Jad Abumrad’s New Podcast Series Delves into the Life, Times & Complicated Legacy of Fela Kuti

In honor of Fela Kuti’s 87th posthumous birthday on October 15, OkayAfrica is rolling out a week of stories, from October 13 to 17, spotlighting the Afrobeat pioneer's life, activism, and legacy. Read them all here.

There are many deep emotions in the first episode of Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, a new twelve part podcast series centered on the life of the iconic Afrobeat creator. Dele Sosimi, the composer and musician who started by playing rhythm piano in Kuti's Egypt ‘80 band, is bawling as he recounts the dark memory of his father’s assassination. Not long after, he’s euphoric, this time replaying what a typical night performing with Kuti is like, extolling the healing properties of the hours-long repetition.

For Jad Abumrad, veteran broadcast journalist, composer and host of Fear No Man, speaking with Sosimi for the podcast series is where things really clicked into place. “We were sitting in a little flat in London that we had just rented for a few hours and it’s one of those interviews I’ll never forget — I’ve been doing interviews for 20-30 years,” Abumrad says. “He was singing to us and I could tell he was really in it because the music was that important to him, it literally saved his life. 

“It was that moment where I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what we’re doing.’ We’re telling a story about the power of art.”

Fear No Man is a panoramic look at the man, his mind, the circumstances and the legacy that have all contributed to the enigma that is Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. It’s thoroughly researched, an expansive effort that walks through the nuances that made Kuti who he became, the encounter that radicalized him, his passion for afrocentric intellect, his complex relationship with women, and as a father.

In “Vengeance of the Vagina Head,” the fourth episode of the podcast series, Kuti's mother, the iconic rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, is the main subject. She also serves as a conduit to Kuti's conviction as a socially conscious and fiercely radical artist years after Funmilayo led a women’s protest that upended the status quo in Egbaland. For the episode, Abumrad and his team traveled to Abeokuta and spent time at the Ransome Kuti Heritage museum, also the site of the Ransome-Kuti family home, which houses hundreds of letters and pages of diary entries. They also visited Abeokuta Grammar School, where Funmilayo was a student.

This expansive scope treats each layer of Kuti's life and wider impact as ultra-important facets that shouldn’t be glossed over, a three-year-long process that started with Abumrad’s friend who was working with the Kuti family and asked if he would be interested in doing something on Kuti's life. “I started doing interviews and calling people, scholars, musicologists. I just kept going,” he says. “I had already done 60 to 70 interviews and we didn’t even have a home yet.”

The home eventually turned out to be Higher Ground, the media company founded by former American President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama. Their entrance about two years into the project further strengthened Abumrad’s resolve to ensure the storytelling was as all-encompassing and authentic as possible.

“I’m an outsider. But I wasn’t going to half-ass this,” he says. “I’m Lebanese and we’re classically rootless and scattered across the globe. All the stories I’ve done are from outside coming in, so I had to be as open-hearted and curious as I could possibly be.” He also worked with a team of Nigerian historians and academics, some of them who participated in the field work and whose voices are part of the podcast series.

From Radiolab to the award-winning podcast series Dolly Parton’s America, Abumrad’s expertise at telling compelling stories in audio form is acclaimed and it plays a key role in maintaining a cohesiveness as the series traverses everything from Kuti as a performer to his eternal role in socially relevant movements years after his death. The years of reporting and serialized storytelling figures into decisions like putting Sosimi’s witnessing at the center of episode one.

“Fela is the electricity but Dele is the light bulb,” Abumrad says. “You can’t see the electricity until it illuminates, so we have to see the light bulb first.”

In addition to Sosimi, the series features testimonies by Kuti’s children — Yeni, Femi and Seun — and comrades like fine artist Lemi Ghariokwu, band member Duro Ikujenyo, and many more. It also features interview cuts from artist Santigold, actor and writer Ayo Edebiri (who reveals that her full first name is Funmilayo), author Hanif Abdurraqib, President Obama, and many, many more.

“I hope that some cultural interest is sparked,” Abumrad says of what he would like to see as the series rolls out. “I hope people really see that there’s something about the courage Fela had, for all his faults, and they can take from that because it’s what we need right now in the world. I also hope Nigerians and Africans think I did a good job in capturing the nuances and complexities of Fela.”

The first two episodes of Fela Kuti: Fear No Man are out now, with weekly releases for subsequent episodes.

Shop OkayAfrica's Fela Kuti Collection here.