Fela Anikulapo-Kuti

Adeshina Afolayan is a senior lecturer of philosophy at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His areas of specialization include African philosophy, political philosophy and cultural studies. He is the editor of Auteuring Nollywood (2014), author of Philosophy and National Development in Nigeria (2018), the coeditor of the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (2017), and the coeditor of Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa (2018). Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has several books to his credit, cutting across history, cultural studies, and African studies. Professor Falola holds 7 honorary doctorates, several prestigious lifetime career awards (including the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association). A total of 9 Fetschriften have been written in his honour on the creation of the construction of the subaltern. He served as Vice President of UNESCO’s International Scientific Committee, Slave Route Project from 2011 – 2015 and currently on the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows Programme and the International Committee of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute at UNISA.

Fela will remain an enigma for generations to come. New and fresh studies about his “strange-beingness”, and his illustrious career, even with all the controversies, will also continue to emerge. Afolayan and Falola provide deep insight on our subject while also making the text accessible, even to popular readers - Fela’s primary constituency, whose struggles and experiences provided the bases for his life choices and framed the revolutionary contemplations in his body of works. The authors propose a forward-looking approach to the study of Fela’s life, music, activism, and philosophy. Clearly, this is a book that deserves attention for things yet unsaid and even unknowable about 'Abami Eda', Fela!

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Fela Studies2. Fela in Historical PerspectivesPart A History And Culture3. Natal Tales: Fela and His Family4. The Performative Rhythm: From Highlife to Afrobeat5. The “Woman Question”: Fela and His WomenPart B Fela, Art, and Politics6. Fela and Postcolonial Political Economy of Nigeria7. The Politics of Fela’s Music8. Fela’s Use of Language9. Postcoloniality and Art in Fela and His AfrobeatPart C Fela and Felasophy10. Cultural Imperatives in Fela's Music11. Fela's Thoughts on African Indigenous Knowledge Systems12. Fela and Pan-Africanism13. Blackism: Fela’s Political Philosophy14. Freedom and Excesses: Fela and Social Eccentricities Part D Fela In The Future15. Post-Fela: Afrobeat as Memorialization16. Fela as a LegacyNotesBibliographyIndex