{"id":262051,"date":"2026-02-01T05:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/262051\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T05:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:31:07","slug":"fela-kuti-becomes-first-african-to-get-grammys-lifetime-achievement-award-music-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/262051\/","title":{"rendered":"Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime Achievement Award | Music News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three decades after his death, the \u2018father of Afrobeat\u2019 Fela Kuti has made history by becoming the first African to get a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian musician, who died in 1997, posthumously received the commendation along with several other artists at a ceremony in Los Angeles on Saturday, on the eve of the 68th Annual Grammy Awards.<\/p>\n

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For his family and friends \u2013 some of whom were in attendance \u2013 it is an honour they hope will help amplify Fela\u2019s music, and ideology, among a new generation of musicians and music lovers. But it is an acknowledgement they also admit has come quite late.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe family is happy about it. And we\u2019re excited that he\u2019s finally being recognised,\u201d Yeni Kuti, Fela\u2019s daughter, told Al Jazeera before the ceremony. \u201cBut Fela was never nominated [for a Grammy] in his lifetime,\u201d she lamented.<\/p>\n

The recognition is \u201cbetter late than never\u201d, she said, but \u201cwe still have a way to go\u201d in fairly recognising musicians and artists from across the African continent.<\/p>\n

Lemi Ghariokwu, a renowned Nigerian artist and the designer behind 26 of Fela\u2019s iconic album covers, says the fact that this is the first time an African musician gets this honour \u201cjust shows that whatever we as Africans need to do, we need to do it five times more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghariokwu said he feels \u201cprivileged\u201d to witness this moment for Fela. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have one of us represented in that category, at that level. So, I\u2019m excited. I\u2019m happy about it,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

But he admits he was also \u201csurprised\u201d when he first heard the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cFela was totally anti-establishment<\/a>. And now, the establishment is recognising him,\u201d Ghariokwu said.<\/p>\n

\"FelaThe front cover of Fela Kuti\u2019s Beasts of No Nation, designed by Lemi Ghariokwu [Courtesy of Lemi Ghariokwu]<\/p>\n

On what Fela\u2019s reaction to the award would have been if he were alive, Ghariokwu says he imagines he would be happy. \u201cI can even picture him raising his fist and saying: \u2018You see, I got them now, I got their attention!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Yeni feels her father would have been largely unfazed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t at all [care about awards]. He didn\u2019t even think about it,\u201d she said. \u201cHe played music because he loved music. It was to be acknowledged by his people \u2013 by human beings, by fellow artists \u2013 that made him happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yemisi Ransome-Kuti, Fela\u2019s cousin and head of the Kuti family, agrees. \u201cKnowing him, he might have said, you know, thanks but no thanks or something like that.\u201d She laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really wasn\u2019t interested in the popular view. He wasn\u2019t driven by what others thought of him or his music. He was more focused on his own understanding of how he should impact his profession, his community, his continent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though she believes the award may not have meant much to him personally, she told Al Jazeera that he would have recognised its overall value.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would recognise the fact that it\u2019s a good thing for such establishments to begin the process of giving honour where it\u2019s due across the continent,\u201d Ransome-Kuti said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many great philosophers, musicians, historians \u2013 African ones \u2013 that haven\u2019t been brought into the forefront, into the limelight as they should be. So I think he would have said, \u2018OK, good, but what happens next?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FelaFela Kuti performs on March 16, 1981, with his band \u201cAfrica 70\u201d at the Hippodrome in Paris, France [File: Herve Merliac\/AP]\u2018Fela\u2019s influence spans generations\u2019<\/p>\n

Fela was born in Nigeria\u2019s Ogun State in 1938 as Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti (later renaming himself to Fela Anikulapo Kuti), to an Anglican minister and school principal father and an activist mother<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1958, he went to London to study medicine, but instead enrolled at Trinity College of Music, where he formed a band that played a blend of jazz and highlife.<\/p>\n

After returning to Nigeria in the 1960s, he went on to create the Afrobeat genre that fused highlife and Yoruba music with American jazz, funk, and soul. That has laid the groundwork for Afrobeats \u2013 a later genre blending traditional African rhythms with contemporary pop.<\/p>\n

\u201cFela\u2019s influence spans generations, inspiring artists such as Beyonce, Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke, and shaping modern Nigerian Afrobeats,\u201d reads the citation<\/a> on the Grammys list of this year\u2019s Special Merit Award Honorees.<\/p>\n

But beyond music, he was also a \u201cpolitical radical [and] outlaw\u201d, the citation adds.<\/p>\n

By the 1970s, Fela\u2019s music had become a vehicle for fierce criticism of military rule, corruption, and social injustice in Nigeria. He declared his Lagos commune, the Kalakuta Republic, independent from the state \u2013 symbolically rejecting Nigerian authority \u2013 and in 1977 released the scathing album, Zombie, with lyrics that painted soldiers as mindless zombies with no free will. In the aftermath, troops raided Kalakuta, brutally assaulting its residents and causing injuries that led to Fela\u2019s mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Frequently arrested and harassed during his life, Fela became an international symbol of artistic resistance, with Amnesty International later recognising him as a prisoner of conscience after a politically motivated imprisonment. When he died in 1997 at age 58 from an illness, an estimated one million people attended his funeral in Lagos.<\/p>\n

\"Fela\"Portraits of Late Afrobeat Legend Fela Kuti, on display at Kalakuta Museum in Lagos, Nigeria [File: Sunday Alamba\/AP]<\/p>\n

Yeni \u2013 together with her siblings \u2013 is now custodian of her father\u2019s work and legacy. She runs Afrobeat hub,<\/p>\n

the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, Lagos and hosts an annual celebration in Fela\u2019s honour called \u201cFelabration\u201d.<\/p>\n

She remembers growing up with her larger-than-life father as something that felt \u201cnormal\u201d, as it was all she knew. But \u201cI was in awe of him\u201d, she also says \u2013 as an artist and a thinker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really, really admired his ideologies. The most important one for me was African unity \u2026 He totally worshipped and admired [former Ghanaian President] Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who was fighting for African unity. And I always think to myself, can you imagine if Africa was united? How far we would be; how progressive we would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on Fela\u2019s legacy, artist Ghariokwu says most big Afrobeats musicians today have been influenced and inspired by Fela\u2019s music and fashion.<\/p>\n

But he laments that most have \u201cnever really sat down with the ideological part of Fela \u2013 the pan-Africanism \u2013 they never really checked it out\u201d.<\/p>\n

For him, Fela\u2019s Grammy recognition should say to young artists, \u201cIf someone [like Fela] who was totally anti-establishment can be recognised this way, maybe I can express myself too without too much fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeni says that through Fela\u2019s work and life philosophy, he wanted to pass a message of African unity and political consciousness on to young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo maybe with this award, more young people will be drawn to talk more about that,\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully, they will be more exposed to Fela and want to talk about the progress of Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three decades after his death, the \u2018father of Afrobeat\u2019 Fela Kuti has made history by becoming the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[190,2567,156,157,111,43,139,24648,69,135,1430,1431],"class_list":{"0":"post-262051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-arts-and-culture","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nigeria","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-us-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}