Afrobeat! Fela and the Imagined Continent
Revised Edition
In the seventies, as signs of decay began to show in the capitalist experiment of the newly independent African countries, a “bard of the misrule” emerged on the streets of Lagos. Often shirtless and armed with his trademark saxophone, Fela Anikulapo Kuti tore his way into popular culture with Afrobeat music. Blending ethno-traditional forms with the reigning highlife and jazz rhythms, Afrobeat drew lyrics from the flip side of neo-colonial society and Fela’s London and American experience in ...
Éditeur : Africae, IFRA-Nigeria, Noirledge Publishing
Lieu d’édition : Ibadan
Publication sur OpenEdition Books : 22 juin 2023
ISBN numérique : 978-2-493207-09-8
DOI : 10.4000/books.africae.6133
Collection : Africae Monographs
Année d’édition : 2022
ISBN (Édition imprimée) : 978-978-59342-2-9
Nombre de pages : xxi-256
Chapter 1
Tradition and AfrobeatChapter 2
Bard of the Public SphereChapter 3
The Empire Sounds BackChapter 4
Idán, or a CarnivalesqueChapter 5
Alterity, Afrobeat and the LawChapter 6
The Afrobeat ContinuumAppendices
(Aims and Objectives)
In the seventies, as signs of decay began to show in the capitalist experiment of the newly independent African countries, a “bard of the misrule” emerged on the streets of Lagos. Often shirtless and armed with his trademark saxophone, Fela Anikulapo Kuti tore his way into popular culture with Afrobeat music. Blending ethno-traditional forms with the reigning highlife and jazz rhythms, Afrobeat drew lyrics from the flip side of neo-colonial society and Fela’s London and American experience in the sixties.
In the two decades that followed, Fela ruled the nights from Afrika Shrine, his signature night club, and the days from the turntables of the restless city dwellers along the Atlantic coastline. Fela’s Afrobeat became a dynamic mode of expression in the social history of post-independent West Africa and generated a counterculture that bonded through music, drugs, resistance politics—and ultimately, the nascence of an Afrocentric contemporary global culture.
Sola Olorunyomi, PhD., Research Reader in Cultural and Media Studies, Institute of African Studies, was formerly of the English department, both of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
He has published extensively in local and international journal outlets on his research in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Nicaragua where he worked in the literacy and harvest volunteer team project in the mid-80s.
Olorunyomi’s first book, Afrobeat! Fela and the Imagined Continent, was published by Africa World Press (AWP, NJ) in 2002, and is being reissued by Noirledge Publishing & Africae. His complementary addition to the subject is a researcher’s extensive finder FelAfrobeat Index, and the co-authored Duro Ladipo: Thunder-god on Stage. His current research is on two book projects: In Search of Lucumi, on the Atlantic diasporic Yoruba since the sixteen hundreds and Wombiture: the Agency of Unborn Futures, partly an effort at locating the moment(s) of tertiary orality.

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