Fela as a Consciousness Musical Caliban

Abstract

Background: Fela Kuti's choice of a language of musical communication has always coincided with his perception of who his primary audience is and, even here, we find convergence with the three broad Fanonean stages he underwent. He sang mainly in English in that phase of his high modernist mode of African-American jazz music with tracks like My Baby Don't Love Me and Everyday I got My Blues; in Yoruba, during the reactive ethno-nationalist phase (having experienced racism in the West); and pidgin, once Pan-Africanism became his main ideological focus.