Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery, "Fela: Music Is the Weapon" (Amistad Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network –

Episode: Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery on "Fela: Music Is the Weapon" (Amistad Press, 2025)
Date: December 9, 2025
Host: Bradley Morgan
Guests: Jibola Fagbamiye (artist), Conor McCreery (writer)

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Episode Overview

This episode of New Books Network: New Books in Music explores "Fela: Music Is the Weapon," a groundbreaking graphic novel by Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery. The authors delve into the legendary life of Fela Kuti—Nigeria’s iconic musician, activist, and Afrobeat pioneer—exploring his political defiance, spiritual journey, and profound cultural legacy. The conversation covers Fela’s family background, his formative years, musical evolution, relationships, artistic resistance, and the innovative ways the graphic novel medium brings his true and mythical narratives to life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis and Scope of the Graphic Novel

• Personal ties to Fela’s story [02:07]:
  • Jibola grew up near Fela’s house in Lagos, hearing tales but not fully grasping his impact until reading Carlos Moore’s "This Bitch of a Life."
  • “He’s actually someone who went on to create his own artistic, political, and even spiritual ecosystem or universe… Fela is probably one of the most important artists of the last, say, 100 years.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [03:07].
• The aim: To tell Fela’s multi-faceted story accessibly for both Nigerians and a global audience, especially younger generations.

2. Colonial Legacy and Family Influence

• The British Colonial Context [08:07]:
  • Colonial rule imposed English names, education, and infrastructure, but devastated indigenous culture.
  • Fela’s own name, Ransome-Kuti, reflected this colonial legacy.
• Father as Both Inspiration and Hard Taskmaster [11:16]:
  • “He made him very serious. Takes music very seriously and to not treat it as a hobby.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [12:24]
• Mother as Political Firebrand [13:29]:
  • Led independence-era protests; pivotal in deposing a colonial-aligned king.
  • “She started this huge movement that literally got 10,000 women to depose the king.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [16:21]
  • Early exposure to activism influenced Fela’s later political courage.

3. Musical Journey: From Jazz to Afrobeat

• Early Struggles in London [17:47]:
  • Initially failed as a jazz musician; his London experience forced him to reflect on identity.
  • Juxtaposes early ridicule with eventual adulation in Nigeria after musical breakthroughs.
• First Arrest in London and Awakening to Racism [20:14, 23:20]:
  • His cheeky defiance toward police foreshadowed his later resistance to authority.
  • Sensed racism and classism firsthand: “He talks about seeing the signs that talk about no colors and finding himself … it’s the first crack in Fela’s belief that the British system... is ultimately a good one.” — Conor McCreery [25:17]

4. Forging Afrobeat: Cross-continental Influences and Breakthrough

• Returning to Nigeria & Musical Reassessment [26:04]:
  • Initially dismissed as a jazz musician at home. Highlife and funk (via James Brown) reshaped his direction.
  • “Jazz is not working in Nigeria, you know… maybe you’re not a good jazz musician, but if you listen to old school Fela, jazz is actually quite good. It was just not for the right audience.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [27:49]
• Geraldo Pino and James Brown influence [28:17]:
  • Copying funk’s energy and spectacle, Fela merges jazz, funk, highlife, and African rhythms—thus Afrobeat is born.

5. Transformation in America: The Sandra Isadore Effect

• Sandra Isadore’s Impact [33:29]:

  • Black Panther and activist, she challenges Fela’s colonial mindset, introduces him to Malcolm X, political consciousness, Nina Simone, and the power of black protest music.
  • “Sandra was the midwife for Fela’s revolutionary spirit. And for Afrobeat...” — Jibola Fagbamiye [35:23]
  • Afrobeat’s origins rooted in both musical fusion and political awareness developed in LA’s Citadel De Haiti club scene.

• Songwriting Shift: “My Lady Frustration” and Black Identity [37:12]:

  • Realization: “He had been playing jazz without realizing why... eventually coming to understand that jazz was music about black struggle, black beauty and black resilience.” — Bradley Morgan [37:12]
  • "My Lady Frustration" marks the personal and political genesis of Afrobeat.
  • “It’s his first real conversation about using music in this political way. And it starts very personally, and from there it’s going to blow up and become something universal.” — Conor McCreery [39:13]

6. Art, Resistance, and Political Awakening

• Re-Africanizing Minds, Not Just Music [44:17]:

  • Fela’s songs pivot from praise to pointed critique.
  • “Fella did the exact opposite. He mocked corporations, he mocked leaders, he mocked politicians… he was kind of like forcing us to reconnect with Nigerian, with African sounds, but use it to challenge the system.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [46:26]

• Kalakuta Republic and the Cost of Dissent [47:29, 48:05]:

  • Communal compound reflects political and artistic autonomy.
  • Legendary “expensive shit” story: Fela eats planted evidence (a joint), spends days in jail, with fans helping him hide excrement from authorities.
  • “The most expensive shit in the history of Nigeria because of the arrest and the holding them and having to have doctors. And so Fela writes a song about the experience called ‘Expensive Shit’. And it is a legendary song.” — Conor McCreery [54:14]

7. Women, Contradictions, and Evolution

• Sandra Returns to Nigeria—Collision of Worlds [56:35, 57:16]:
  • Sandra comes to live in Kalakuta, is disturbed by Fela’s polygamy and misogynist lyrics.
  • “He breaks his own rule about not writing a song for another person and ends up writing a song called ‘Upside Down’ for Sandra to sing.” — Bradley Morgan [57:39]
  • Sandra and Funmilayo (his mother) both complexly shape Fela’s worldview and art.

8. The 1977 Kalakuta Attack: Music as Weapon, Life in Peril

• Build-up and Cataclysm [61:06–67:13]:
  • Fela’s refusal to compromise with the Nigerian regime during the FESTAC arts festival leads to military retaliation.
  • Song "Zombie" satirizes soldiers as mindless tools; the government unleashes a thousand soldiers, destroys Fela’s compound, and causes the death of his mother.
  • “They beat Fela up so much that he said he could hear his bones crack…and they assaulted his women... you know, he was taken to jail, and after being in jail for 28 days, he came back and sang the same song again on stage.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [65:42]

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The Power of Myth and the Graphic Novel Medium

9. Magical Realism and Yoruba Spirituality [69:43–74:19]

• Dream sequences with a spirit girl intertwine Yoruba mythology and Fela’s story, blending the real with the legendary.
• “We actually live in clues in there for you to actually discover she is an actual goddess. But we don’t quite tell you what she is. But she’s supposed to have layered meaning…” — Jibola Fagbamiye [70:43]
• The graphic novel’s structure allows seamless shifts between realism and myth, immersing the reader in the magic and political tumult of Fela’s world.

10. Visual Storytelling, Artistic License, and Biography [74:56]

• The medium enables wild legends (like driving a bus into a military compound) and spiritual encounters to breathe alongside documented history.
• “When Nigerians tell stories…there’s a bit of magic, a little bit of mysticism…when we were telling the story, we wanted to make sure you had that magic element.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [76:09]

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Reflections and Legacy

11. Reconciling Cultural Memory and Celebration [78:18–81:35]

• For Jibola, creating this book is both a personal reckoning and an act of cultural restoration:
  • “For me, telling Fela’s story in this big way is just to…put him on that pedestal…we should do that for all our heroes…this is my way of doing that as an artist.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [79:24]
• The project aims to inspire Nigerians to better celebrate their own icons and stories, challenging the tendency to neglect national champions.

12. Favorite Fela Songs [81:35]

• Conor’s picks:
  • "Wata No Get Enemy" (accessible, groovy), "Junkoku," "Lyshow" (early jazz cut), "Overtake Don Overtake Overtake" (long, multi-part song)
• Jibola’s picks:
  • "Look and Laugh" (“30 minute deep cut on nihilism”), "Gentleman," "Zombie" (“hardest funk, hip hop, jazz song you’ve ever heard”), "Equalization of Trouser and Pants"

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You could say that Sandra was the midwife for Fela’s revolutionary spirit. And for Afrobeat and Citadel de Haiti was the incubator.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [35:23]
• “We were actually on a panel the other day with somebody who had lived with Fela...he said that he really felt we had done Fela justice, which is all we really wanted to do.” — Conor McCreery [84:45]
• “This is my way of doing that as an artist, because that’s something I see in the world. And as an artist, I wanted to put it out there so that, yeah, the world sees our stories. Nigerians see themselves as well and champion more stories like this.” — Jibola Fagbamiye [81:24]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Fela’s origins, family, and colonial Nigeria: 02:07–14:13
• Mother’s political activism and influence: 13:29–16:48
• Musical failures and lessons in London: 17:47–19:23
• First arrest and awakening to racism: 20:14–26:04
• Creating Afrobeat: 26:04–30:46
• Citadel de Haiti and Sandra Isadore: 33:29–36:00
• "My Lady Frustration" and Afrobeat’s genesis: 37:12–41:56
• Re-Africanization and political music: 44:17–47:29
• Expensive Shit and Kalakuta Republic: 48:05–54:14
• 1977 attack and its aftermath: 61:06–67:37
• Yoruba spiritual elements and graphic novel medium: 69:43–76:09
• Reconciling cultural memory: 78:18–81:35
• Favorite Fela songs: 81:35–84:32

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Closing Thoughts

The episode is a vibrant, candid discussion about art, activism, history, spirituality, and the enduring power of Fela’s music in resisting oppression and reclaiming cultural pride. Through both meticulous research and storytelling flair, Jibola and Conor have created a graphic novel that honors Fela’s contradictions, legends, and world-changing artistry—and that serves as a model for telling multidimensional African stories.

Further info and graphic novel excerpts: fellagraphicnovel.com

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Transcript

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[Djibola Fagbamier]

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[Djibola Fagbamier]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Bradley Morgan]

Hello. Welcome to New Books and Music, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Bradley Morgan and I'm joined today by my guests Djibola Fagbamier and Connor McQueery. Jibola is a visual artist whose previous work includes Black af, the unwhitewashed Story of America. And Connor is a comic writer whose work has appeared in various publications such as DC and Dark Horse. They collaborated together on their latest book, Music is the Weapon, published by Amistad. Djibolo and Connor, thank you so much for joining me today.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Thank you for having us, Brad.

[Connor McQueery]

Thanks so much, Bradley.

[Bradley Morgan]

So to get things started, can you share with us what your book is about?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Sure, absolutely. So our book is about a graphic novel about Fel Akuti, who's a Nigerian musician who uses music to bring down the Nigerian military government. And what's very interesting about Fela and what got me into it and got me to drag Conor along with me for the ride was that I grew up not too far from Fela's house in Lagos, right? And I would walk past his house all the time and there were all these stories about him, but I didn't know enough about him at the time, there were these stories about him being this agitator, womanizer and all of that, but that was generally all I knew about Fela. And fast Forward to around 2007, 2008. I read this book called this Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore. And I realized that, wait a minute, this guy's not just a musician and not just a political agitator. He's actually someone who went on to create his own artistic, political, and even spiritual ecosystem or universe. Right? And you could start to argue that Fela is probably one of the most important artists of the last, say, 100 years, and not just in Africa, but around the world, because.

He started his own political movement called Movement of the People, ran for president of Nigeria. At one point, he declared his house an independent republic.

At a time when.

A genocide was happening in Nigeria.

In the eastern part of Nigeria, when the Igbos declared Biafra as an independent republic outside of Nigeria, and a million people died because of that. And fella around the same time said, oh, his house is an independent republic because he felt like the Nigerian military government was not a legitimate government. So the balls to. To. To do that was just amazing. He released over 70 albums in his. In his lifetime. And he's, you know, his music has been remixed and sampled and is constantly studied. And. And, you know, he was arrested over 200 times. There was this one time where he sang this song called Zombie. And when. When the song was released, the government got so scared about, you know, about the song that they literally sent a thousand soldiers to burn his house down. And all this is happening not too far from where I live. And I kind of felt, you know, shocked that I didn't know this. And I started to think to myself, wait, what else do I not know about my history, about my culture? So I became obsessed and wanted to tell the story. And it was very important to me to tell it in a very specific way where anyone that is not Nigerian, or even Nigerians who didn't know much about I, about Fela or about Nigerian history, and we're getting to that generation of people who don't. Right, can plug into it and download that story in a fun, interesting way.

Especially in the west, when we consume stories from West Africa and from Nigeria.

There is this flattening of our story which kind of makes it feel like, oh, these people are just suffering or this, you know, just to train.

Almost stripping us of our personality, of our history. So it was very important for me to tell the story in a way where it shows, it shows the struggle. But yes, it shows our imagination, our magic, our mythology, our politics, like this whole 360 story. And you know, I. It just so happens to be that when we were, you know, when we were about to release the book, right. We, I mean, we started working on it 10 years ago. We didn't know that the world was going to go to, right. And that they're going to. We're going to see this rise in authoritarianism, rise in anti immigrant sentiment and fascism on the rise in America and Europe and all over the world. So Fela's story just kind of seems like the story of right now. And Connor and I just did a talk.

Last week about art as resistance. And Fella basically lived that, right. With his body, with his reputation, with his music. And I think this story is for someone who's kind of looking for some hope right now about what's happening in the world. Someone who think about, wants to learn about the world, learn about history and learn about music.

And. Yeah, that's the gist of it.

[Bradley Morgan]

Well, I really appreciate you going through that with me and we're going to be covering a lot of those stories that you mentioned because it is a very fascinating life and there is a lot to glean that's very relevant and, and so let's get things started. Because Fela was born in Nigeria in 1938, when the nation was still under British colonial rule and, and the country would not achieve its independence until 1960. That colonialism and its aftermath would fuel much of Fela's revolutionary music later on. But before we get into that, can you set the scene being from Lagos yourself and tell us what life was like for Nigerians under that system when Fela was a child?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Oh, that's a good question. So, you know, I'm not a historian and, you know, I didn't grow up at that time. I can kind of go by based on what I've read and based on what, you know, my parents have told me, but.

I would say life under the British, you know, colonialism just sort of washes away that word colonialism kind of like washes away the, the, the impacts of colonialism. The real impacts of colonialism. Because on one hand you had a relatively stable orange society, right. Which was.

You. You had.

The British building infrastructure, the railroads around the country, churches, schools and all of that. Right. And it became the. What was culturally important was for you to become more British, right. More, more, more Western. Right. So people just naturally started to shed their Africa in many ways. Right. So Fella's initial name was Ransom Kuti. Right. Because Fela's grandfather took on the name of the person who took him.

To England. Right. And eventually to Jerusalem. And so for you to be part of the elite or a symbol of the elitism was having an English name. Right. But on the flip side of that, you also had.

My dad grew up under free education, same with my mom, same with my grandfather. Right. So you had those, those positives, in a sense, but the, the, the negatives was, you know, overwhelming, overwhelmingly more. You had us losing a huge chunk of our culture, of our history. You know, a lot of the traditional.

Spiritual, spiritualism was demonized even till this day. Right. So that was kind of like the context around what Fella was growing up in. Right. So Fella grew up in a relatively Christian family, like his grandfather Jin Ransom Kuti brought.

Translated English hymns to Yoruba for. For the. For. For. For Nigerians. Right.

[Bradley Morgan]

And.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

And I think it was the first recorded artist coming out from Nigeria.

So.

When Fella grew up in. In that context, fast forward into like 1960s, 1970, where you have a Fella who is more of a Yoruba traditionalist, spiritualist, like this huge contradiction to what he would have grown up in.

[Bradley Morgan]

Fela's father was a reverend and he led the church choir. And he had a very strict demands that the music had to be performed correctly. Later, his father would pass away from prostate cancer in 1955. But Fela harbored some very conflicting emotions about his father. What impact did that have on Fela's own musical development early on?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

So the way we just sort of portrayed that, is that.

Fela.

Yeah, historically, in Fellow's biography, he was obviously, I think he loved his dad in, in some ways, but in other ways, he. He said, my dad will kick. His dad would kick his ass for no apparent reason. So did his mom. But that's also a different story. And I think the impact Fella's dad had on him was just his. His love for music and how he was so strict about making sure the music was done right, you know, And I think that's a big thing that Fella took away. There's this really famous story which we. We incinerated in the book, but we didn't exactly put it in, is that Fella actually got his band to perform for 24 hours. Right. Just to get a sound. Right, right. That sounds like. Just the way he described his dad. That sounds like something his dad would do, you know, So I think he just made him Very serious. Takes music very seriously and to not treat it as, you know, like a hobby. And he made him hear about repetition and. And the technicality of music.

[Connor McQueery]

Right.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

And he. He made sure the people around him also took music very seriously.

[Bradley Morgan]

In your book, you describe Fela's father as a tiger, but that he was married to a lioness. And Fela's mother was very political and a respected figure throughout her community. And this would have an impact on Fela's own political development. You recall a story where his mother organized a movement to unite against the local ruler who was stealing from women in the market. Could you share us about that story?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Sure. So Conor Nachi wrote a small graphic novel, a small comic on this. It was about 10 or 11 pages long that just focused on his mom. I think in a different world, we would have actually loved the opportunity to just tell a whole graphic novel about this mom because she was a giant in her own right. And I'll get Connor to jump in on this too. So his mom was part of the people who led the Nigerian independence movement, was in the room when they were negotiating.

The British, when Nigeria.

Was negotiating independence from the British.

Now, what made her. How she became well known in Nigeria was there was this king called the Alaki in this town called Abel Kuta, where Fella grew up, right? And you know, the Ake and would. Was. Was.

Was. It was a king that big, basically worked with the British, right? If you remember, the British actually did not rule Nigeria directly. They. They did something called indirect rule where they would have local rulers that would. That would answer to the British, right? And. And then the ruler would just sort of kind of like rule. Whatever committee they were, they were located in. So there are all these pictures. If you Google it, the Alake, you would actually see a white man standing behind him or next to him, so almost like his handler, so to speak.

[Connor McQueery]

Right?

[Bradley Morgan]

So.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

And the other thing people also forget is that during World war, World War II, when we're. When the world was fighting Hitler, a lot of the soldiers came from India, came from, From. From.

[Connor McQueery]

From.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

From Africa, right? So. And the food to feed the war effort also came from so many countries, right? Like countries like Nigeria, right?

And to fund the. The war against Hitler, a lot of the money came from. From. From Nigeria and so many different countries. So Fella's mom was fighting, fighting the Alaki because a lot of the resources that were supposed to go to the community.

And the market, women that were working in these communities were being taxed so that the money could go to fight the war effort. So she started this huge movement that literally got 10,000 women to depose the king, right? And that women's movement was hugely, hugely influential to Fellah's life, right. And.

You could even argue that that that movement led to so many other movements around the world. The anti apathy movement in South Africa had an impact so many women's movement around the world. So I think Fellow was hugely influenced by that because he was in the room when his mom was planning those events. He was in those protests with his mother, right. So you could imagine that he carried that along with him. When you see him singing a song like Zombie or Coffin of the head of state. When the Nigerian government.

Killed his mom, essentially he took his mom's coffin to the, to the, the army barracks in Nigeria, right? And he led like so many people to, to, to show, to protest the government like this, right. So I think that's kind of the impact his mom had in his life.

[Bradley Morgan]

So when Fellow was getting started on his music career, he left for Nigeria. He left Nigeria for London in the late 50s and he told his family that he's going to be studying medicine. But he really went there to play music and he performed as a trumpet player for a band called the Cool Cats. But Fela really hated his experience playing music in London. Can you tell us more about that?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

So I don't know if he hated his experience playing.

In London. I think London was where he just formed this identity as a musician. At least as a jazz player he was influenced by Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis and all of that. So I think that in London he was just trying to figure out what his identity was. And we tried to paint that picture. There's a really famous story that when the first time fella performed on stage, that people liberty laughed him off stage, you know, so. And we wanted to ground the reader in that, in that beginning because the Fellow musical journey in the, in the graphic novel starts there where he performs and the people laugh at him. And you juxtapose that to later in the book where he's, you know, people are almost worshiping him on stage, right? And there's this really beautiful juxtaposition that we do where in the first couple of pages when he sang them, people are shocked.

And they're not sure how to process the music the first time towards later on in the book about the 200 page mark where he performed Zombie. And it's the same positioning too, that the people are ecstatic and just blown away by his musical performance and what he's able to do with, you know, with his music. Right. So we, what we do beautifully, beautifully is just help the user connect that journey and, you know, and tell that story.

[Bradley Morgan]

Fela was arrested over 200 times throughout his life. But before all that, his path toward being a revolutionary didn't come naturally to him and he needed something to push him in that direction. Could you tell us about the first time he was arrested during his stay in London?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah, so the, the first time he was arrested in London was so fellow would, when he was starting out would have these parties at his house, right.

And then.

You would imagine that he has neighbors, right. So he's playing music. Yeah, guys playing drums and all of that. And we introduced this character who is his landlady or this, you know, this lady who lived below him. And she, she called the cops to say, hey, be these college kids making a lot of noise, right?

And then the next day the cops come in and they, they knock on the door and they say, hey, you're, you, you're, you're making a lot of noise with your music. And fella says, hey, you know, you, you have to.

Music has to be done right, you know, so I can't do it half ass. So if I'm doing it properly, I have to make a lot of noise, you know. And then.

He, the, this, he said to be cheeky and be, be, be a trickster a little bit. And the, you know, that kind of annoyed the.

Cops and they, they arrested him. Right, but they didn't really have a reason for arresting him. Just, I think it was just being a, you know, and that's kind of why they arrested him.

And, and, and actually I'm going to get Connor to talk about this because he actually does a better job telling the story.

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[Bradley Morgan]

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[Connor McQueery]

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[Connor McQueery]

I was going to say, I mean I was only going to say that at the very end. One of my favorite bits would actually didn't make it into the book is Fela talks about how after he was, you know, admittedly self. Admittedly being a bit of an asshole, you know, because, you know, he, he, you know, it's that kind of the buried revolutionary spirit that was kind of infused in him by his mother and by his father. You know, one of the things we didn't speak about his father is he actually ran a school in Fenella's hometown that the British would come to inspect. But because it wasn't actually funded by the government, the British didn't have any right to inspect the school. But of course they did because we're the British and we can do what we want. And so there's sort of a famous story of him chasing a school inspector away. Another story of him almost losing an eye while confronting a British officer because he almost got bayoneted. So there was always this, you, you get the sense that while fellow was raised to mind his p's and Q's that you didn't have to scratch too far to find that revolutionary spirit. But, but he, you know, as you were saying, Bradley, he was more focused on music to begin. But my favorite bit about this is, yeah, at the end of it when Fell is like, yeah, he's kind of being an asshole and he's like yelling at these cops we're arresting him for, you know, there shouldn't be an arrest here. This should just be a noise violation, give him a ticket kind of thing. But they arrest him and Fella starts yelling at them about how he's going to sue them for wrongful arrest. You know, he's going to take them down. And Fell, the last one he tells his story because he's like, these guys are just like, the cops are not buying one word of it. He's like, they know it's bullshit because I'm living In this, like, cheap. Like, they know I don't have the money to take them to court and to try to arrest them. But he's still yelling it anyways, even though both him and the cops know that this is not happening. But that was kind of fell in a nutshell. He was always someone who would kind of, you know, you saw in him this ability to puff up when faced with kind of pointless authority. And so, yeah, it is a funny story, and it is something that kind of makes him realize that instance. Not necessarily, but he talks a lot about being exposed to racism in a much different way in London than obviously he would be back in Nigeria. You know, there. There's classism here. There's classism that is tightly tied to race. And he talks about seeing the signs that talk about no colors and finding himself. He's like, hey, I'm supposed to be in the heart of the civilized world and this stuff is here. And it's. It's the first crack in Fela's belief that the British system in Nigeria is ultimately a good one, because, look, the Brits built all the lasting stuff and what have we done for ourselves? And this is when he starts to question, wait, how good is this system and what is it taking away from us?

[Bradley Morgan]

So, Jabola, as you had mentioned earlier, Fela was musically inspired by performers like Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. But when he returned to Nigeria, he was playing jazz music, but was told he wasn't very good at it. And then he just that he should stick to playing African music in it was while seeing a James Brown cover band called Geraldo Pino and the Heartbreakers. That inspired him to form a new African music that combined rock, jazz and high life, which is the style of music from Ghana. Could you tell us about that concert that inspired him and how did audiences respond to this new band that he put together?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

So when Philip first came back from London, one of my favorite lines of the book was when so came out of Gil in his first arrest in London and shout out to Conor for coming up with this line. And even though he's talking to his best friend JK and J, he was like, I think it's time to go home and do you think we can get shows at home? And JK is like, brother can get you a gig on the moon, right? And then they get to Lagos and Fella says, well, there's nobody in our clubs who might as well be on the moon because there's nobody, nobody here. You know, because initially when it was singing jazz and he was singing just.

Yeah, just classic jazz, kind of more in line to Miles Davis. So if you listen to a song like Ameche Blues, you would. You could hear.

Almost like a Miles Davis fella version, right? Nobody was listening to this in Nigeria. Most people were listening to High Life. So.

There'S actually an interview on YouTube where fellas says, yeah, jazz is not working in Nigeria, you know. And his, his mother famously told them, yeah, maybe you're not a good jazz musician, but if you listen to old school fellow, jazz is actually quite good. But it was just not for the right audience anyway.

Then he found out about.

Gerald Aino, who was singing more James Brown covers. James Brown was also huge in Nigeria and in West Africa at the time. I think James Brown, if I'm correct, may have been influenced by West African sounds as well. For him to create the sound he needed, which was kind of funky. So it was just us kind of listening to a, an Americanized version of.

West African sounds, right? And it's very interesting that when fella listened to this and when he saw Gerald Dupino first time, it was like, wait a minute, this, the way this guy presents himself, right? Is this over the top performer with big speakers and dancers and all of that. Fella felt, wait a minute, I should come to the stage like this in a very big way, you know. And when he went to, to, to the States and he met Sandra Isadore and he, he got influenced and he, he created Afrobeat, which is this new sound that he's going to be known for. And you could hear all these. I guess it's a concussion, right? Like some, some jazz, some funk, some, some high life, some calypso.

Mixed with a little bit of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael in there and Fungalaya Rasamputi's mother and he, he put this special concussion together and when he brought this back to Nigeria and people listened to his first hit called Junkoku.

[Bradley Morgan]

You could.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

You can hear the James Brown in there too, right? You can hear the funk, but it's very traditional Yoruba sounds, right? The drums is very, is like almost all of response sound like stuff you hear. Whenever I would go to the village in Nigeria and when I go hang out with my grandparents, those are the sounds you hear there, right? So when people heard that, that connected right away to people, you know, so.

And we try to make that connection for you as a reader. Even though you're not from Nigeria and you, you didn' the 70s in West Africa, you're able to make sense of it.

[Bradley Morgan]

So by this time in Fela's life, in the late 1960s, while Nigeria was technically free from British rule, the country seemed to be falling apart economically and socially, and people were still trapped in this colonial mindset. And since audiences weren't really responding well to his music, a friend had encouraged Fela to go to America. And he did, as you mentioned, and he was in LA playing for a few months at a club called Citadel to Haiti. What was his experience like performing there in Los Angeles as compared with back home?

[Connor McQueery]

I mean, at first, I think for Fela it was. And for. I mean, that whole tour is actually really funny. So Fela makes up this story about how James Brown is hugely influenced by his music in the United States. And it's not true, but he does it because he knows it's going to get attention. And he does it because he's like, hey, maybe some tour company or will hear that we're big in the US and get us there for a tour, because things just weren't working in Nigeria. And that does happen. He does get a tour. He. This. This story he tells works and he gets to America. And he famously says the tour company that he had kind of cheated to bring him over here was ripping him off. Because once he gets there, the tour company is nowhere to be found. And Fell and his band are basically on their own. There's no tour booked, there's nothing. In fact, the only time this tour company shows up is when Fella manages to hustle himself into a gig at Disneyland, but playing the African Pavilion, and then this tour company shows up and they're like, oh, well, we're the only guys who can book Felland as band. And they ask for such a huge price that Disneyland is like, forget it, we're not going to do this. So Fella finds himself in la. They're basically broke. A lot of their visas have now run out, so they're technically illegal. Fel kind of talks about the ridiculousness of people being illegal. Like the actions are illegal, but how can people be illegal? But this is what he's facing. Citadel de Haiti was run by a local actor. And when Fela first gets there, it's kind of quiet, but it's la and this. The people are open to different sounds. They're interested, right? LA has always been that kind of town. And so Fella's music starts to bring people in and Fella talks. At first he's like, oh, well, this is. This gig will work until I get something better. But he starts to really pack in an audience. And so Phyllis stays there, and it gets him exposed to more and more of the sounds that are happening in la, in the. The black music scene there. Stuff that's a little more underground than, say, James Brown. And it also introduces him to someone who's going to absolutely change his life, this woman, Sandra Isadora. So Citadel of the Haiti ends up being this pretty pivotal moment in his career.

[Bradley Morgan]

So Sandra Isadore has been mentioned a few times, and that's someone who he met in Los Angeles and would have a profound impact on him. And a bit about Sandra's background is that she was a frustrated singer herself. And she told Fela that it just wasn't enough for his music to entertain people, but that I needed to do something more than that. Can you give us a bit more background on Sandra and that and specifically the impact that she did have on Fela? Sure.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

So I remember the first time I read about Sandra, too, because I was like, oh, wait a minute.

I didn't know somebody else influenced Fela, right? But he just probably came from his mother.

But Sandra was a Black Panther, right? And she. She was. She was also trying to. I think she was saying how she was really into.

She really wanted to learn more about Africa. And she was. She was trying to find an African man who was going to teach her about Africa. But most of the African men she would meet are from, you know, small towns, mostly church boys, which we called Fella. A church fella was also a church boy, Right. But had become a bit more rough over the years. So when she met Fella and Fella was talking about how.

You know.

How black people were backward, and, you know, he was saying these things that were. That it made him seem just kind of like this colonized boy, basically. Santa was shocked by this, right? And she was, you know, she had been arrested for protesting.

And she basically educated Fela on Malcolm X, on Stokely, introduced him to Nina Simone and all these different sounds. And you could say that Sandra was the midwife for Fela's revolutionary spirit. And for Afrobeat and Citadel, the 80 was the incubator, right, where Fela was just able to test out these sounds. And without Sandra, maybe we wouldn't have gotten the Fella that we have today.

So.

It was just really interesting that he had to go to the US to discover his real self. Right? And that's actually a pretty common story for people who are immigrants who become aware because you grew up in one context where you grew up in this bubble. I can also speak for Myself here, where you grew up in this bubble of how you think the world is. And then you come to, you know, to. To the west. Like I, I came to Canada. In Fella's case, he came to LA and he was like, you're like, wait a minute. Oh. Like nobody actually knows anything about us back home. Oh, wait a minute. What, you know, why is it you start asking these very interesting questions that you never had to ask yourself growing up in Nigeria. And I think for Fella, it just changed his worldview and he became obsessed with it, that he carried that obsession for the rest of his life and infected everybody around him with this revolutionary spirit. Right. So. And I think you can thank Sandra a little bit for that.

[Bradley Morgan]

A big revelation that Fela had about his music thanks to Sandro was, was that he had been playing jazz without realizing why, and eventually coming to understand that jazz was music about black struggle, black beauty and black resilience. And this would lead him to write his first true song, one called My Lady Frustration, and which was the beginning of the new genre failover called Afrobeat, which you had mentioned earlier. Can you tell us how this song comes to define Afrobeat?

[Connor McQueery]

I mean, that's an interesting question, like whether it defines Afrobeat. It's kind of considered the first Afrobeat song. But it's interesting, you know, fellow was. It starts really downloading all this music that Sanders put into him. And he's, you know, he's a deep thinker. He is, he is, he is a genius composer, right? This is one of the things that I think sometimes gets overshadowed in fellow's career because there's, you know, there is a lot of. There's the sheer craziness of his life, right? 200 arrests, 28 wives, starting his own country. This firebrand who was fighting the Nigerian military government. And I think sometimes people underplay what a genius composer he was, right? Like by the end of his career, he's making literal, classic music.

And so Fela starts getting a lot of ideas around the music, but he's still struggling with, well, what do I want to say? And, you know, his story for My Lady Frustration really comes out of him looking inward and recognizing that he's kind of actually really pissing Sandra off. Because at this point, he is staying at her house, he's eating her food, he's making long distance calls back to Nigeria. There's a famous story of him taking the car and forgetting it and it gets towed and Sandra's just apoplectic because, like, she, she loves this guy and she sees he's trying to build something, but he's this perfectionist. And she's like, this is America. Like, you've got to figure out what you need to say. And that inspires him. Her frustration makes him look at himself and what he's trying to do accomplish. And he sort of ties it into this bigger picture of the diaspora. This idea that.

That Africans as a whole have really frustration is this stock and trade for them, that the things they want in life, the things that have been taken for them in life, the way they treat. The way Africans have been taught to treat each other, especially in diaspora in the States at the time, right, there's this big conversation. This is where this quote unquote, black on black crime conversation started sort of begins. And so he's just looking at all this. That narrative, the false. The falsehood of that narrative, you know, which we. We know is false. And it. It leads him to build this song. And it's fun because it actually really influences his music going forward. Is the next thing Fella does after this is he. He does like, Black Man's Cry. And he does these songs that are very much rooted in traditional black protest music of the 60s. And so he goes home to Nigeria and he's singing these songs about, like, you know, we have to get off the plantation. And of course, Nigerians have no context for this. So Nigerians are coming up to him after shows being like, so, brother, like, should we not be farming? And Fella has to be like, oh, no, no, no, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about something very different. But black man's or, sorry, My Lady Frustration is the first step of the music that is going to define Afrobeat. And it's his first real conversation about using music in this political way. And it starts very personally, and from there it's going to blow up and become something universal. I. I would say. I don't know. Jibal, would you say that's one of his most personal songs, My Lady Frustration? Even though it's not really. There are very few in the way of. Not much in the way of lyrics, but the genesis of it is very personal.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah, I would say so. I think, like, I think it's the. In my latest Frustration, there. There's. There's no. There's no there.

There are no vocals. Excuse me. Right. It's just. Is just straight jazz, right? And Fella chanting throughout the song.

[Connor McQueery]

Right.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

And it's the only song where he sang it for somebody. Right. Everything else he sang for the people. And we were trying to make this case that fellas songs are love songs, right?

To Nigerians, to black people, to anyone who.

Who cares about the world and wants to see a better world. It is a love song. But Fela famously would say he doesn't sing love songs. So My Lady Frustration maybe in a way was a celebration for Sandra, but Fela's songs going forward were a celebration of.

For Nigerians and for black people around the world.

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Bradley Morgan]

This.

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[Connor McQueery]

All?

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[Bradley Morgan]

I want to dive a little further into that because when fellow returns to Nigeria after having visa issues in Los Angeles, he goes and forms his new band called Africa 70. And his vision for this new band was that it would change Nigeria and that this new decade would belong to Nigerians with him bringing the teachings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. That he learned from Sandra. And this leads to songs that we've been mentioned before like Black Man's Cry and Joan Koku. And as he's developing his musical styles even further, he's doing things with it, like designing the horn arrangements to make the rhythms work, like talking drums and where the horns were telling these classic Nigerian stories within the music. And in the book you write that Fela didn't want to Africanize his music, but rather to re Africanize people's minds. Could you tell us more about that?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah, that's a great question.

So I think that when the context is that this was not too long after the independence, yes, Nigeria's had a couple of coups, but things are not as bad as they are now.

We're still generally functioning country, you know, and was seen as one of the countries that would be the leaders of, of. Of on the leaders on the continent, right? So famously there was this fest, this festival that most people haven't heard of called Festac 77. Where.

It was, you know, Nigeria was celebrating.

Our, our emancipation or independence from, from. From the British. And we're celebrating African culture and history and all of that. And so many people, celebrities from all over the world, like Gil Gibberto, Stevie Wonder were all in Nigeria to come, come celebrate. And this was the kind of place Fela was, you know, and this, this was a context, right? And I think that when people listen to fellas songs and listen to what he was saying, I think that they always feel that fellow was kind of like way ahead of his time because you have things that are happening. Like I said, like Nigeria's doing relatively well at that time and fella is critiquing the government at the time. And people were like, what are you talking about? Like things are fine. But I think for some strange reason, because he's just such a genius and he was able to just sort of see what was happening. It was just like, watch out, we have. That's an iceberg in front of us. But no one else could see it. And.

At the time when even until today, really a lot of African songs, a lot of Nigerian songs are praise music. Like we would praise rich people, companies, kings, because that's just how it is. And fellow did the exact opposite. He mocked corporations, he mocked leaders, he mocked politicians, right? So he was kind of like forcing us to.

Reconnect with Nigerian, with African sounds, but use it to challenge the system. But at the time, I think people just could not. People enjoyed the music because they, they vibe to it and they understood what Fellow was saying, but I think they just couldn't make that. They didn't have the, the deeper understanding to make that next step to just sort of challenge the system, you know.

[Bradley Morgan]

So as his success as a musician grew, Fela he developed this communal compound that would serve as his home recording studio and bass for his band and many wives. And we touched upon it earlier and he would, he would eventually call this compound the Calicuta Republic as a way to mock the jail where he was held for for several days. And while in jail, Fela anticipated having a fight for his life, but he came to realize that the people around him there weren't violent criminals, but rather were people being punished for being poor and, you know, are victims of the systemic abuse that was happen there. Could you tell us why fellow was sent to jail and how that experience influenced him musically?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah. So this is a really, really funny story. And.

When Connor initially wrote this part of the story.

It was I think maybe about 20 or 30 pages long. And I was like, hey man, I think we need to cut it down. But it was just so good. So the reason fella got arrested was.

Actually the real story was like he had initially been arrested for something else. I don't remember what it was, but he had just gotten home and he was just kicking back to relax and he heard another knock at the door. And he looked through the peephole and he saw cops again. And he was like, wait, what? I just got back here. Like, what's going on? So, and he was just about to smoke up a joint, so he tossed the joint in the toilet and flushed it, right? So he opened up and he cleaned up the room, tossed everything out and that was it. And then he opened the door and the cops come in and they search the whole room and they didn't find any weed in it in the room. And then they planted one and they were like, see, we found some weed in your house at the time. If you find, if you're caught with hemp, which is what we call it in Nigeria at the time, you go to jail for 10 years. So the guys, the cop was like, hey, we found a joint at your house. And Fellow's like, let me see. Bring it closer. And the guy brought it close to his face and fellow literally bit it and ate it, right? And.

He started laughing and then he took him to a hospital and they were like, hey, we're going to wash your stomach so we can take, we can, we can prove, prove that you, you had some.

Marijuana in your system. So basically they needed a sample of a stool, right? So eventually they took him to jail so that they can just wait for him to poop so that they can take a sample. And it's pretty gross, but that's just what it was. And then when Fellow was in jail for this, and this is one of the things we did that I was really happy about that we touch on these themes, on abolition, on colonialism, but it's actually not heavy in many ways. And sometimes we actually made or we tried to contextualize it for the reader so they get it in real visceral ways. So Fella was in prison. I was like, wait, it's the poor, the uneducated that are in jail, right? So he. And these people felt like Fella was their champion, and they helped him hide his tool so that he would never get caught. So by the time he was like, hey, I'm ready to. To, you know, hook now, the. The cops, you know, when they tested him, they realized it was nothing in his system, you know. But, yeah, so I. I think that what was. What was great about it is showing how Fella is also just such a trickster and such a. Almost like this Loki character. Right? And. But yeah, I. I think. Connor, what do you think? Like, what are your thoughts on this? I just kind of want to get your take on it, too.

[Connor McQueery]

I mean, it was. Yeah, it was the most fun, like, I remember, because I. The whole process. So one of the things we didn't talk about was when Jabala first brought me onto this project, he had been working on this idea for. For years, and he had come to me with a specific segment. We. We haven't really touched on it yet, but there's this famous attack on Fela's commune Jabola mentioned earlier. A thousand soldiers. Literally a thousand soldiers storm it. And so for Jabola, the original idea was to take this attack because it's based on the song called Zombie. The soldiers would be literal zombies, the generals and the politicians would be animals. Because Phil has the song Beasts of no Nation where he. Where he says that the politicians are like animals in human skin. And he was then going to use flashbacks to kind of explain, like, why are a thousand soldiers attacking this guy's house? And so he brought it to me for notes, and I, you know, I gave him my notes, and basically what I said was, you know, there are so many great stories about Bela, and he's somehow both famous and also unknown at the same time. And that a lot of people might not get the context of this. Of this attack, even with the flashbacks and sojbol is like, you're right. Like, I'm Gonna go back and I'm gonna do the epic. I'm gonna do the full bio of him, right? The full biopic. And then he came back a few weeks later and was like, dude, like, I really like the idea of this, but I don't think. Like, I don't know if I have the chops to write this. And he really liked some of the work I'd done. And so that's how I get involved. And so Jabola sends me away to write a script, and he's. You know, he always talks about how. Yeah, you know, I thought this was going to be, like, you know, maybe a hundred pages or something like that. And I came back with, like, 350 something pages. And jabola was like, wtf? Like, I got to draw this. What are you talking about? And so early on, Jibola was always like, I got to cut this thing down. So every time we had a meeting on a scene, if it was six pages, he's like, it should be four. If it was four pages, it should be two, right? If it's two pages, can we squish it into one? And this scene was like, it's like 30 pages, and it goes through, like, four different time zones that we travel around. And Jibola was like, I think it was the one that ultimately broke him because he. He wanted it. Like, he's like, I. No, this is.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

No.

[Bradley Morgan]

No way.

[Connor McQueery]

We're not doing this. And he fought, and we. We. You know, we fought and we fought and we fought. And then I was like, all right, Chabal. So, like, but what do you want to cut? And he was like, well, I can't. I'm like, should we cut this or this? He's like, well, I can't.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

We can't cut this part.

[Connor McQueery]

We can't cut that part. So it ended up actually expanding a little bit. And I. What. I really. I think it's the most interesting part of the book, structurally, and the work Chabola does in it. But because we're in different time zones and different, like, emotions, the art changes within these 30 pages. It's. It's like virtuoso work by Jabola.

And, yeah, I think. I think what makes it so important is because it is, you know, the. The whole thing comes down. So Jabola, or Felis finally has, you know, he finally has this shit. And I'm going to use that word because when his lawyer comes and gets him at the end of this whole process, he's like, fela, you just had the most expensive shit in the history of Nigeria because of the arrest and the holding them and having to have doctors. And so Fela writes a song about the experience called Expensive Shit. And it is a legendary song and it really shows how he would like, mock authority. But I think one of the most important things that you touched on at the beginning, Bradley, was this idea that Fela talks about going into prison and still really believing that only prisoners, like only bad people are in prison. So he's actually really afraid because he's like, I'm going to get killed. I mean, Nigeria did have a reputation for having dangerous prisons. So that wasn't like a crazy middle class, like misreading of a situation. But when he gets in there and he sees that the people in jail are the people he's often singing about and that his music means so much to them, it really makes him see how the prison industrial system is used not just in Nigeria, but in the world. And it kind of comes. There's one line that comes out of it that we kind of put into Fela's mouth that Jabal and I both really like. He's talking about how when white collar crime occurs, we have all these other fancy names for it, like misappropriation, right? It's. It's embezzlement. And he's like, no, it's stealing. And he's like, who's doing more damage? The guy in the alleyway who's trying to like rob you with a knife, taking your wallet or the politician or the corporation that's taking millions of Naira that's been for an entire city. Like, why do you think that desperate guy is in the alley in the first place? And so it's another moment where fellas politics shift because of this experience of being in jail and realizing that like you said, Bradley, the vast majority of people are there, their crime is being poor. And I think it shifted how he wanted to talk to the people of Nigeria.

[Bradley Morgan]

The interesting thing when I was reading through your book is there's a lot of just amazing stories about Fella and all the, you know, legends and trickster shenanigans he gets up, you know, gets to. And those are all entertaining their own, right? But I'm really fascinated by all these kind of artistic and.

And personal shifts that he makes because after he comes out of jail around this time, Sandra visits him in Nigeria to stay with him and record music. But things are a lot different than when, when they were together back in Los Angeles. Besides being taken aback, that Fella has two dozen wives who he rotates through on a sex schedule. Sandra is very uncomfortable about the misogyny she hears in his lyrics and confronts him about it. And as a result, Fela, who is this bandleader and runs this compound and has a particular vision for his music. He breaks his own rule about not writing a song for another person and he ends up writing a song called Upside down for Sandra to sing. Can you tell us about that song?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

About the song Upside Down?

[Bradley Morgan]

Yeah, just about Upside Down. And you know, that kind of interaction between him and Sandra that would lead him to break his own rule and write that. Because for me that's kind of a, you know, that, that, that's a particular shift. I think a lot of people would, would be very, you know, wary to.

Accept the, you know, the, the feminist bonafides of a man who has two dozen wives. But you know, clearly, you know, his mother as well as Sandra were women who had very significant impacts on him. So I just wanted to know a little, learn a little bit more, understand about how Sandra continued to influence him. And I think that song is a, is a big touchstone for that.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Right?

[Connor McQueery]

Yeah.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

You know, like I think one, one of the things we, we, we tried to do here was to show all the complexities around Fila, right. You know, and you, I think up until now you would get just almost a flattening of him, not so much a santification of him, kind of like you're Martin Luther King, right. But like you get a different version of fellow where people just didn't really. You get the fetishizen of him a little bit where people see him as just this agitator, but all you people see him as just a musician, right. Or people just don't know him at all. Right. And we, with Sandra we're able to do so many things. We're able to tell a love song, a love story, excuse me, with Sandra. Because Phyla and Sandra have this really deep connection, right? And Phyla loves and respects her and vice versa, right. And you fella broke his rule twice for Sandra, right? One for singing My Lady Frustration for her in la and also when she did Upside Down, I think that's the only other female musician Philip collaborates with, if I'm thinking out loud here, right. And the song Upside down is mostly led by Sandra. And Sandra is in Nigeria for the first time, living in the commune with several other women that are fellows wives. You know, this is somebody who grew up in the US in the, in the south. You know, so this is a totally different context for her. And she's just trying to.

Understand this new world that, that she's living in as well, you know. And also critiquing Nigeria as well, you know, because in that song Upside down, she was like, wait a minute. Like, why is it that.

Why is it that Nigerians change their names, you know, to, to British sounding names when we have this, when Nigerian and our African names have this huge meanings behind them, you know, like when you go to Germany, you have Germans have German names. If you go to China, people have Chinese names. But in Nigeria you get Mr. Ransom, you know, this and that. Right. So Sandra was just sort of critiquing that because she was like, Nigerians need to embrace themselves more, embrace their history, embrace their culture. Right. And that was what that song was all about. And it's really on brand for something Fella would say as well.

[Bradley Morgan]

So as we're coming to a close, it's been touched upon a few times. But I, I do want to bring up that very significant night when the Nigerian army sent a thousand soldiers to raid his compound. Because he had organized in 77 this festival Festac. And it was a local arts and culture festival. And Fel had certain ideas and demands, you know, about it, like having all the musicians pick their own songs. But he also didn't believe that the government had good intentions given their corruption and appeal to Western and European business investments. And this leads to the song Zombie that he would perform on stage as like part of this counter festival. And Zombie is about the soldiers just being mindless, you know, beings following their orders. And this attack was carried out by a thousand soldiers, destroyed Fela's studio and master tapes, which I can only imagine the, you know, the, the, the wealth of, of material that was on that. And they beat a lot of people there, including Fela. But the response from the government was that the violence was committed between the people in the compound. However, during the attack, Fela's mother was thrown out of a window and she later succumbed to her injuries. And after the funeral, Fella led a demonstration to protest the government for killing his mother. I, I want to, I have a two part question here. How did Fella carry out that protest in your book and how did it actually happen? And you know, that significance of, of that for him.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah. So the best 77, to put it context to, to give you context is, was like a celebration of Nigerian culture and history and all of that. This was at a time where Nigerian naira was more, had more value than the dollar. Right. You know, we had the oil Boom. Like the Nigerian economy was doing really well. The president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo at the time was arguably the most powerful person in the continent at that time. You know, this was a guy who grew up relatively poor, not too far from Fella. I think they, they grew up in the same neighborhood and Fela was, you know, grew up upper middle class in, in the same town. Abel Guta that we mentioned earlier on, right? So to, to give. So one of the things we did was Abbas Obj Obasanjo, like we call him OBJ in Nigeria. One of the things we did was we wanted to make sure him being the main antagonist to Fela, that they had this one face to face moment, right, where OBJ says, we want you to be part of this huge festival. Which makes sense because Fela is Elvis at this time, right? And OBJ is the most powerful man, you know, in the country. And anyone coming to Nigeria, like I said earlier, Sunrise in Nigeria, the Beatles are in Nigeria. This is a big, big deal. It will be strange for the biggest star in Nigeria to not be part of this event. And Fella is like, all right, cool, if you want me to be part of this event, you can't. You know, I have this nine point demand. It wasn't even about Yin. It was like people can sing their own song. No censorship. You can't brutalize people on the streets. You can't do this and that.

And the military should not be running an arts festival which is bars. Right, that makes sense. And that was when the conversation broke apart. And that led to Fella saying, I'm gonna sing this song Zombie, which was banned at the time in Nigeria. And OBJ saying, listen, if you embarrass me and embarrass the country, they'll be hell to pay.

And Fella does the counter festock party where everybody, all the who's who's came to fellas counterfest party and not to the festival party that the government literally paid for. So there was an altercation that actually happened after this, you know, where some soldiers, some of fellas boys got into an altercation with a soldier. And, and that, and that, that led to.

That I guess was the trigger that actually sent the thousand soldiers to come down to Fella's house, right. And when they came, they beat fella up so much that I said he could hear his bones crack in his body and he felt his soul leave his body, you know, and they assaulted his women, which now that I think about it, it was, you know, it it was more.

They fella was known for his women. So him, his women being assaulted was almost like a direct hit for him or something that would really hurt him, you know. And, you know, he was taken to jail. And after being in jail for 28 days, he came back and sang the same song again on stage, you know, and then does another song called Unknown Soldier that accounts for what actually happened in that song that you can listen to. So I think that when you read the book, one of the interesting things we did visually was before the attack, you have this pretty traditional graphic novel style where you have your Brits and.

It'S something you would expect in a graphic novel visually. And then after the attack.

You get a totally different art style, right? The art direction changes to more darker, more abstract, and even the line art is different and more edgy and it starts to feel more and more claustrophobic. Just to show how the impact of the music of that attack, infalla's life into his music.

[Bradley Morgan]

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[Djibola Fagbamier]

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The attack on.

[Bradley Morgan]

His compound was a major turning point for Fela in so many ways. And your book explores what happened throughout his life after that. But I want to leave that for the readers to discover for themselves. However, as this is the first interview I've ever done for a graphic novel, I want to talk a Little bit about that before we finish. And, you know, I was very interested to see at the beginning of your book and at other parts that signal a new phase of his life and career. There are these mythical scenes of a young boy following a type of spirit. What do these scenes mean to you within the context of the story you're telling about Fela and the power of his music?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

That's a good question, too. So we start the story in this spiritual.

Dream world, right. Most people don't know anything about Yoruba mythology, Yoruba spirituality or anything like that. And we thought it would be a great way to kind of educate the audience and to get them to explore a little bit about. About our world and our. About your. By imagination. And this spirit girl was someone who. Who was Fella's guide throughout the book. Almost like his conscience, so to speak. Right. And it was. It's kind of like open for interpretation who she is and what she's. She's meant to be. But we. We actually live in clues in there for you to actually discover she.

[Connor McQueery]

She.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

That. That she is an actual goddess. But we don't quite tell you what she is. But she's supposed to have layered meaning. Layered meanings to her as well. But I'll let Connor jump in to. To talk a little bit about this one as well.

[Connor McQueery]

Yeah, I mean, we kind of. When we were doing our research, we kind of looked at her as this kind of mixture of Oshun, who's like the goddess of like, fertility and like, beauty, and also Eshu, who's like the trickster goddess because she kind of fulfills both those purposes. I think a big part of it.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Was.

[Connor McQueery]

Not to give too much away, like you're saying, Bradley, for the rest of the story. But after the Kalakuta attack, a failure becomes more obsessed with sort of vengeance. And a lot of how he's looking at the world is. Is about wanting to. You know, he. He runs for president, Right. He wants to run Nigeria. He wants to make a better Nigeria. But he also wants to have the ability to like, to. To. To punish the people who killed his mother. Right. Like his mother dying is this huge thing for him. And.

So.

In that part of his career, he starts getting more and more invested in Nigerian spirituality. And it is both a strength for him, but it leads him to this guy called Professor Hindu who ends up being this charlatan. And it creates this almost like, weird.

Situation, like the Crucible style, where all of a sudden people are accusing each other of. Of having evil spirits. And in Many ways, it kind of part of his spirituality kind of pushes him into some darker places. And because we were having this commentary on Hindu and we're talking about how the spirituality was used as a weapon against Tela, it was really important, especially for Chabola, to make sure that we showed that the, the traditional Yoruba mythology and the traditional spiritual religions were, were beautiful and they were valid. And they're as valid as any other religion or mythology that any other culture has. And so using those, they were great because it allowed us to do some interstitials. It lets us jump between time periods seamlessly when we want to. A lot of people have told us when they open the book and it starts in this dream sequence, that they're very taken aback because they're expecting something very different, like, oh, this is going to be a very nuts and bolts, like it's going to be a biopic. And they're not expecting it for it to start off with basically magical realism. So it kind of seeds the idea, the innate magical nature of Nigerian storytelling. And so, yeah, a big part of it was to kind of confound expectations. It gave us a device to be able to move through. It underpins that idea that Fela was singing love songs because it's in these sequences that Felip is confronted about his love for his people and the idea of love songs. But it also was something to make sure that if you were coming to the story and you had no knowledge of Yoruba mythology, Yoro traditional religion, that you weren't going to just see the last part of the book and be like, oh, it's all like mumbo jumbo. It's all, you know, fake witch doctor kind of things that you'd be able to appreciate the beautiful parts of that spirituality. But like any other religion, there are going to be people who are doing things in the name of religion or individuals who are using that religion to enrich themselves and to, you know, to wield power over others. Which, ironically, was something Fela called out a lot in his music. But he was a little blind to that at the end of his life.

[Bradley Morgan]

And it's interesting visually to see that because at the beginning there's a lot of pinks and purples and magentas and then just gets darker and darker. And I think it's just really fascinating. And, you know, further beyond that, while your book is a biography on Fela, there are moments where you indulge in some of the urban legends that surround him, such as driving a bus through the gate of the army barracks to deliver his mother's coffin to the military head of state. And reading that, I got the sense that you don't usually see these kind of moments in biographies. So how did the medium of the graphic novel allow you to expand on Fela's legacy in ways that other types of books just can't?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Oh, man, I love that question. I think that's one of the great things about having it as a graphic novel, right? Because you could really show these things that, these stories that would be very difficult to show otherwise. You know, on that particular story where Fela drove to the army barracks and he was shot at and, and didn't get killed.

There.

It seemed like a story that actually did happen, you know, and there are many stories about soldiers literally just driving in front of Kalakuta Republic and just shooting at the place, this is actually really commonly known, and just shooting at the police and just driving up, just doing like a random drive by or random Tuesday, you know. And the other thing too is that when Nigerians tell stories, and I think West Africans tell stories, just everyday stories, there's a bit of magic, a little bit of mysticism that just sort of automatically weaved into the story, you know.

So when we were telling the story, we wanted to make sure you had that magic element. And I, you know, for me, I always thought that we just don't get the stories like that in Nigeria. I think they're just magic or just history or just politics or, you know what I mean? That's just all like siloed and like, wait, we can, we can mix this up and remix it and have a good time with the story, you know, and it was very important designing the story in a way where, you know, fella telling you something that is extraordinary. We've already created the context for you, so it doesn't seem so extraordinary. It just seems like, oh, yeah, I understand why I'm hearing this story this way. And we sort of cultivate you to, to get to that point, right? So you open the book and you're introduced to this dream world and then you get to London and then as the story goes on, it starts to become more and more.

Mythical and magical and it's, it becomes very difficult to, to differentiate between what's true or what's not. There's this really famous song of fella called Ruffle Ruffle Fight where he talks about two friends fighting in the mud and somebody's trying to separate them, but doesn't know which one is his friend, right? And because they're all covered in mud. You can't tell which one is your friend to stop the fight. Anyway, we kind of do that at the end of the story where Fella is fighting, but.

Fighting all these demons. But then he realized that he's actually fighting himself too. Right? And as you as reader are going through it, you find it very difficult. It's like, wait, what, what is true and what's not. I'm actually going to go spend some time to read more about this, to figure out the history. And if we're able to do that at the end of the story where you go and you start to dig and you're inspired, then that's a huge win.

[Bradley Morgan]

Djibola, this question is directly for you. And in the book's introduction you talk about the impact that Fela's life and work had on you. And with regards to seeing the Broadway musical about him in your book, you write that it was not another slavery story, not a colonization story, and that you felt this deep shame because you had the question of how Nigerians did not celebrate their own champions. Having worked on this book and now seeing it out there, have you found yourself reconciling those feelings?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

I think it's the first time anybody has asked me that.

I think that.

It'S really strange that.

Fella's mother, when she was thrown out of a second floor window.

And.

You know, she eventually died of her wounds and just given her history and who she was and how important she is, you could argue she's kind of like a, a George Washington or a, a.

Martin, Martin Luther King sort of, or JFK there. But the, the Nigerian government actually never apologized for, for that, of that incident, you know, to this day. So I feel like there's this underlying tone of like, we don't, we celebrate our heroes in some ways, but other ways we don't give a shit. You know, it shouldn't be possible that something like that would happen in Nigeria and for it not to be so condemned and so frowned upon that.

Like, fellas, mom to this day people would just say, oh, she's the woman who drove. The first woman to drive a car in Nigeria. People don't know much about her, right?

So that's why you get people being able to sort of tell our stories for us because we don't champion our stories. So for me, telling Fela's story in this big way is just to reassure that, you know, that to put him on that pedestal and say, yo, we produce this really great artist, we should celebrate it. To the high heavens in all its beauty. It's on its complexities and contradictions. And we should do that for all our heroes, you know, because it helps us. Reminds us who we are, what our strengths are, what our weaknesses are, and helps us see the future. So this is, you know, my way of doing that as an artist, because that's something I see in the world. And as an artist, I wanted to put it out there so that, yeah, the world sees our stories. Nigerians see themselves as well and champion more stories like this. So the world is getting smaller with globalization and with technology. We need to learn more about each other. Right? So this, again, this is my way of doing that.

[Bradley Morgan]

So to close things out, I've got a softball question for you fellas. What are some of your favorite fellas songs or albums?

[Djibola Fagbamier]

All right, I'll let you go first.

[Connor McQueery]

Oh, I mean, I'll take. One of my favorites is Wata no Get Enemy. It's just this very smooth, accessible track. Because, you know, the one thing about Fellow's music is a lot of his songs. Even his short songs are long. You know, you're talking 8, 9, 10, 12 minutes. And then his long songs are really long, 30, 40 minutes. So Wata no Get Enemy is one you can get into pretty easily. It's. It's very groovy.

Junkoku, which we talked before, is actually a really interesting song. I really like that song as well.

And what else will I do? I'll do. I'll do a deep cut from the Kula Libidos and era of pH, which is kind of when he was doing jazz. There's a song called Lyshow that is just a really good example of what Fellow was up to before he becomes the king of Afrobeat. And, you know, while him choosing to become the Afrobeat was King of Afrobeat was the right decision. L makes you good. Makes you realize that if he just played music like that his whole career, he's. They still would have been, you know, it still would have been fire. So I think those. Those are all very fun songs. And I'm gonna do over Ogd, which is like a. Overtake. Don't overtake. Odio is like another great. It's a longer song. It's a really interesting song that kind of changes a few times in it. So. But you really can't go wrong. Whatever song you pick with Fela is gonna be. It's gonna be great.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah, those are good ones. You stole a couple that of mine there. So my.

[Connor McQueery]

I almost took your favorite One. But I was like, nah, I can't do that. I can't do that. That's just me being mean.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

No, my favorite is Easily look and Laugh, which Phila basically sings about nihilism. It's like a 30 minute deep cut. It's so beautiful.

It sounds like this spiritual song that you could just sort of listen to when you just want to kick back and chill and read a fellow graphic novel.

There is another one.

The gentleman is also a great one to listen to. And Zombie, I don't know if you mentioned that already, fella. Connor, Zombie is a fantastic song to listen to. It's like the hardest funk, hip hop, jazz song you've ever heard in your life. Right. So it's almost this event, this experience that you have to.

Just sort of.

[Connor McQueery]

Yeah.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Just to experience. And lastly, I would say.

This one is hard to say. Equal. Equalization of trouser and pants. I would say that's. That's my other favorite one.

[Bradley Morgan]

Well, thank you, Jibola and Connor for speaking with me today. Great work in telling the story of this larger than life musical icon. And with such beautiful and stunning artistry. I think you both should be very, very proud.

[Connor McQueery]

Oh, thank you very much.

It's been really great to see the reaction. We were actually on a panel the other day with somebody who had lived with Fela and I think we got this great compliment where he was like, I was really skeptical about this book when I heard about it. And he read it and said that he really felt that we had done Fela justice, which is all we really wanted to do because he is a musical giant. But he's just someone that. His story is important. And anybody out there, if you still don't really understand what's going on here, pick up the book. You're going to love it.

[Djibola Fagbamier]

Yeah. Thank you, Bradley, for having us.

It was a great experience working on it and it was really nice talking to you. A good place for people to check us out is fellagraphicnovel.com there's actually an excerpt of the graphic novel on the website that you could check out of the Expensive shit story. So that's something to read up on as well.

[Bradley Morgan]

Free Comics.

My name is Brantley Morgan and you've been listening to new books of music with my guests Jabola Fakbagmier and Connor McCreary. Their latest book is Music is the Weapon and is published by Amistad.

[Connor McQueery]

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[Djibola Fagbamier]

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[Commercial Narrator]

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