6: The Queens

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Episode 6: The Queens
Host: Jad Abumrad for Higher Ground
Date: November 5, 2025

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Overview

This episode centers on the often overlooked group of women known as the Afrobeat Queens, who were crucial to Fela Kuti’s musical, political, and personal legacy. Host Jad Abumrad, alongside scholars and firsthand voices—including surviving Queens themselves—explores how these women shaped Fela’s art and ideology, the unique culture of the Kalakuta Republic commune, and the immense cost they bore, both as creators and as the front line against government oppression. The episode wrestles openly with the complexity of Fela as a revolutionary and a deeply flawed man, raising questions about whose legacies get honored and how we reconsider artistic greatness.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Indispensable Role of the Queens

• Dotun Ayobadi (Assistant Professor, Northwestern; 01:04): “We wouldn’t have a Fela Kuti without the queens. I could say that in ten hundred ways.”

  • The Queens were not just backup singers or dancers, but co-creators—integral to the Afrobeat sound, the vibe of the Shrine, and the movement’s energy.
  • The interplay of Fela’s gruff vocal and the Queens’ crisp harmonies created a unique dynamic central to classic Afrobeat (“playful give and take”—02:25).
  • Performance as Power: Audiences were drawn as much to the women’s performances as to Fela himself (03:10).

• Visual and Sonic Liberation:

  • The Queens were known for bold makeup, shaved heads, topless dancing—defying social norms and creating a “whole new aesthetic of Black beauty. They embodied everything against beauty that I had learned. And yet they were beautiful.” —Ayo Adeburi (09:38)

2. Controversies and Erasure

• Despite their significance, the Queens have historically been erased from the Fela/Afrobeat story: “In the years since Fela’s death, they’ve basically been erased. And they’re not considered part of his legacy, part of what Afrobeat has become in the world.” —Jad Abumrad (04:57)
• Moral Backlash: Their choices, lifestyles, and relationships with Fela drew outsized moral scrutiny; the 1978 “mass wedding” of 27 wives was both a bold cultural statement and the start of a public controversy (08:03).

3. The Voices of the Surviving Queens

([05:48]–[14:01], [15:21]–[18:53])

• Interview with Laide, Lara (Lara Shosaya), and Chinyere
  • They express agency: “I joined him on my own. Nobody asked me to go there. Yes, I’m proud to say that.”—Laide (11:18)
  • All Queens affirm they chose to join Fela, saw themselves as workers (dancers, singers, DJs), and were paid for their contributions.
  • On Performance: Dancing was both livelihood and empowerment—audiences would “spray” (throw money to) dancers (12:28).

4. Motivation and Backgrounds

• The Queens’ personal stories illuminate why they joined Fela:
  • Laide: Wanted to escape strict, abusive, colonial-influenced discipline in her middle-class family; sought freedom and adventure (15:28).
  • Lara: Drawn by possibility for change and Fela’s music as “weapon” (17:30).
  • Chinyere: Sought freedom and belonging after being orphaned by the Biafran War; Fela’s commune became her sanctuary (18:01).

5. Historical Context: Post-Colonial Nigeria and Civil War

• The episode explores, with support from historian Moses Achunu, how British colonial policies created deep-seated ethnic divisions—eventually sparking the Biafran War. Chinyere’s own story of loss exemplifies the trauma and disillusionment of a generation in 1971, searching for new beginnings and meaning (21:24–24:16).
• Kalakuta Republic (Fela’s Commune): Just miles from military barracks and universities, Fela’s “microsociety” attracted misfits, runaways, and idealists. Ethnic identity was banned: “You are not allowed to identify by ethnicity” (27:42).

6. Life and Rules inside Kalakuta Republic ([28:59]–[34:54])

• Polyamory and Power: Both Fela and the Queens had partners inside and outside the commune; Fela was “a liberal lover” (29:26). Still, nobody could bring their outside boyfriend into the house.
• Yabis Culture: Insults (“yabis”) were encouraged—free expression, equal-opportunity mockery, but not falsehood (libel) (30:10–33:03).
• Justice and Abuse: Commune disputes ended in Fela presiding as judge, often sentencing “yabis fines,” cleaning—but, troublingly, also physical punishments.
  • Laide clarifies Fela would not hit the women himself, but would order his “boys” to beat offenders: “Two people will hold your hand. Two people will hold your legs, and they will be beating you…You see all the marks on your body.” (35:04)
  • Some outside voices (e.g., Chief Taiwo Lijadu) criticize Fela for exploiting his power: “People change sometimes because they cannot handle fame. Something eats their brains up…You don’t accuse the government of doing things to people and repeat the same thing and do worse. Became a tyrant.” (35:51)

7. The Cost: Violence from the State ([38:03]–[39:51])

• The Queens bear not only internal hardship but also public brutality—Lara lost her eye, Laide bears scars, from army/police attacks during raids.
  • “We will go through all this and people will say they don’t see us. We went through all this. They will say they don’t see us. Why would they not see us? With all the struggle we struggled with Fela. Fela cannot do it all alone…They can’t do it without us.” —Laide (38:53)
  • The Queens view themselves as “the front line of Fela’s army” and guardians of his vision (37:18, 37:26).

8. Aftermath, Abandonment, & Legacy

• The Queens feel forgotten—cut out from the Fela legacy, living with injury and poverty.
  • “I’m abandoned.” —Laide (39:51)
• Small gestures of inclusion (free entrance and meals at the Fela museum) mean a lot, but larger questions about justice and recognition remain.

9. Reconciling Greatness and Flaws

• Ayo Adeburi voices the discomfort of loving Fela’s art but being disturbed by parts of his story. Separating art from the artist feels “false… sometimes you’re not even sure how much of it is you and how much of it isn’t. So how can somebody else…decide?” (42:33–44:02)
• Tony Kushner (quoted from past interview):
  • “It’s not that you’re unaware of the fact that this is a great racial…nationalist epic written by an anti-Semitic egomaniacal monster, but it’s just too great to leave alone.” (44:33–44:46)
• Jad Abumrad concludes: “He did some amazing things and he did some fucked up things…you can do great things and you can do terrible things. And better to have a full conversation about that with all the messiness rather than an idealized version without the truth.” (45:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We wouldn’t have a Fela Kuti without the queens. I could say that in ten hundred ways.” —Dotun Ayobadi (00:05)
• “The deeper you dig, the more you realize the story of Fela is the story of women.” —Jad Abumrad (00:17)
• “We all love Fela. Fela is a very, very good woman.” —Laide (08:36, repeated 36:44; affectionate, complex rendering)
• “What people don’t understand is that they think that everybody in Fela’s house are bad. No, I joined him on my own. Nobody asked me to go there. I go there. Yes. I’m proud to say that.” —Laide (11:18)
• “We know we love Fela because Fela doesn’t leave us. We were protecting Fela. Fela was protecting us.” —Laide (36:54)
• “We will go through all this and people will say they don’t see us. Why would they not see us?” —Laide (38:53)
• “I’m abandoned.” —Laide (39:51)
• Ayo Adeburi on art vs. artist: “Even the maybe challenge that that poses, I think it’s a bit false…there is no answer, and that’s kind of the answer.” (42:33–44:02)
• Tony Kushner (channelled by Jad): “It’s just too great to leave alone.” (44:46)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:05–03:10: Importance of the Queens in Afrobeat’s formation and performance.
• 05:48–13:04: Interviews with Laide, Lara, and Chinyere; Queen’s voices and experiences.
• 15:21–19:33: Personal histories and motivations for joining Fela.
• 21:24–24:16: Postcolonial Nigeria, civil war, and the Kalakuta Republic’s appeal.
• 28:59–34:54: Life in the commune—polyamory, yabis, internal justice, and abuse.
• 35:51–36:29: External critique from family (Chief Taiwo Lijadu), Fela’s changing character.
• 38:03–39:51: Documentation of violence from state, scars—both physical and emotional.
• 41:44–44:02: Wrestling with art and artist, no easy answers.
• 44:33–44:46: Reflection via Tony Kushner on genius and darkness—when art is “too great to leave alone.”

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Conclusion

“The Queens” offers a raw, intricate look at the women so often erased from Fela Kuti’s myth—honoring their agency, artistry, suffering, and centrality to the Afrobeat revolution. It is an episode that refuses easy answers, insisting on messy humanity in art, in politics, in love, and in memory. For listeners, it’s a reckoning with legacy: who builds it, who benefits, and who gets left behind.

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Fela Kuti. Fear no man. I'm Jad Abumrad. Chapter six.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

We wouldn't have a Fela Kuti without the queens. I could say that in ten hundred ways.

[Jad Abumrad]

It simply wouldn't happen in this chapter. Fela and the Queens. Okay, so there is a theme that is emerging in our series that behind Fela there are a series of influential women. Whether it is Sandra who jump starts his political philosophy, or his mother who architects his whole worldview and shows him that music really can take down a king. The deeper you dig, the more you realize the story of Fela is the story of women. And this is particularly true and particularly hard when you're discussing a series of women known as the Afrobeat Queens. We got onto this topic thanks to Doton Doton Ayobadi.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

I am an assistant professor, Performance Studies, African American Studies, Northwestern University.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's one of our advisors on this project and he had just written a book about the Queens.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

We've never heard anyone else put it like that.

[Ayo Adeburi]

Can I just ask what you're thinking of when you.

[Jad Abumrad]

When you say there wouldn't be Afrobeat without them? That's producer Ruby Walsh. She and I interviewed do tune together. Are you thinking of sonically, Certainly, in the performances. I'm just curious to know what flashes.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

In your mind in every aspect of it. Think about the first. The first album that really showcases the women as a sonic force. That's the first time Fela experiments with having women as backup singers. I mean, he had had hits before then. He had jkoko. He had had some really great songs before then. But once he locked in on the formula of having that.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Before I jump like monkey Give me.

[Sheun Kuti]

Banana make you hear Give me banana juxtaposition.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Gruffy Scat singing with this high pitch, crisp female vocals. And you could have that interplay. It's that playful give and take.

[Sheun Kuti]

That.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Also sustains the groove. Once he locked in on that formula, he never let it go till he died. So that's one layer. The other layer or the other dimension is the lived experience of witnessing an Afrobeat concert. So when folks went to Fela's club, you didn't simply go to listen to good music. You also went to see the women showcase their talents.

[Ayo Adeburi]

You know, like, so it was amazing. I was shocked, like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And I went home trying to do what I called the African dance on the floor.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was certainly the case for Santigold. Singer, songwriter. We're gonna hear a lot More from her later in the series. When she saw Fela perform in Philly as an 8 year old. She can't even remember the music from that night. But the image of the women dancing, it was wild that she will never.

[Ayo Adeburi]

Forget that they had no shirts on and we could all see their breasts, you know, as a little girl, like in the 80s, like, you don't do that.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

But they did.

[Ayo Adeburi]

Yeah, these black women did.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

That was one of the reasons why the shrine was an attraction. And that was how fellow could also accumulate the kind of following that he also had in the 70s. And then you had a controversy, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

His wives are trophies.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

When it came to women, he was just total mierna. I don't know if you speak any Spanish. That's Spanish for bullshit.

[Ayo Adeburi]

There are pictures of him sitting in his underwear.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

And he's sitting there with kind of oil on his body and the women are surrounding him. Everything about it just looks like a throwback. The fact that he violated. He broke loose.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

These women, young women, girls and women, were with Felakuti living in Kalakuta Republic.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

They know, but they don't want to talk about it.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

There was all of this moral controversy about what these women's relationship with Fela was. Just this speculation alone produced controversy. And then there were court cases that amplified publicity for Fela's work. Like, that's my point. We wouldn't have Afrobeat music, the phenomenon that it became, without the influx and the injection of the women's creativity and their passion and their voices.

[Jad Abumrad]

And yet Totun says there's very little documentation of who. Who they are. In the years since Fela's death, they've basically been erased. And they're not considered part of his legacy, part of what aphrobe has become in the world.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

How many of them are alive? What were they thinking? What was the motivation for them? The question then became, where are the women?

[Ayo Adeburi]

Right?

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Where are the women?

[Jad Abumrad]

That became the question for Dotun in his book. And it also became the question for us. Could we get in touch with any of Fela's queens who are still alive? When we were in Lagos, after weeks and weeks of back and forth, we managed to contact a former queen named Laide. And she arranged a meeting for us.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I'm Laide, one of the queens of the late Afrobeat king Fela Anikula Bokutsi.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of the original 27 queens, four are still with us. We think we met three of them that day. Hi, Jed. There was Laura.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I'm Lara Shosaya, one of Fela dancers.

[Jad Abumrad]

She joined Fela's group as a dancer in 1976.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I lived with Fela for long years.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stayed with him 21 years, until he died.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Nice meeting you all. My name is Chinyere.

[Jad Abumrad]

Then there was Chinyere Dancer.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Chinyere Dancer.

[Jad Abumrad]

She danced with Fela for three years.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I thank you all for doing this. For making it known to me that I am somebody, you understand, Because I've never experienced a thing like this. When she called me, I was like me dancer that danced for Fela for years. We are going to ask us questions, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

It's an interview, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Are you taking everything back to your country and play the cassette for people and let them know who we are?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the plan.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

And we are going to tell them what we said about Fela. Right?

[Jad Abumrad]

But I'm also going to ask you a lot of questions about you and your story.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

And there are some. If I don't want to answer, I don't have to, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

You do not have to answer anything you don't want to answer.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Okay?

[Jad Abumrad]

Lara is tall and quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you think she's seen some things. Chinieri is shorter. The warmest smile. She'd never been interviewed before. Laide was a powerful presence. She was clearly their organizer, their advocate. As we stood in her small living room.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes, that's my husband.

[Jad Abumrad]

Laide showed us a picture of Fela on the wall.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

My late husband.

[Jad Abumrad]

There he is. He said, that's my late husband. It was a picture of him smiling, like he just heard a joke. That's a great photo. Quick, important piece of context. When Laide calls Fela her husband and when people refer to the queens as Fela's wives, it is because of one of his most infamous stunts. In 1978, Fela married his 27 singers.

[Sheun Kuti]

And dancers in one fell swoop. They are now called the queen.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you married 27 wives because you. You felt this was part of the tradition here?

[Sheun Kuti]

No, because I needed 27 wives. And my tradition was not against it. I needed. You know, I like a lot of women around me. I liked the women. I wanted to sleep with them every day, man, you know.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

You know, Fela, Fela. We are. We are many. We are many women around him. And Fela loves sleeping with everybody. Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

At that moment, Chinieri shot Laide a look like. Don't say that.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes, you have to say it. So when you see that Fela is up and you want him to call you, you will do everything to please him, to please him, to hustle him. That's what we call hustle. You will do everything you can go and do. Maybe you can do any kind of makeup. Because Fela loves, you know, different things, seeing different things. We all love Fela. Fela is a very, very good woman.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the. The look, the style was driven just to catch his attention.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes, just to catch his attention. That was how we came up with our makeup.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's just a fact that Fela loved sex. He had a lot of sex. And a lot of what the queens did revolved around him and having sex. It's also worth just a word about the makeup. It was more than makeup. It was intensely theatrical. These eye popping turquoise and blues and reds.

[Ayo Adeburi]

I was like, oh, my God. They're painted and shaved heads, some of them. They embodied everything against beauty that I had learned. And yet they were beautiful. I probably didn't care that much about Fela. I remember these ladies.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

We'll make it for you. This is the makeup.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, what? Since we're on the radio, we can't actually see, but describe what you're holding.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

This is the African chalk. African powder. Let me show it to you. Yes, this is the African powder. We just cut a little bit and put it inside water.

[Jad Abumrad]

Laide put some of the chalk on her face to show us how it looks. And it gave her face a kind of sculptural look.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Very nice. That's what they do.

[Jad Abumrad]

At this point, we had gathered in her very small bedroom. To try and isolate from the noise coming in through the window. If we can scoot back a little bit, you have a little more space. Laide lived right next to a series of market stalls in Lagos. In certain areas, men will walk around with sewing machines. And as they walk, they jangle metal to let people know they're there. In case anyone needs patches sewn in on their pants. That guy was out there jangling. So we had the window closed. It was blisteringly hot. The sound you hear is the generator, which is the sound of Lagos. The day that we were there, the power was in and out. We had to keep going and getting gas for the generator. And also on that day, the water was not running. When we asked you to do an interview and you agreed. I'm curious why. What did you want get out of it? Like, what do you feel that people don't understand? That they should understand?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Thank you for that question.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Laide.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

What people don't understand is that they think that everybody in Fela's house Are bad. No, I joined him on my own. Nobody asked me to go there. I go there. Yes. I'm proud to say that. Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

One of the things that they all really stressed is that they wanted to be there. They were not coerced. They were there by choice and they liked it. Despite everything.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I don't want to be a slave. I am a free person. Ms. Chinyeri, what people thinking about Calakuta? I don't know. They look down on us. And Lara, Yeah, from good home, good family. She's from good family. You can see her house. Rich family. The same thing. The same thing to me. I just. Just love Fella. I don't care. I don't bloody care what people talking about Fella. I still proud of Fella. Fella was a super. A super double, double, double, double superstar.

[Jad Abumrad]

Another point they all stressed is that they were all workers. Everybody had a job to do. Dancers, singers, DJs, and they were paid every Monday.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Every Monday.

[Jad Abumrad]

This naturally led into a conversation about the work the three of them did. Tell me about the dancing because you were all dancers. From what I understand, right?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

When I see a lot of people in the shrine and they are watching us, you know, I'm always excited. All these people are here to come and, you know, watch us. Oh, praise God. When you are dancing, they will bring out their money. They will go out of their ways and put their hand in their pocket and bring up money and be spraying you and betraying the money in the cage. You understand? Then, you know, out of four cages, your own cage will be the particular cage they will be putting money. You know, you'll be excited.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just to explain the cages at the Shrine Felaz Club. In front of the stage, either side, you have these sort of dancing platforms. Just think of Studio 54. It's like that. The cages are less cages and more platforms with netting around them.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

When he start playing. Wow. When he start playing all the songs that will make me go.

[Jad Abumrad]

Off.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

You see my small daddy, I'm sweating. You can see I'm sweating. Because if I should start thinking about Fela or start talking about Fela, I can talk from now to next week.

[Jad Abumrad]

We'll continue in a moment. 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 Fearnoman. We talked for a while with Laide, Lara and Chinieri. Just about how they grew up. What brought them to be with Fela, to live in his commune.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

What were they thinking? What was the motivation for them?

[Jad Abumrad]

When you were 14, 15, even younger, what were your dreams for your future? What did you want to be?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I wanted to be an air hostess.

[Jad Abumrad]

Air hostess? Yes. So fly travel. My parents were strict, Laide said. She came from a very good family, middle class, but they were quite religious and conservative. And she was, by her own account, unruly. She would get into fights a lot. She was often beaten by her parents and at school, which again, colonialism. One of the things that the British missionaries did was enforce British cultural norms with extreme corporal punishment that then became normalized in Nigeria. Anyhow, she wanted to be an air hostess, travel the world. And she says her parents didn't want that for her. So when she got suspended from school, instead of going home, where she knew she'd be punished, she wandered into Fela's compound.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I thought I was going to spend only two weeks.

[Jad Abumrad]

First thing that surprised her was that when she walked in, she saw people she knew who'd been living there. So you had classmates that were already there?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nobody asked questions at all?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

At all. And when Fela woke up, he saw me. He asked me, why are you here? I said, fella, my parents are too harsh. They are too harsh. What about your school? I said, I came from school. Do you want to go back to the school? I said, no. Do you want to go back to another school? I said, fela, I want to be your worker. I said, okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

Pretty soon she was a dj. Then she was a dancer, which allowed her to travel the world like she dreamt about. For Lara, it was A different set of reasons. Like Laide, she came from a middle class home with strict parents. But for her, it was the sense of looking around at her life, at her community, and thinking, I want things to be different. Like these conservative values handed down by the British, enforced with brutal beatings. There's nothing for me here. And Fellah, she says, was the one guy who seemed to be saying that in his music. Politics. Politics, yeah.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I love his music. It's weapon, his weapon. That is why they hate him, what he's talking about. So I love his way, his music, his message. Nobody touched me to go to Fela. Nobody knew. I just love him. And I went there straight. I want to know whom you are. What are you for? What did you stand for?

[Jad Abumrad]

For Chinieri, who again, this was the first time she ever talked to a journalist. For her, her answer was different. It sort of opened a door to a whole different conversation.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I felt that. I felt like Fela's house is just a place that I feel free. You understand me? Everybody's free.

[Jad Abumrad]

I asked her what she meant and she started telling us about her dad.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

My father is an Igbo man. Igbo.

[Jad Abumrad]

Igbo, that's one of the main ethnic groups in Nigeria, which will become important.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

And my mom. My mom died when I was little. My daddy got married to an Igbo lady.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, okay. How were they as parents? Were they strict? Were they lenient?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

My father was good to me. Very good to me. My father used to treat me like a baby. Even at the age of 12. Get me toy. At the age of 12, he would get me that ring that you'd be twisting around. My daddy would do that for me. My daddy loved me. He took good care of me. But my daddy died during the war. You understand?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

And he's the only one that loves me. I know because I love my daddy. My daddy loves me. When he died, then when I started growing up, we got back to Lagos.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did he fight in the war, your dad?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

No, my dad didn't fight in the war. He was an engineer. After the war, yeah, we came back to Lagos and I left and went to Fela's house.

[Jad Abumrad]

We spoke with Chinyere for a while about her dad. And about how she was truly rootless after he died. And it's worth taking a second to understand that moment in time, the war that she mentioned, its aftermath. Because it really is a way of understanding Fela's power. That he was exactly the right person at the right time for so many people in the late 60s, just a few years after Nigeria had declared its independence from the British, you had a series of military coups, one after another after another. And in one of those coups, ethnic tensions kind of spun out of control. When the British colonized Nigeria, they. They essentially created a country that made no historical sense. I mean, they drew this arbitrary border. Actually, it wasn't arbitrary at all. They did it on purpose. They drew this border which slammed together three different ethnic groups with different histories and different cultures, different religions, different languages, put them all together, hoping that they would fight, which would make the land easier to rule. Three major groups. You had the House of Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the south, and the Igbo in the east. And now these three groups were suddenly one nation. Just for a second, imagine if aliens did this in Europe or Asia. Landed. We're like, okay, France, Poland, Kazakhstan. I mean, I don't even know if they share the borders. They don't. They don't. Doesn't matter. Bam. New country. It's insane.

[Sheun Kuti]

They had different aspirations. They come from different regions, and the British kept them apart for so long that when the British finally left, they just. These people just couldn't get along.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Moses Achunu, professor of African history.

[Sheun Kuti]

Here at Vanderbilt University.

[Jad Abumrad]

We work together at Vanderbilt. He is an advisor on this project.

[Sheun Kuti]

It created a post colonial political mess.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so as I mentioned, in one of those post independence military coups, things spin out of control, and soldiers from the northern ethnic groups purge thousands of Igbo soldiers from the army. Igbo is what?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

You know, my father is Igbo.

[Jad Abumrad]

Genieri's dad was. In the wake of that trauma, the Igbo decide to secede from Nigeria. And they call their new nation Biafra.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

The Biafrans have no artillery to speak of.

[Jad Abumrad]

Their only answer to Nigerian firepower is a homemade rocket. This leads to a brutal civil war.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

The Nigerian government blockaded all of the space around Biafra.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Louis Tutasoki, writer, scholar.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

There was no food allowed in. And so a disease became globally notorious called kwashiorkor, which is where your protein deficiency, where your stomach expands, your head expands.

[Jad Abumrad]

And so these pictures of starving babies.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Were all over the world.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nearly every child shows symptoms of advanced under nourishment. Swollen stomach, lips, and cheeks. That's how Chinieri's dad died.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

But my daddy died during the war.

[Jad Abumrad]

She wouldn't elaborate on the circumstances, and we didn't want to push, but he most likely died of starvation or in an ethnic purge. And afterwards she felt lost and she wasn't alone.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

So 1971, one of the defining qualities of 1971 was a sort of silence, a sort of quiet that comes after a violent three year civil war.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's their tune, Ayuba Day.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Again, there was a certain kind of quiet. And it's not the case that there weren't things happening, but that it was. What do we do with ourselves now? What does the Nigerian state mean? How do we account for the atrocities? How do we all sit under the same umbrella called Nigeria? The idea that finally we are out of colonialism, we are out of centuries of European domination, we're going to champion our own destinies. That rhetoric and that idea was thoroughly challenged by, by the war itself. There was just this general sense of disillusionment.

[Jad Abumrad]

You had a lot of young people in 1971 looking around, particularly if you came from a strict family, conservative family, looking at the future and thinking this makes no sense. So this is a moment where you had a lot of runaways, you had a lot of people leaving home, looking for meaning and joining cults. Actually we saw this in America too. This is the moment where you had the Mansons, Children of God, Heaven's Gate, Jonestown, all the hippie Christian stuff. It was the same phenomenon. All of these young people disillusioned with the past, looking for a different way in Nigeria into this sort of discombobulated, existential quiet steps Fela. He'd been in America having the whole Sandra Isadore experience. He, he was still walking around with colonial mentality, comes back radicalized, has a hit. And then he does one of the great PR moves of his career. He sets up the shrine. His club, as we talked about down the street was a house his mother owned. He moves into that house, calls it the Kalacuta Republic and he declares that house a sovereign state, a separate country within Nigeria in the wake of a civil war. Think of how just ballsy that is.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

And there is also something important about the kind of geography of Kalakuta Republic. Kolakota Republic was located about 300 yards or 300 meters away from major military barracks. It is just about 1 1/2 miles or 2 miles away from the University of Lagos. It's just a couple of miles away from the Yaba College of Technology, a few miles away from the College of Education. And you come down the street from where Kalakota Republic was and you just have this sprawling, sprawling, working class neighborhood, like poor working class neighborhood, mushing. So you do have Kalakota kind of situated in this nexus of institutions and reality.

[Jad Abumrad]

In other words, Fella was perfectly situated in space and time to become a magnet for anyone interested in going another direction. And almost overnight, his house filled with young people.

[Sheun Kuti]

A hundred people live here permanently. This is Fela's republic. Or rather his kingdom.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I came back to Lagos after my daddy died. Then I just found myself, fell in love with Fela's music. And I went straight into his house. In Fela's house, everybody's free. Everybody's free. Except if you dare say you are Nibu, you are Yoruba, you are a white man, you are a black, you are in trouble. He believes everybody is one. Everybody to fella is one.

[Jad Abumrad]

She said this wasn't just a vibe. This was a rule. You are not allowed to identify by ethnicity.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Don't say anybody. Hey, you're from here, you're not from Yoruba. No, he doesn't want that.

[Jad Abumrad]

If you did, you were kicked out of the commune. And for her that was one of the appeals. That Fellah had constructed a kind of micro society where many of the old norms were upside down. But that instinct to flip the old norms on their head led to some things that not everybody agreed. That's.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

In a moment.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

Before, while getting nowhere at airport security. There's more to imagine when you listen.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Discover best selling action titles on audible.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Fela Kuti. Fear no Man. We pick up the story with Fela constructing a micro society for his commune for the queens. That upside downed many of the old norms. Including, of course, sex.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I mean, with all those women in the house. Fela was having sex anywhere from three to four times a day.

[Jad Abumrad]

Though to be fair, Chinieri reminded me that the women could also sleep with whoever they wanted. I think I heard you say when we were all together that you had had a. You had a boyfriend outside of the house?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yeah, I have a boyfriend outside.

[Jad Abumrad]

Was he a musician? What did he do?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He was a student in us.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Fela knew about the boyfriend?

[Sheun Kuti]

Yes.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He said okay, he doesn't care.

[Sheun Kuti]

All Fela's women had their own boyfriends too. That's what people don't talk about. Like Fela was a liberal lover. They weren't his women alone.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Sheun Kuti, Fela's youngest son. Afrobeat star in his own right. He was born in Fela's compound The Kalakuta Republic. And his mom, Fantola, was one of Fela's queens.

[Sheun Kuti]

Even my mom had a boyfriend. Everybody had their boyfriend. But the rule was that can't bring your boyfriend to my house. Go and meet him in his house or wherever you're going to meet. So sometimes, you know, because Calakuta was so fun, some of their boyfriends would sneak to the house, that is 10 days shushu cleaning. The house was called shushu. That was. My dad was such a trip. The rules, you know.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Yeah.

[Sheun Kuti]

So there were animosities, people had rivalries. And in Calakuta, one of the rules. This is our own adaptation of freedom of speech. But it wasn't called freedom of speech in Calakuta. The rule was, yabis is no case.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Case. Yabis is no case.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yabis is no case.

[Sheun Kuti]

Yabis is insults.

[Jad Abumrad]

Insults, insults.

[Sheun Kuti]

When you insult, it's called yabis in Lagos. I yab you, you yab me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yabis is a word that we encountered many, many times. This is another example of fella upside downing the norms of the wider culture. Moses Acunu and Michael Veale, both our advisors, explained to me that one of the underlying structures of Nigerian society is patronage.

[Sheun Kuti]

You know, traditional ideas about client patreon relations, the concept of the big man. Let's support the big man so that when he gets to the top, we can all benefit. Because if you're a big man, a big woman, you have people that you are responsible for. You are supposed to take care of them.

[Jad Abumrad]

And the understanding is you at the bottom. In exchange for the big man's help, you're supposed to praise the big man. If you're a musician, you sing the praises. Oh, you're so great. Look at all your wealth, your beautiful wife. This is the system. It's sort of Reaganomics with a twist. You praise the guy at the top, the wealth trickles down to you.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Now, when has that ever happened in human history?

[Sheun Kuti]

Fela, his thing was he saw the politicians as corrupt. And so he deliberately took the opposite tack of not singing praises, but singing derision. The flip side of praise is abuse.

[Jad Abumrad]

At his concerts, he would hold yabis.

[Sheun Kuti]

Sessions, call out people in the audience. He would just insult their body parts. You know, you have a long, big head or something. Yeah. You must still talk. You're stubborn and stupid.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is him at a concert in Atlanta where he gets into it with someone in the crowd.

[Sheun Kuti]

You see, that is why sex is beautiful. If you look at him now, he has no woman. If he has a woman, the woman Is ugly.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

If you have a woman, you'll be cool, man.

[Sheun Kuti]

Go find a woman, man. You know, he just wanted to create laughter as well.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he brought that spirit to the commune, which for Chinyere was a breath of fresh air. Was there a lot of yabis, like between the different girls?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yeah, a lot of yabis.

[Jad Abumrad]

A lot of it.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Boku, boku, boku. We don't gossip. Whatever. I want to tell you, if you offend me, na na na na na na. Go tell you then maybe if you feel like saying, get out of here. See your clothes, see your trousers, see your hair. I'm abusing you. And you yourself, you're abusing me. Returning the abuse.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that fella likes that one that's laid chiming in.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He loves seeing you yabbing. That's where he gets his kick.

[Jad Abumrad]

The rule was all insults are permissible. Except if someone lies, lie, lie.

[Sheun Kuti]

Abiz that liable.

[Jad Abumrad]

So alongside his version of freedom of speech, you also had his version of a libel law.

[Sheun Kuti]

You have to pay fine. Maybe 200 naira fine. 300 naira fine.

[Jad Abumrad]

Fela would just decide.

[Sheun Kuti]

I mean, yes, he was the judge, jury and executioner. So you can't even make case against him.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's here where the free love polyamory of it all adds a layer of charismatic man directing the show and enforcing his will. Apparently, if there was a dispute, Fela would yell at the top of his lungs. Court. Everyone would gather, the parties would make their case. And then he would issue his judgment. Which, yes, was sometimes a fine or cleaning, but could also be much worse.

[Sheun Kuti]

You could get a whooping.

[Jad Abumrad]

You could. We read in Carlos Moore's book that accounts of Fela beating some of the wives. Did you did that beating some of the wives? This is Laide. Some of the girls.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

If you do any bad thing, Fela will beat you.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he would beat you?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes. He used to punish us. He punishes us. If you do any bad thing and Fela catches you, you have to take the punishment. We have beaten. We have Kalakushu. Kalakushu. That's a place dark place. You will stay there for two days.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. Did he ever abuse you?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He will abuse you.

[Jad Abumrad]

You.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes. Abuse is nothing in Kalaputa. Abuse is nothing. For context, when she says abuse, she means insult.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was our field producer, Fei Fei. I see. Well, I mean physical abuse.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Physical.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, physical slapping, beating, things like that. Did he ever. Did you witness that? Yeah.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Fella will never use his hand on anybody. Oh, no, no, no.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you never saw him hit any.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Of the women at all. Fella will never hit anybody.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'll be honest. I was relieved to hear this. But that relief only lasted roughly one second, because then she said he would regularly order his security boys to beat them with a rubber slipper.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He has his boys. Two people will hold your hand. Two people will hold your legs, and they will be beating you. After the beating, you will. You see all the marks on your body. That's what we mean by the beating. I still remember him the way he was. He used to be kind, used to be gentle. He used to have courtesy, used to have respect.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Chief Taiwo Lijiadu of the Lijadu Sisters, a hugely popular group from Lagos. She also happens to be Fela's cousin. Her and her sister Kehindi spent a lot of time with Fela during those years. And she said when all of those women showed up at his compound in 1970, 1971, it changed, okay?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

People change sometimes because they cannot handle fame. Something eats their brains up. No, no, no. You don't accuse the government of doing things to people. And you repeat the same thing and do worse things. Became a tyrant.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says she knows there were young girls hanging around Kalakura. 17, 16, maybe younger. And she knows age did not stop Fela.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

There are things you don't do.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says between what was going on outside the house, the police raids, the beatings, and what was going on inside, that pressure could break you.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

A lot of young people went crazy from Fela's house.

[Jad Abumrad]

How do you mean?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I mean outright madness. No, no, no, no, no, no. We all love Fela. Fela is a very, very good woman.

[Jad Abumrad]

In Lade's opinion. He was trying to create a new world order, and he suffered for it. He was beaten over and over, and he always kept coming back. He was the only one who fought for them.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

We know we love Fela because Fela doesn't leave us. We were protecting Fela. Fela was protecting us.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Think about what they have invested, the sacrifices they have made personally by being with Felakuti. Taking blows for Felakuti from the state, like physical violence. Absolutely.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is something we will talk about at length in an upcoming episode. But just to shorthand it, the Queens. When Dotun makes the argument that we.

[Dotun Ayobadi]

Wouldn'T have a Felakuti without the Queens.

[Jad Abumrad]

He'S also thinking about the fact that the Queens were the front line of Fellah's army, quite literally. In public, when he felt vulnerable, he would surround himself with the Queens, a.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Sea of women who are powerful, sort of Deja vu.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right. And when the State came down on him, which it did repeatedly, the Queens often bore the brunt of those attacks. One of the most difficult parts of our visit that day was talking about the violence they suffered. Not from Fella, not from his bodyguards, but from the police and the army, the State.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I have all the marks. I want to show you. I want the photographs to take it. Okay. They disfigured us.

[Jad Abumrad]

Laide was really insistent. We had to take a picture of Lara's glass eye.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Look at her eye.

[Jad Abumrad]

She'd lost an eye. When soldiers stormed the compound, they put.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Bottle in her eye. Yes, I have my wounds here. Yeah. That's why I'm wearing something that I can show you, so that photographs can take it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Lady lifted up her shirt just a few inches to show us.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

This is it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, you're showing us your stomach.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

This is it.

[Jad Abumrad]

A really gnarly puncture wound near her navel.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

You see?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. You see the mark where basically a soldier had stabbed her during a raid.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

He hit me. My head. Everything is broken.

[Jad Abumrad]

She then took off her head wrap and showed us a scar that ran the full length of her scalp.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

My head. In my head. If you look very well, you will see all the marks. I had 16 stitches on my head. You know, we will go through all this and people will say they don't see us. We went through all this. They will say they don't see us. Why would they not see us? With all the struggle we struggled with Fela. Fela cannot do it all alone. Yes. I come back to that question again. They can't do it without us.

[Jad Abumrad]

Laide was asking a question that sort of hung in the air for the whole interview. What part of the legacy do they have a right to claim? As muses, as singers, as dancers, as his army, as people who severed connections with family, put their bodies on the line, and now live without running water. What part of this do they get to claim?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

I'm abandoned.

[Jad Abumrad]

You feel abandoned?

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Yes. All of them have abandoned me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Laity feels that she. They have been cut out. But she's also not sure what they are owed either. As we were walking out after we'd stopped rolling, she told us about recently visiting the site of the old Kalkura Republic, which has now been turned into a museum. She'd gone there because Fela is buried there and she wanted to visit the coffin. And on days, she visited Yenni, Fela's oldest daughter was there. Yenni is one of the main people who runs the estate. Yeni Introduced Lai to all the people at the museum, told them, this is somebody who can come in for free anytime she wants. And if she ever wants food in the museum cafe, she can eat free of charge. It was such a small gesture, but to Laid, it meant everything. So what do we do with all this? This is a question that's hanging over so much culture now. Like, do we. Do we cancel him? Do we discard everything he did? Do we ignore it? I don't know. I want to bring in two more voices. The first is writer, actress Ayo Adeburi. She was in the TV show the Bear and many great movies. I'd found a clip online saying she was a huge Fela fan, despite the fact that he was, you know, complicated.

[Ayo Adeburi]

Guy, very complicated man. Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

And I think she's amazing. So I called her up, and we ended up getting into these issues. So what's the story with your obsession with Fila?

[Ayo Adeburi]

Well, my father's Nigerian and my full name is Fumilayo, which is the same as Villa's mother. Amazing, amazing woman.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says her dad was always a huge fan, and one day when she was young, he played her a record.

[Ayo Adeburi]

We just started playing it in the car, and I was like, I love this. Like, my ears love this. I want to know more.

[Jad Abumrad]

But then we got to the idea of the queens and him and women.

[Ayo Adeburi]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says there she found herself thinking, do I want to know more?

[Ayo Adeburi]

I think it's. I haven't even dug into that because part of me is like, I don't want to know. I don't know too much. I mean, the fact that I'm sort of like, yeah, I mean, I don't want to. I don't want to know. It makes it a little bit easier. But it's also like. Like what I'm in the. In the. I don't know. It's a bit like you are like, well, what am I supposed to do, though, with this information now that I have it? Like, how does. Like, what am I supposed to do? I can't. Can't talk to him. I'm not a medium. You're left a bit unsure. But it's. It's also interesting. It's like, it wasn't. Those women were like, you know, they were like. They were singing back up. You know, they were like, in the room. They were in that space. So it's not as though it was completely divorced from the work. I always find that phrase also, like, so uncomfortable, like, separating the art from the artist and also, like, Even the maybe challenge that that poses, I think it's like a bit false. It's like, should we do it or should we not? And it's like, I think when you're making art, sometimes you're not even sure how much of it is you and how much of it isn't. So how can somebody else. Like, it's. Yeah, I think that there is no answer, and that's kind of the answer.

[Jad Abumrad]

But when she said that, I immediately flashed back to an interview I did ages ago, 22 years ago with playwright Tony Kushner. I was doing a documentary about Wagner's Ring cycle. Tony Kushner FAMOUS Wagner FAN he is Jewish. Wagner was an unrepentant anti Semite. I asked him, does that make it hard to like the art, particularly the Ring cycle, which has some nationalist overtones to it? And his response has stayed with me. It's not that you're unaware of the.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Fact that this is a great racial.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nationalist epic written by an anti Semitic.

[Laide (one of Fela's Queens)]

Egomaniacal monster, but it's just too great to leave alone.

[Jad Abumrad]

I guess that's the question. What are the things that are too great to leave alone? I would say Fela for sure. So where do I land in the end? I guess I land with the reality of it. Here was a guy who worked very hard to break from the past, but he couldn't completely. He didn't. People suffered. Women suffered. He did some amazing things and he did some fucked up things. That's who he was. You can do great things and you can do terrible things. And better to have a full conversation about that with all the messiness rather than an idealized version without the truth.

[Sheun Kuti]

If you call a woman African woman, no go Green she goes.

[Jad Abumrad]

She. Up next, vibe shift. We see Fela at his most soaring, where he becomes something much bigger than a musician. He makes a leap and begins to transform minds and maybe even the country in ways that are profound. 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, Jad Abumrad, Ben Adair and Ian Wheeler. Written and hosted by yours truly. Higher Ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukhta Mohan and Dan Fearman. Gen 11 was Creedfish 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. Aladdiosui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help from Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Nida Abdurra, Aqeed, Michael Veal, Moses Achunu 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 Carla Murthy, Leah Friedman and Shoshana Scholar. We couldn't have done any of this without their Head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer Rachel Gyaza Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, L.L.C. 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 top of that are these elephants and growls. You can choose between snares, you can start chopping up the Amen 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 whyy.