‘Music is supposed to give hope and liberate’

Femi Kuti is the Crown Prince of Afrobeat, the blend of American jazz and funk with African percussion and vocals of which his father, Fela Kuti, was king.

Like his father, he has shown a strong commitment to social and political causes throughout his career, perhaps also inspired by his grandmother, the first Nigerian woman to drive a car, who campaigned for women’s right to vote and was the first black woman to visit Russia and China. One uncle started a political movement and another was deputy president of the World Health Organisation.

The 47-year-old was born in London in 1962, but grew up in the former Nigerian capital, Lagos. His parents split when he was a child.

Femi chose to live with his father and left school in 1978 to play saxophone in his father’s band, Egypt 80.

Egypt 80 was a well-known international act in the Seventies and Eighties, and Fela Kuti’s huge popularity gave him a platform for social comment. His lyrics and spoken introductions brought tumultuous reactions from audiences thirsting for change.

Gradually though, his outspoken position on many social issues began to be seen as dangerously subversive and Fela began to draw disapproval from the authorities.

Meanwhile, Femi was enjoying his apprenticeship and was content to play a supporting role. But in 1985, he was thrust into the spotlight. Egypt 80 was booked to play at the Hollywood Bowl, but Fela Kuti was arrested at Lagos airport and jailed on a trumped-up fraud charge before he could make the trip across the Atlantic.

The rest of the band travelled and Femi took the lead on stage to great acclaim, fronting the 40-piece band on saxophone and lead vocals, in a performance which brought a standing ovation.

PERHAPS he was motivated by this taste of stardom because within two years he had started his own band – The Positive Force, whose sound took the established rhythms of Afrobeat and spiced them up with elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop.

For a decade, Femi Kuti consolidated his position touring with The Positive Force and building up his own reputation.

In the meantime, his father’s life and work were continuing to make the headlines. An outspoken critic of institutionalised corruption in Nigeria, he had founded his own political party in 1979. In the Eighties he was arrested and imprisoned while pushing his political ambitions to be president of Nigeria.

In 1989, Fela and Egypt 80 released the anti-apartheid Beasts of No Nation album which depicted Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and South African Prime Minister PW Botha on its cover with fangs dripping blood.

By the Nineties, Fela’s activism continued, but his recording output had dropped and rumours that he was seriously ill were confirmed when he died of an Aids-related illness in 1997. More than a million people attended his funeral.

In the song, ’97, Femi Kuti relates the tragic events in his life in 1997 – not just when his father died, but when his sister and former bandmate, Sola, succumbed to cancer.

The king was dead; it was time for the prince to take the crown. In 1997, Femi Kuti signed a major record deal, and his career began to take off. Femi took on not just the rhythms of his father’s Afrobeat, but also the social comment, and common themes in his work are justice, African and Nigerian politics, and the problem of Aids, but through it all, encouragement.

He said: “My music gives hope to many lives. We perform five days in a row and two days are not for shows. We perform to thousands of fans every night in Lagos. After every show people are renewed and have great strength again.”

FEMI’S music is intense and incorporates delightful swinging melodies. It is an amalgam of West African “agitpop”

lyrics and dance rhythms, with other European and American influences. Like his father, Femi Kuti has written protest songs that have provoked the ire of the authorities in Nigeria.

He said: “Music is supposed to give hope and liberate. I will sing music despite what the authorities decide is best for the people. I am not afraid of any force or those who try to prevent me in any way. I am not afrad to die. Even those who kill will die one day.”

His father’s middle name, Anikulapo, meant “having control over death” and Kuti means “death cannot be caused by human entity”.

When he performs in Europe and the US, Femi says he is trying to tell them of the crisis in Africa, the corruption and the evil that is going on in the continent. He said: “I perform in Europe and America to tell them to put pressure on governments in Africa.

“There is a good 30 years that a number of African musicians have raised critical questions of the way African countries are being governed.

“There has been a lot of talking of issues of injustice, but little justice is being done. The problem of Africa is how many things a person owns, how much money, cars, houses, but when we die we will all be put in one coffin.”

Femi’s live album, Africa Shrine, was recorded in the Lagos club of the same name. It’s the latest incarnation of Fela Kuti’s legendary club, The Shrine – which was both a performance venue and a home for Fela and his family.

Fela’s legacy lives on.

■ Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, plus Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Monday, July 13, 7.30pm, Gala Theatre, Millennium Place, Durham.

Price: £18, concessions £16.

Box Office: 0191-332-4041.