

[Chad Abumrad]

Before.

[Michael Veal]

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 Fel Akuti Fear no Man. Before we go on. The voices you just heard before the break, in addition to Michael Veal and John Darton were Stephanie Shonikan and Bode Omojola, both professors of ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland in Mount Holyoke, respectively. Afrobeat musicians Delay Shoshimi and Duro Ikugenyu, activist, filmmaker, musician Saul Williams, musician and producer Brian Eno, artist Lemmy Gariaku, photographer Marilyn Nance, designer Lorraine Animosin, and our advisor, Moses Uchunu, who's a professor of history and my colleague at Vanderbilt University. He was one of the last voices you heard? And I asked him, he said the music made you Feel like you needed to tune into things you hadn't been tuning into. Like what?

[Michael Veal]

You know, when I was growing up in Nigeria, you know, we would hear about corruption, about thousands of naira being embezzled by some politician or government official. And we would open our mouths in shock because our brains couldn't compute how one person would make off with thousands of naira. How would the person carry this money? What would they put it in? In some boxes, in some cars? You know, physically, how would they move this money? You know, we just couldn't fathom it. And then over time, we started hearing about millions, not thousands anymore, then billions. And now, as we speak, the corruption numbers have entered the trillions. So that over time has had a numbing effect, a dulling effect. The shock value, the kind of shock that I felt as a child growing up in Nigeria, the moral outrage that I felt, that's gone. That's long gone.

[Chad Abumrad]

And that is what would come back when you heard his songs, right?

[Michael Veal]

Exactly.

[Chad Abumrad]

Moses said that Fellah's music would remind him of the insanity that he had been sane, washed into, believing was normal. And I think that there's something really interesting about how the music can.

[John Darton]

Move.

[Chad Abumrad]

Him to that thought. Music is all about structure, right? Structuring the relationship between notes and chords and melodies. But here you have structure on an entirely different level, almost like a phenomenological structure. For the first 15 minutes, it's just loops. Ostinato is going round and round.

[Michael Veal]

The power of the musical ostinato.

[Chad Abumrad]

Ostinato in it, Italian, by the way, means basically stubborn. The loops stubbornly repeat. And at first, it's not so bad. It's kind of grounding, actually. But then the natural response is then to want some change. Like, can we go to the next section now, please, Please? No. This is what the Buddhists call our monkey mind. Our monkey mind wants distraction. It wants anything to keep us from having to live with our own thoughts. But the music doesn't give us that. It doesn't change. It only builds. Layers get added piece by piece, instrument by instrument. And at some point, a few minutes in, you arrive at this mysterious moment where you stop wanting it to change. This is phase two. Now, that part of you that wants novelty starts to notice things like, whoa, listen to all the interlocking parts of this groove.

[Michael Veal]

Oh, the Austin Magic. Those that like machine gears, they don't grind. The gears are timed in between each other, so they just subtly fit into the little gaps and holes like tet.

[Chad Abumrad]

The way that the conga plays off the shaker call in response. The way that the three guitar lines spin around endlessly like gears in a higher level clock. My God, this groove is a whole world. This is the trance state. Usually when we talk about trance, we mean a kind of dulling of our senses, but actually it's the opposite. It's a state of hyper focus. You are noticing things. You're hearing things you've never heard before because your neurons are rewired. You are open. And it is at this very moment that Fela begins to sing.

[Michael Veal]

I was like, what the hell? There are words too.

[Chad Abumrad]

In comes his voice, booming like the voice of God. This is phase three. And because you are open, you really hear what he is saying.

[John Darton]

You see it sinking in. You could see ideas in the air floating from the stage like thought balloons and then sinking into somebody's skull.

[Chad Abumrad]

And in that way, as the final piece of this progression, he gives you a new conception of what your life can be. I saw the delight that you can now dance to.

[Michael Veal]

My music. My main. My main preoccupation right now, music is a small part of it.

[Chad Abumrad]

This is a clip from an interview fela gave in 1988, where he describes his musical form almost as this vehicle designed to move people step by step by step so that they can hear what he has to say.

[Michael Veal]

Is your music kind of a tool? It's a weapon. It's a weapon to say, so I can talk when I have the chance to. I consider music to be effective, like a weapon to inform people. My music is like an attraction to inform people. It is the information side of the music that is important.

[Chad Abumrad]

In that same interview, he suggests that there's something else going on here too. It has to do with time itself.

[Michael Veal]

If anybody tells me 20 years is a long time, I would tell him, no. Time is meaningless unless you want to understand what time is about. There is time for everything.

[Chad Abumrad]

Coming up, that idea of cycles is going to become not just about the music, but so much more cycles of history, of violence, of resistance. We're going to follow all of the interlocking ostinatos of fellas groove across time and space into the deep past to an incredible story of a rebellion that deposed a king that created a sound that continues to echo to this day on the streets of legos in the world. That's next. This has been a higher Ground and audible original. Produced by Audible, Higher Ground Audio, Western Sound and Talkhouse. The 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 Fearman. 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 Utwele. Ruby Heron Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefe Odudu and Oluakemi Ala Dusui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help for Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Neef Abdurraqib, Michael Veild, 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, Melissa o' Donnell to Inside Projects and Maggie Taylor. And big thanks to Carla Murthy, Leah Friedman and Shoshana Scholar. The head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Navin, Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio.

[Michael Veal]

Foreign.

[Chad Abumrad]

I'm Dallas Taylor, host of 20,000 Hz, a lovingly crafted podcast about the amazing world of sound. 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 of top. Top of that are these elephant growls. You can choose between snares.

[Michael Veal]

You can start chopping up the Amen.

[Chad Abumrad]

Break and 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. This is Tonya Moseley, 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.