Two weekends ago, I traveled to New York City to see a musical unlike any I have seen before. Fela!, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, invites its audience to explore the spirited and politically defiant world of the late 70s Nigerian Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

The production pays homage to Kuti’s revolutionary Afrobeat music which incorporates traditional West African song and rhythm, Nigerian highlife, Western jazz, funk, psychedelic rock and Cuban mambo musical styles. The show investigates portions of Kuti’s contentious life as a musician, activist and leader, and explores Kuti’s relationship with his activist mother, Funmilayo, played by American actress Lillias White, who was thrown out of a window and murdered by the Nigerian police. The production features many of his well known songs, translated from Nigerian pidgin and traditional Yoruba language into English.

The show is set in Kuti’s nightclub, the Shrine, in Lagos, Nigeria. It was here that Fela Kuti sought to fuse his Afro-centric ideology with his magnetic musical charms, and what eventually emerged out of the nightclub were Kuti’s loyal followers who showed resistance to governmental dictatorship.

West African-inspired dances pack the set and leak into the audience as the dancers move among the aisles and summon the audience to participate. The dance ensemble includes twenty primary dancers and twenty-seven additional female dancers who represent Fela’s twenty-seven wives.

Rather than employing a traditional orchestra playing in a pit, the Brooklyn-based Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas plays Kuti’s music directly on stage, utilizing instruments commonly used in Afrobeat such as the bass, trumpet, saxophone and the traditional Nigerian Shekere gourd. In his excellent portrayal of Kuti, Sierra Leonean actor Sahr Ngaujah leads the band, sings, dances and handles the saxophone throughout the show. He transforms the spacious, dark theater into the Shrine’s steamy and intimate cabaret setting with his magnetic requests for audience involvement.

The set is designed by Marina Draghici who outfits the space with pictures and wall texts, lyrics subtitles and projected scenes of riled-up crowds. Her costuming includes vibrantly colorful traditional West African dress.
While Fela! explores Kuti’s development towards fame, his educational expeditions abroad, his relationship with his mother and his collisions with Nigeria’s military system, the musical fails to reveal Kuti’s personal blemishes such as his struggle with AIDS and his copious affairs with women. His notorious sexual frivolity is displayed in the show as simply the result of his commanding and outgoing personality.

During intermission, I befriended a woman sitting to my right, Abeni, a medical student from Lagos. While leafing through our playbills, she noticed that the show’s cast members claim individual origins from across the globe. I asked her how she felt about their collective representation of Yoruba tradition and Kuti’s Shrine culture, and she expressed admiration for the impressive accuracy and lack of discrepancy between the performers’ Nigerian accents and mannerisms. Abeni revealed that Fela’s full name sheds light on his music and his life. In Yoruba, “Fela” means “he who shines with greatness” and “Anikulapo” translates as “one who has death in his pocket.” The musical’s chronicle of his life thus illuminates the significance of Fela’s name.

Fela! excellently transports its viewers into Kuti’s unique social and historical framework. Until now, the typical Broadway musical hasn’t been nearly as experimental in its narrative structure as Fela!. In addition to the performers’ and director’s pioneering contributions to Kuti’s Pan-Africanist philosophy, the show’s achievement is owed to Draghici’s progressive set that disregards the traditional design strictures of the stage musical and, instead assaults the entire space, and carries theater patrons to a different place, era, rhythm, soul and revolution.

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