For Fela’s family and those who worked closely with him, the moment represents more than institutional recognition. It is, as his son Seun Kuti describes it, a rebalancing of history. “Fela has been in the hearts of the people for such a long time,” Seun tells the BBC. “Now the Grammys have acknowledged it, and it’s a double victory. It’s bringing balance to a Fela story.”
That sense of delayed justice is echoed by Rikki Stein, Fela’s long-time friend and manager, who calls the award “better late than never”. Stein points to a broader shift within the global music industry. “Africa hasn’t in the past rated very highly in their interests,” he says. “I think that’s changing quite a bit of late.”
The timing is significant. Following the worldwide rise of Afrobeats — a modern genre whose roots trace directly back to Fela’s innovations — the Grammys introduced the Best African Performance category in 2024. This year, Nigerian superstar Burna Boy is also nominated in the Best Global Music Album category. Yet Fela Kuti’s honour stands apart: a lifetime award that acknowledges not just popularity, but foundational impact.
First presented in 1963 to American singer and actor Bing Crosby, the Lifetime Achievement Award has historically gone to artists who reshaped the musical landscape. Alongside Fela Kuti, this year’s recipients include Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan and Paul Simon. Members of Fela’s family, as well as friends and collaborators, will attend the ceremony to accept the award on his behalf.
For Seun Kuti, the recognition extends beyond lineage. “The global human tapestry needs this, not just because it’s my father,” he says.
Fela Kuti’s importance lies as much in his ideas as in his sound. Stein describes him as a man who gave voice to those who had “drawn life’s short straw”, relentlessly challenging “social injustice, corruption and mismanagement” in government. To separate Fela the musician from Fela the agitator, he argues, would be to misunderstand his legacy entirely.
Indeed, Fela was never simply an entertainer. He was a cultural theorist, political firebrand and the undisputed architect of Afrobeat — a genre distinct from, but foundational to, today’s Afrobeats movement. Working closely with drummer Tony Allen, he fused West African rhythms with jazz, funk, highlife, extended improvisation, call-and-response vocals and unapologetically political lyrics.
Across a career spanning roughly three decades until his death in 1997, Fela released more than 50 albums. His work collapsed the boundaries between music and ideology, rhythm and resistance, performance and protest. That fusion frequently brought him into direct conflict with Nigeria’s military governments.
The most infamous confrontation came in 1977 following the release of Zombie, an album that mocked soldiers as mindless instruments of authority. In retaliation, troops raided Fela’s Lagos compound, known as the Kalakuta Republic. The property was burned, residents were beaten, and Fela’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti — a prominent feminist and political activist — later died from injuries sustained in the assault.
Rather than retreat, Fela responded with defiance. He carried his mother’s coffin to government offices and released Coffin for Head of State, transforming personal loss into public protest. His ideology — a volatile blend of pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism and African-rooted socialism — only sharpened in the years that followed.
Those ideas were shaped early on by his mother’s activism and later refined through his relationship with US-born singer and activist Sandra Izsadore, who helped crystallise his revolutionary outlook. Born Olufela Olusegun Oludoton Ransome-Kuti, he later dropped “Ransome”, rejecting what he saw as its colonial inheritance.
Fela’s personal life was as unconventional as his politics. In 1978, he married 27 women in a single, highly publicised ceremony — partners, performers and organisers who were all part of the communal vision of Kalakuta Republic. Repeated arrests, beatings, censorship and surveillance followed, yet repression only magnified his influence.
“He wasn’t doing what he was doing to win awards,” Stein says. “He was interested in liberation. Freeing the mind. He was fearless. He was determined.”
Musically, Fela’s evolution was shaped not only by Nigeria but by Ghana. In the 1950s and 1960s, highlife — pioneered by musicians such as E.T. Mensah, Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas — dominated West Africa’s soundscape. Its melodic guitar lines, horn arrangements and dance rhythms deeply influenced Fela’s early work.
Time spent in Ghana allowed him to absorb highlife’s structure and phrasing before fusing it with jazz, funk, Yoruba rhythms and political storytelling. The result was Afrobeat — a sound that is not solely Nigerian, but West African, pan-African and diasporic at its core. The DNA of highlife remains audible in Afrobeat’s melodic sophistication and groove-driven sensibility.
On stage, Fela cut an unforgettable figure: bare-chested or draped in wax-print fabric, hair shaped into a sharp Afro, saxophone in hand, commanding a band of more than 20 musicians. His performances at the Afrika Shrine in Lagos were legendary — part concert, part political rally, part spiritual ceremony.
Stein recalls that the Shrine defied conventional concert etiquette. “When Fela played, nobody applauded,” he says. “The audience wasn’t separate. They were part of it.” Music, for Fela, was not spectacle but communion.
His visual legacy was shaped in collaboration with artist and designer Lemi Ghariokwu, who created 26 album covers between 1974 and 1993. Ghariokwu sees the Grammy recognition as confirmation of an enduring presence. “Fela has been an ancestor for 28 years,” he says. “His legacy is growing by the day. This is immortality.”
Today, Fela Kuti’s influence resonates far beyond Afrobeat purists. His imprint can be heard in the work of artists such as Burna Boy and Kendrick Lamar, and admired by figures like actor and DJ Idris Elba. Elba, a vocal admirer, curated an official vinyl release, Fela Kuti Box Set 6, and has compared Fela’s singularity to that of icons like Sade and Frank Sinatra.
During his lifetime, Fela performed at major festivals across Europe and North America, presenting global audiences with a politically charged vision of modern Africa — uncompromising, complex and unapologetic.
Seun Kuti was just 14 when his father died, yet his memories resist myth-making. “Fela never made me feel like I was a child,” he recalls. “He didn’t hide anything from me. He talked about everything openly.” Fame, he says, was never emphasised. “I didn’t even realise my dad was famous. That’s credit to him. He kept me grounded.”
What endured most was discipline and humanity. “The human part of him — leadership, musicianship, fatherhood — that was the epitome of who he was.”
One reflection captures Fela’s philosophy of independence. “Fela was our dad, but you didn’t own him. Fela belonged to himself. But we all belonged to him.”
Titles meant little to Fela. He insisted even his children address him by name, once docking Seun’s pocket money for calling him “Pops”. The lesson, Seun says, was about service. “He always reminded us that he was in service to others more than himself.”
That ethic reshaped Seun’s own path. “I used to make music to make money. But as I’ve grown, I lean more toward working for my people as well as my art.”
Fela led several ensembles, most famously Africa 70 and later Egypt 80 — the latter now carried forward by Seun. These groups were not conventional backing bands, but tightly drilled collectives built on discipline, endurance and shared purpose.
Stein remembers Fela’s meticulousness. “He tuned every instrument personally,” he says. “Music wasn’t entertainment to him. It was his mission.”
With the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, that mission — long resisted, marginalised and misunderstood — receives a form of global validation. For many, it is not an introduction, but an overdue acknowledgment of a legacy that never stopped shaping the world’s sound.