Abstract

Nigerian Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is a political maverick not only because of the depth of his musical oeuvre, but also because, as a human rights activist, his personhood unreservedly engages the tempered socio- political space of Nigeria's post-independence phase. Fela's artistic commitment emanates from the genre Afrobeat through which he entrenched his musical ideology of Pan-Africanism and a materialist engagement with the leadership predicament of Nigeria's socio-political milieu. In addition, his performance space called Kalakuta Republic is a symbolic space from where he constantly conscientised his audience about the array of post-independence maladies afflicting the African continent. Through an examination of specific childhood events, I show that Fela's iconoclasm and creative oeuvre are catalysed through his parental inheritance. I then further my argument that, while operating within Nigeria's geographical microcosm, Fela's artistic and humanistic commitment transcends such borders and approximates the predicament of post-independence Africa as a whole. To expand my discussions, I investigate the deployment of his peculiar linguistic tool and vituperative poetics termed Yabis. The article in the end suggests that Fela's personhood significantly evokes how his celebrity life mediates between the state and individuals, and how this personhood has been absorbed into the contemporary Nigerian cultural space.

摘要

尼日利亚的非洲节拍音乐家Fela Anikulapo Kuti是一位政治特立独行者，这不仅是因为他的音乐创作的深度，而且还因为他是一名人权活动家，毫无保留地融入了尼日利亚独立后阶段不断发展的社会政治空间。费拉（Fela）的艺术承诺源自Afrobeat风格，他通过这种风格树立了泛非洲主义的音乐意识形态，并与尼日利亚的社会政治环境的领导困境进行了唯物主义的交往。此外，他的表演空间叫作“卡拉库塔共和国”，是一个象征性的空间，从那里他不断地使听众意识到困扰非洲大陆的一系列独立后疾病。通过检查特定的儿童时期事件，我发现费拉 他的父母传承促进了他的偶像破坏和创造力。然后，我进一步提出自己的论点，即费拉在尼日利亚的地理缩影中运作时，其艺术和人文承诺超越了这些边界，并近似于整个独立后非洲的困境。为了扩大讨论范围，我研究了他独特的语言工具和vi谐诗学的部署，这些术语称为亚比斯。最后的文章表明，费拉的人格魅力极大地唤起了他的名人生活如何在国家与个人之间进行调解，以及这种人格魅力如何被吸收到当代的尼日利亚文化空间中。