There’s overwhelming evidence that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was a sociopolitical rebel.
His catalog is packed with classic tunes putting oppressive leaders and elements through the wringer of his critical barbs and sardonic humor, none more biting than “Zombie,” his greatest and most consequential composition.
The year was 1976. Fela was at his most prolific, having fully embraced the responsibility of anti-establishment hero. The musician was a regular target for security agencies and at the same time he was a folk hero, reviled by those in power and revered by the thousands that faithfully listened to his politically forthright music. He was combative and combustive, more direct in addressing the failings of Nigeria’s military junta than in songs from preceding years.
Fela released a total of six records in 1976. There’s a reason “Zombie” stands out in his ultra-sprawling discography: it made fun of an establishment that took itself seriously despite its severe failings. Comparing military and paramilitary officers to mindless beings was the kind of rarely heard courage that galvanized many listeners, especially at a time when dissent was incredibly dangerous.
Even now in 2026, it remains a potent protest song in a country where leadership is still tied to threads of military authoritarianism. Nearly three decades since the end of military rule, high-level government offices are still widely referred to and administered as positions of power, instead of leadership posts meant to serve the people. It’s essentially the continuation of a template where the government fails the majority in service of the powerful few, and shores up itself by persecuting its critics using military and paramilitary officers who can still be compared to mindless beings.
“Zombie” was instantly barred from radio airplay upon its release, perhaps apt for its unmistakable taunts. “Zombie no go turn unless you tell am to turn/Zombie no go think unless you tell am to think,” Fela sings in a matter-of-fact tone that barely veils the disdain that defines the song. “No brake, no job, no sense,” he declares, a direct lob at the military and security forces ranks for being complicit in the subjugation of their fellow Nigerians.
The same orderliness, discipline and unrelenting obedience valued by the military was flipped into cutting mockery. “Zombie” was blunt and subversive, a masterwork in songwriting execution. It also has the honor of being one of the Afrobeat legend’s best compositions: a strident groove with percussion mimicking a marching parade and horn blasts growling at the constricting reality of living under daily repression.
“It was taboo [at the time it was released],” Dele Edebiri said of “Zombie” on Jad Abumrad’s Fela Kuti: Fear No Man. Edebiri, the father of actor and comedian Ayo Edebiri, shared that his father found the record and broke it, deeming it too dangerous for his son to have under military rule. Still, Edebiri ended up replacing it, indicating how many people must have easily connected to it. “It was a big deal, ‘Zombie’ was huge,” he says, adding that it was so dangerous that it sparked “riots [and] protests.”
When the song was released, Nigeria was at the tail end of a revenue boom caused by high oil prices. A cost of living crisis was in its infancy, helped along by a military government that was grossly mismanaging the windfall from the previous years and was only accountable to itself for those misdeeds. “Zombie” was an effective salvo because it expressed the long-term rot being inflicted by the military, an institution that claimed to be correcting democracy’s earlier failings.
That Nigeria is still on a path of continued dysfunction reflects a system unwilling to detangle its ties to those years of autocracy. There’s a connection between Nigeria’s endemic ills and the leadership crisis plaguing the country. In 2026, Nigerians are living through a seemingly permanent cost of living crisis while there’s rampant corruption and fiscal irresponsibility by government officials, as well as a refusal to meaningfully engage with citizens’ concerns—similar to the realities five decades ago.
“Zombie” said the things many were afraid to say at the time, with Fela committing even harder to being a truth-telling provocateur. For a month, starting in mid-January 1977, Nigeria hosted FESTAC ‘77, a pan-African festival that brought in thousands of delegates from over 50 countries, including popular artists like Stevie Wonder and intellectuals like Audre Lorde and Amiri Baraka. It also drew in over 500,000 visitors. Rather than join the fare, Fela chose to host his own counter-FESTAC at the Shrine, his regular performance spot. Hundreds showed up every night to see Nigeria’s hottest musician, piling insult to the deep wounds inflicted by “Zombie.”
On February 18, 1977, six days after FESTAC ‘77 ended, about 1,000 soldiers stormed Kalakuta Republic, Fela’s two-story building and residence that served as a commune for family, band members, dancers and dozens of others. Initially, eight soldiers came to Kalakuta to demand that a commune member be handed to them over an accident that involved a reportedly injured soldier. Fela and his mother, Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti, refused on the grounds that the military didn’t have the right to arrest civilians.
By this time armed raids weren’t new at Kalakuta Republic. In November 1974, Fela was beaten to near-death by police officers who broke into the commune with unsubstantiated claims that a young girl was being forcibly held in the house. The ordeal led Fela to adopt the title “Anikulapo”—Yoruba for “he who has death in his pouch”—and make it a part of his surname.
This February ‘77 raid was much worse, by all accounts the deadliest show of force the Nigerian government has ever directed at a musician. Those eight soldiers left after they were turned away, but a few hours later a battalion was at Fela’s gate. Ever the performer, Fela took to the balcony of the second floor with his saxophone, taunting the soldiers with a live rendition of “Zombie.” Shortly after, mayhem was let loose.
As immortalized in “Sorrow, Tears & Blood,” the violence was rampant. No one in the commune was spared, men and young boys were beaten brutally, women were assaulted in unspeakable ways. Fela famously said he could hear the sound of his bones breaking, and his mother was thrown out of a window from the second floor. Kalakuta Republic was sacked and burnt down.
“Zombie” was the most pivotal inflection point in Fela’s life. It elevated him into immorality but it also caused his greatest pain. A year after the army’s raid, Fela’s mother died from complications from that fall, and it colored everything he did in the remaining two decades he was alive. His music was more direct in its vitriol and he became more defiant. He went to prison for 20 months and expanded the scope of his music. He performed esoteric spiritual sacrifices on stage, turned down multimillion dollar recording deals, and denied the existence of HIV/AIDS.
The loss of his mother was a grief Fela never healed from, and it was made worse by the lack of institutional and systemic change he was advocating for with his music. 21 years after the release of “Zombie,” Fela died and the military was still in power. Just four years before, military dictator Ibrahim Babangida annulled the 1993 elections.
Less than two years after Fela’s passing, former military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as the civilian president for Nigeria’s return to democracy. Obasanjo was in power when Kalakuta was attacked and burned down, with one survivor stating that he was present during the raid. In 2015, another former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, became president and was in office for eight years. Buhari was in power when Fela was arrested on trumped up charges of foreign currency laundering that landed him in prison.
Despite the nominal existence of democracy in Nigeria, there’s no understating the importance of autocratic force in keeping the status quo. Police officers and soldiers are routinely deployed to quell protests, without any repercussions for excessive, undue force. In an actual democracy, there will be accountability for heinous events like the Odi Massacre, which happened under Obasanjo’s civilian presidency, and the Lekki Tollgate killings that took place with Buhari as president. Both were dismissed, similar to how the Kalakuta raid was attributed to an “Unknown Soldier.”
“Zombie” was appropriate for the time it was released but it remains even more resonant as a broader criticism of how an entire country can be subjugated by a government that can turn its military might against its citizens. There’s a reading of the song where we’re all zombies, resigned to lives riddled with systemic hurdles that leaders will never meaningfully solve.
As it was in 1976, so it is in 2026.
