2.

1 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.1 MUSICAL ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE

Humans raise their voices to highlight injustice, beat drums to motivate
action, and sing songs to memorialize. With sweet grooves and lyrical
jabs, these songs shape our engagement with our communities and spur
us into action (Cannon A. , 2020).
“Music makes mutations audible. It obliges us to invent categories and
new dynamics to regenerate social theory, which today has become
crystallized, entrapped, moribund.
This mutation forecasts a change in social relations. Already, material
production has been supplanted by the exchange of signs. Show business,
the star system, and the hit parade signal a profound institutional and
cultural colonization.
Music, as a mirror of society, calls this truism to our attention: society is
much more than economistic categories, Marxist or otherwise, would
have us believe.
Music is more than an object of study: it is a way of perceiving the world.
A tool of understanding.
Today, no theorizing accomplished through language or mathematics can
suffice any longer; it is incapable of accounting for what is essential in
time-the qualitative and the fluid, threats and violence. In the face of the
growing ambiguity of the signs being used and exchanged, the most well-
established concepts are crumbling and every theory is wavering. The
available representations of the economy, trapped within frameworks
erected in the seventeenth century or, at latest, toward 1850, can neither
predict, describe, nor even express what awaits us.
It is thus necessary to imagine radically new theoretical forms, in order to
speak to new realities. Music, the organization of noise, is one such form.
It reflects the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible waveband
of the vibrations and signs that make up society. An instrument of
understanding, it prompts us to decipher a sound form of knowledge”
(Jacques A. , 1977, 1985, 2009, 2011).
Music and entertainment consist of culture-specific narrative re-
presentations and reenactments of the human condition, and of lived
experience (Onyebadi U. , 2022).
When music is combined with a politically-charged narrative, it is either
going to lean right or left. This has an impact on the song’s ability to
receive blanket adoption and regard. However, the process is significant
because it helps to promote a message by aligning it with an artist and
their fan base.This creates a relationship rooted in an emotional
connection, which carries with it a strong influence (Westcott K.G.,2019)
Music is used by politicians as means to reach the masses by conveying
succinctly their message and boosting their images. The state also uses
music to preserve some of its memories as well. However, music and
musicians have suffered at the hands of politicians when the music turns
to criticize politicians or the standard norms in the state or society. Thus,
Music can be either an ideological tool in the hands of the state or a
symbol of critique that incurs state oppression (Abubakar S. H., Sidal, S.
2022).
Music has been used to eulogize and educate. Music has been used for
propaganda within and among states in the International community and
most importantly, music has been used to call for reliefs and help
ameliorate disastrous situations. Music is a veritable tool for social
consciousness and ultimately is a force for social change. Music
irrespective of the styles and patterns they are used can be used for the
good of the society; to correct several ills and decadence(Sobowale E. O,
2019) as in the case of the transformative role of Fela Anikulapo’s Afro
beats pop music genre and advocacy and engagement as a weapon for
positive change, peace and development of Nigeria (Olaleye, O.A. &
Osuagwu, D. 2020).

Buck Morss (2003) asserts that art (music) might participate in activism
as a “grassroots, globally extended, multiply articulated, radically
cosmopolitan and critical counter-culture”
A key feature of activist music therefore lies in the reflection on power
and the inherent danger of maintaining the status quo (Cannon A. , 2020).

Although social justice is typically thought of as a political agenda, many

justice movements have used music as a way of inviting and maintaining
broad-based participation in their initiatives. Some of this integration of
music and social justice has become so deeply embedded in the identity
and culture frameworks of particular groups that it is understood today
primarily as culturally constitutive.  For instance, the tradition of the
blues is widely recognized as a distinctively African-American
contribution to music, but is not always recognized for its role helping to
shape the political consciousness of African-American communities
emerging from Reconstruction in the nineteenth century and migrating
out of the American South in the twentieth century (Fieser J. , Dowden B.
2023) and ‘into this unacknowledged war on the poor and the
marginalized came the interplay of technology, economics, and culture at
the origin of hip-hop, what Rose describes as a practice of appropriating
cultural refuse for pleasure (Pg. 22-23).  Subways, street corners,
abandoned parks were occupied by listeners and dancers as political
spaces.  The elements of “flow, layering, and rupture” both reflect and
contest social marginalization, Rose says; in its origins, the music was
both articulating and symbolizing the lived experience of people
struggling to hold onto a community identity in the face of “urban
development” and gentrification processes (Pg. 22).  The struggle, she
insists, was not a final, futile gesture of victims of urban apocalypse, but
was the formation of an alternative, communally-forged identity by
producers of a conscious “take back the public spaces” movement.  It was
an intransigent, unapologetic assertion of the right of all human beings to
take up public space, to interact with each other and with the music that
informed these politicized, reclaimed spaces’(Berry, V. 1996, Rose T.
1994)’.
The safe space of peace building performances creates a container in
which performers and audience members may strengthen their
willingness and capacity to resist violence and injustice and to disrupt
ongoing cycles of violence. Artists and audience members have engaged
in critiques of government policies that would be disallowed, or even
illegal, outside the performance space (Walker, P. 2016).
“Our idea was that we had a larger mission than simply to entertain those
who had achieved a certain measure of comfort in a hostile environment.
The larger purpose of art in the context of injustice is to challenge the
norms of those who are benefiting from the injustice”(O’ Neal J. 2011)
by facilitating a stronger sense of agency which assists oppressed or
marginalized people to create a vision for engaging more actively with
justice initiatives (Walker, P. 2016).

Restoring meaning to situations of seemingly meaningless suffering,

alienation and despair involves more than language. One aspect of
performance that makes it uniquely suited to this restoration is that it is
embodied, engaging memories that are not always easily recalled verbally
but that may be accessed through “creative work that engages the body”
(Cohen, 2011).

Activist-musicians provide a crucial perspective to shaping music

education towards activism and understanding music as an identity-
making process. The hyphenated activist-musician identity offers a
unique praxis-oriented identity. For many activist-musicians, their activist
self is rooted in equity and critique, while their musician self allows them
to assert these ideologies and critiques into the world. Activist-musicians
are uniquely positioned to “name the world” through music and work to
transform it (Freire, 1970:2000), and while scholars address critical
pedagogy and the possibilities of engaging in music as a means to express
ideas and aspects of identity (Allsup, 2013; Benedict & Schmidt, 2007;
Bradley, 2006a; Gould, 2007; Schmidt, 2008; Vaugeois, 2009; Weinstein,
2007), reading music as identity politics remains relatively unexplored to
date in the literature.
Various scholars have studied the relationship between music and
politics. Most, however, focus on how governments and political parties
on the one hand and movements and activists on the other use music for
political outcomes and in doing so they often ignore the more latent forms
of political participation music can lead to. This research, therefore,
focuses on how people give meaning to political music in informal
conversational settings by exploring the reception (Weij, F., & Berkers,
P., 2019) and the recognition and embracing of ideas related to
expressing disagreement that question social norms, which are widely
perceived as unfair, and endorsing movements that strive for fairness and
equal treatment by integrating issues of societal unfairness, human rights,
environmental sustainability, and political change within the framework
of the discussed music.
However so, the outcome of performances is unknown, relying on the
resonances of interaction that occur between audience member and
actors, or between participants and leaders of ritual. Performance
therefore, facilitates a transformation of some type, but not always in the
direction of social healing or peace. Performances, with their abilities to
engage powerful emotions, build resistance and strengthen participants’
agency, have also been used to exacerbate and to legitimate violence.
There is therefore no guarantee that a performance will disrupt cycles of
violence and trauma (Walker, P. 2016) especially when “political
meaning is hard to pin down in song, even when focusing on lyrics”
(Keef L., Pedelty M. 2010).
In an attempt to humanize the experiences of diverse peoples may
resonate very differently with members of opposing groups, some of
whom may see such performances “as a threat to the personal, cultural, or
national narrative they hold dear” (Nasrallah & Perlman, 2011) for
instance, in late June 1994, when most of the genocide was already over,
Bikindi drove along a road in his native Gisenyi, calling over a
loudspeaker, “The majority population, it’s you, the Hutu I am talking to.
You know the minority population is the Tutsi. Exterminate quickly the
remaining ones” said the Rwandan pop star whose two-year trial at the
International Criminal Tribunal was apparently the first attempt to
criminalize music in international law, was just convicted of incitement to
genocide but not, after all, for his songs, even though Rwandan
genocidaires sang them like anthems while hacking people to death
(Boostra J., 2009).
 An ongoing challenge within the literature on music and activism,
however, is to connect formal, sonic, affective and subjective aspects of
musical experience to observable political processes. As some scholars
have highlighted, statements of intention to perform this task have often
unravelled in practice (Peddie 2012).
This paper focuses on the transformative role of Fela Anikulapo’s
Afrobeat music genre and advocates for its engagement as a weapon for
positive change, peace and development.

FELA KUTI
The musical history of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is immensely characterized
with his scathing criticism of the Nigerian government and occasionally
multinational corporations and their debilitating role in the continent
(Sobowale E. O, 2018).

However, prior to that, according to Carlos Moore (2009), “By the

accident birth of Fela (or Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, as
he was originally named) could have chosen to settle for the conformist
existence and trappings of Nigeria’s educated middle class, yet from the
outset, he instinctively rejected that option. He considered himself an
abiku, a spirit child in the Yoruba tradition, who was reborn on October
15, 1938, in Abeokuta, the fourth of five children, coming into the world
three years after his politically aware parents had suffered an infant
bereavement.” Again Sobowale E. O (2019) would assert that, ‘Fela was
born into the family of the Rev. Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti (1900 –
1955) and Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900 – 1978). He came from a
Christian and well-educated background. His father, the Rev.
RansomeKuti, became an Anglican priest like his father before him and
was also a union activist and a school principal. Fela's mother,
Funmilayo, was a human-rights campaigner and political leader who was
awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (the Soviet Union's equivalent of the
Nobel Peace Prize) in 1970. His mother, Funmilayo was responsible for
the disposition of the King of the Egba people in Abeokuta, Ogun State,
Sir Ladapo Ademola II, the Alake of Egbaland in whom she mobilized
women across communities against. Notably, she was among the seven
top leaders chosen by the National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns
(NCNC) in 1947 to protest the new Richards Constitution imposed by the
colonial government. She was also prominent as the first woman to drive
a car in Nigeria. Fela’s father also was a human rights activist and a
school principal such that he used the medium of every institution that he
worked in to spread the gospel of nationalism. He resorted to daily school
assembly addresses and inspiring songs and anthems designed to
motivate young minds on the issue of nationalism.In essence, Fela came
from a strong background of activism that would influence his career
even though he would deny that path for a long time.
Fela went from Abeokuta Grammar School in Abeokuta to Trinity
College of Music, Mandeville Place, London in 1958 where he studied
classical music. It was, however, in London that Fela discovered racism
and he became aware of his ‘Africanness’. While he was in London, Fela
formed his first band, the Koola Lobitos which first played Jazz but
people did not really relate to it in Nigeria. Most people in Nigeria at that
time danced to highlife. Even, at that time, highlife was growing obsolete
and people were looking for the possibilities of taking highlife a pitch
later to sound a little different. It was then Fela discovered the possibility
of fusing jazz and highlife together. So then, Fela and his band began to
play a fusion of highlife and jazz.’

In his article “Fela” Karimu Bolu has asserted that, Fela married his first
wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he would have three children
(Femi, Yeni, and Sola). In 1963, Fela moved back to Nigeria, re-formed
Koola Lobitos and trained as a radio producer for the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation. He played for some time with Victor Olaiya
and his All Stars.
In 1967, he went to Ghana to think up a new musical direction. That was
when Kuti first called his music Afrobeat. In 1969, Fela took the band to
the United States where they spent 10 months in Los Angeles. While
there, Fela discovered the Black Power movement through Sandra Smith
(now Sandra Izsadore), a partisan of the Black Panther Party. The
experience would heavily influence his music and political views. He
renamed the band Nigeria '70. Soon afterwards, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service was tipped off by a promoter that Fela and his
band were in the US without work permits. The band immediately
performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles that would later be
released as The '69 Los Angeles Sessions.

Olaleye O.A and Osuagwu D.C (2020) have opined thus, ‘Fela, being a
positive social critic, made musical contributions that remain memorable
and his prophetic pronouncements continue to haunt the Nigerian society.
His music instilled patriotic and nationalistic feelings in the society and
his lyrics helped in the control and articulation of government
programme. In contending the ultimate value of Afro beats musical art of
Fela; it is necessary for the listener to individualize and differentiate his
musical contributions from his individual lifestyle. In the judgmental
realm, many practicing pop musicians have allowed their personal
indiscipline to override their excellence musical contributions. Therefore,
listeners must distinguish between moral values and individual values for
a great understanding of the Afro beat music. Moral values deal with
what will probably be good or bad in humanity while individual values
are concerned with experience as it relates to a soul’.

FELA’S GENIUS: AFROBEAT AND ACTIVISM

‘Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's biography reflects something of the underlying

nature of social reality and social processes in Nigeria. Biographical
experiences result from a combination of several phenomena, one of the
most important of which is the individual's consciousness, which not only
structures his perception and interpretation of the social world, but also
activates his specific social action. Fela Anikulapo was moved by the
larger evolution of social consciousness that pervaded the black world in
the 1960s. At that time he chose to be a part of the politics of revolution
which was consequent upon that fundamental change.
The immediate setting for that revolution (and for the shaping of Fela's
consciousness) was the United States, and the immediate revolutionaries
were Black Americans. Since he was not an American, he felt it more
relevant to transfer his own revolutionary struggles to his own society
where socio-historical conditions were different, obviously, from those of
the United States. He had to devise his own type of revolutionary struggle
suitable to his social environment as well as the possibilities of his own
existential condition’ (Labinjoh, J. 1982).
Fela was an iconoclast who challenged the powerful in society, a rebel
whose bohemian lifestyle traversed the boundaries of socially prescribed
behaviour as well as a social commentator whose lyrics, often suffused
with coruscating barbs and comical vignettes, laid bare the daily tragedy
of the lives of the suffering African proletariat’ (Makinde A. 2017).

After Fela's trip to the United States in 1969, his music activism started as
he found motivation from several angles and knew at this point that he
could change things and fight injustice and oppression prevalent in
Nigeria at this time through his music (Sobowale E. O, 2018).
Fela Kuti was a revolutionary African musician, the inventor of a genre
which he called ‘Afro-Beat’ and the scourge of successive military
dictatorships and civilian governments whose misrule of Nigeria has
blighted the development of Africa’s most populated country. (Makinde
A. 2017).

Mentored by Malcolm X, Fela said “But this book, I couldn’t put it

down: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. . . . This man was talking about the
history of Africa, talking about the white man. . . . I never read a book like that
 before in my life. . . . Here was a true story, about a man! I said, ‘This is a
man!’ I wanted to be like Malcolm X! . . . I wanted to be Malcolm X, you
know. I was so unhappy that this man was killed. Everything about Africa
started coming back to me”. (Olaniyan, T.. 2004).

He gave his band a new name called “Nigeria 70”(formerly called Koola
Lobitos). It was also at this point that Afrobeat came into life, directing
his music to the society and often questioned and criticized the
immoralities in the society (Sobowale E. O, 2018); the Afrobeat is a blend
of jazz, highlife, calypso, salsa, funk and traditional Yoruba music.
(Fisher, A., & Idowu, S. A, 2023).
Olaleye, O.A. and Osuagwu, D.C. (2020) assert that Fela’s Afro beat is
harbingers of social conscience. The Afro beat exponent was famous for
his satires and his criticisms of the people in authority through music.
What makes Fela’s afro beat music great? It is question that anyone
deeply concerned with his art must attempt at least to answer? There are
certain technical criteria for excellence in a piece of music such as;
consistency of style, clarity of forms, subject focused and meaningful
messages. Music is not a natural system or phenomenon; it is man-made
and man-controlled, therefore Afro beats music is made by Fela
Anikulapo Kuti as a weapon against oppression and a positive social
transformation agent.
The work of art, accordingly, is said to have its complete meaning within
itself. Afro beats music is a great art that has remained stable and
continues to awaken the spirit of freedom against the oppressor: this
focuses on the crucial point of this paper. Furthermore, the importance of
lyrics and messages, as an expression means, is vivid in Fela’s use of
Pidgin English. He made use of Pidgin English, Yoruba language and
Standard English, in order to convey the message to the masses. The
aesthetics of the music embedded is a careful mixture of pidgin and coded
words (Olaleye, O.A. & Osuagwu, D.C. 2020). According to Ozah
(2017), apart from the use of Pidgin English that is understood by the
average Nigerian, Fela used other cultural codes, including non-linguistic
expressions, and body gestures in articulating and communicating his
message to the masses.

Olaniyan T. (2004) further asserted that by the mid-1970s, Fela had

become a countercultural icon the likes of which had never been seen
before. He was brash and outspoken. His immediate public platform was
his nightclub, which he called Africa Shrine, with himself as “Chief
Priest.” During the yabis (idiomatically, “abuse,” but more appropriately,
“roasting”) sessions that were a routine part of his shows, he would
launch running commentaries on local and global headlines as they
affected Africans in general and Nigerians in particular and withering
satires against public institutions or officials whose actions or policies he
considered untoward. To reach a larger audience, he would buy space in
newspapers to run “Chief Priest Say” columns, essentially extensions of
Africa Shrine yabis. His residence was a sort of commune with no less
than seventy persons at a time, composed of Africa 70 band members,
bouncers, visitors, admirers, hangers-on, bodyguards, individuals doing
all sorts of work in the household and with the organization, and a bevy
of young girls who were dancers, chorus singers, cooks, girlfriends, or a
configuration of two or more of these. Fela was the center of this beehive
of activity.
Femi Odugbemi in his article “Constructing the Dramatic Narrative of
‘Fela’ for Cinema”, Fela was the soundtrack that helped Nigerians
confront and get through the worst of times with the military
dictatorships and political avarice of corrupt regimes. Fela was resistance
to systemic corruption and the oppression of power. Fela was a sacred
communion between artist and audience – male and female, black and
white, educated and illiterate, pimps and prostitutes, pastors and players,
addicts and artistes.
Fela according to Femi, was much more than the sum of his parts – he
shouldered enormous risks and with unimaginable courage did things the
rest of us can only dream of. Femi still opines that the Fela story is a
narrative mirror that will afford us a glimpse at the naked soul of our
national character from the prisms of our political history.

Olaleye, O.A. & Osuagwu, D.C. (2020) have posited that ‘Fela, being a
positive social critic, made musical contributions that remain memorable
and his prophetic pronouncements continue to haunt the Nigerian society.
His music instilled patriotic and nationalistic feelings in the society and
his lyrics helped in the control and articulation of government
programme. In contending the ultimate value of Afro beats musical art of
Fela; it is necessary for the listener to individualize and differentiate his
musical contributions from his individual lifestyle. In the judgmental
ream, many practicing pop musicians have allowed their personal
indiscipline to override their excellence musical contributions. Therefore,
listeners must distinguish between moral values and individual values for
a great understanding of the Afro beats music’.

As a political and cultural commentator and Black Power activist, some

of Fela’s pro-human rights and anti-establishment in- and out-of-music
articulations, and his non-conformist cultural demeanor, caused him to
clash with the Nigerian governments. He described such governments as
“Uncle Tom” neocolonial agents of greed and corruption and insensitive
Gestapo-like regimes (Gegauff, D. , 1982).

‘Fela lampooned the high-handedness of police officers and soldiers in

“Alagbon Close” and “Zombie”. His disdain for the ‘foreign imported’
religions of Christianity and Islam and his belief that they served as an
opiate for the masses was reflected in “Shuffering and Shmiling”. His
uncompromising position on eschewing the colonial-derived mentality
and promoting black pride formed the backdrop to his dropping
‘Ransome’ from his surname. In its stead, he adopted the name
‘Anikulapo’ which means “he who carries death in his pouch”.He had
established his pan-African outlook via his album “Why Black Man Dey
Suffer” in 1971 but when criticising the racist regimes of Rhodesia and
South Africa in songs like “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” and “Beasts of No
Nation”, did not fail to remind his listeners of the hypocrisy and the
brutality of Nigeria’s military rulers. He sang against imperialism and
neocolonialism while pointing out that he felt certain of Nigeria’s elite
such as the wealthy businessman, Moshood Abiola were agents of the
Central Intelligence Agency. Corruption and the inhumanity of Nigeria’s
elites were a consistent topic for Fela in his recordings, his stage banter at
his popular club ‘The Shrine’ and in his frequent utterances to the press.
When Nigeria hosted the Second World Black and African Festival of
Arts and Culture in 1977, he refused to perform at the gathering in protest
at the corruption surrounding the event.
The bringing together of artistic talent from Africa and the African
Diaspora had appealed to the Pan-Africanist sentiments of Fela who as a
young boy had been introduced to its greatest champion, Ghana’s Kwame
Nkrumah, by his mother. He felt that the gathering could be used to
“redirect the thinking of the common man”. Fela would pay a heavy price
for his harangues. Less than a week after the end of the festival, the army
surrounded his commune, known as the Kalakuta Republic, before
storming it. Its inhabitants, not least Fela were beaten and the female
members of his entourage sexually violated. Fela’s mother who resided at
the residence was thrown from a first floor window and although initially
surviving the attack died a few months later from injuries that she
sustained.

It was a dark period for Fela. He spent 27 days in jail and suffered
different bone fractures. He was put on trial and an official inquiry
whitewashed the invasion and destruction of his compound concluding
that the damage to his property had been perpetrated by “an exasperated
and unknown soldier”.’(Makinde A. 2017).
Abubakar Siddique, H. & Sidal, S. (2022). MUSIC, POLITICS &
PHILOSOPHY; HOW MUSIC IS PERCEIVED AS A POLITICAL
TOOL . Journal of Academic Perspective on Social Studies , (1) , 94-
105 . DOI: 10.35344/japss.1090338
Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe. Volume 1.
Series in Politics

Uche Onyebadi
Vernon Press, 2022
Uche Onyebadi
Vernon Press, 2022

Botchway, De-Valera. (2014). Fela “The Black President” as Grist to the

Mill of the Black Power Movement in Africa. Black Diaspora Review. 4.

Hawkins, Will (2011, March 11). Fela Kuti, Konkombe interview.

Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=4waYY1HZ318
Kristin Westcott Grant (2019),For Political Activism And Music, (2019)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinwestcottgrant/2020/01/16/political-
activism-and-music-in-2019/?sh=b543c9072008

Peddie, I. (ed.) (2012) Music and Protest. Farnham: Ashgate.

Mark Pedelty, Linda Keefe (2010), Political Pop, Political Fans? A

Content Analysis of Music Fan Blogs, Volume IV, Issue 1,
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0004.103

MacDonald, R. A. R., Hargreaves, D. J., & Miell, D. (Eds.). (2002).

Musical identities. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition

(M. Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. (Original
work published 1970)
Folkestad, G. (2002). National identity and music. In R. A. R.

Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. (Original work

published 1970)

Frith, S. (1996). Music and identity. In S. Hall & P. Du Gay (Eds.),

Questions of cultural identity. London, UK: Sage

Stokes, M. (Ed.). (1997). Ethnicity, identity, and music. New York, NY:
Berg.

O’Neill, S. A. (2002). The self-identity of young musicians. In R. A. R.

MacDonald, D. J. Hargreaves & D. Miell (Eds.), Musical identities
(pp.79–96). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

DeNora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press

Buck-Morss, S. (2003). Thinking past terror: Islamism and critical theory

on the left. New York, NY: Verso.

Dr Cannon A., (2020).Thinking Music as Social Activism

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2020/thinking-of-music-as-
social-activism
Onyebadi, U. (2022). Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment
Spaces across the Globe. Volume 1.. United States: Vernon Art and
Science Incorporated.

Fieser J. , Dowden B.(2023) Music and Social Justice; The Internet

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, https://iep.utm.edu

Berry, V. (1996). [Review of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture
in Contemporary America, by T. Rose]. American Music, 14(2), 231–
233. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052359

Cohen, C. E. (2011). The permeable membrane and moral imagination: A

framework for conceptualizing peace building performance. In Cohen, C.
E., Varea, R. G., & Walker, P. O. (Eds.) Acting together: Performance
and the creative transformation of conflict. Volume II. Building just and
inclusive communities. (pp. 161-189). Oakland, CA: New Village P

Walker, P. (2016). Acting Together to Disrupt Cycles of Violence:

Performance and Social Healing. Breaking Cycles of Repetition: A
Global Dialogue on Historical Trauma and Memory.

Farrell, C. (2011). When Blood and Bones Cry Out. Media International
Australia, (141), 164–165.

Boostra J. (2009). Musical Amplification of Genocide

http://undispatch.com/musical-amplification-of-genocide/.

Bolu K. FELA KUTI : The Talks about the History and Life of Fela
Anikulapo Kuti. His Achievements and Performances during His
Lifetime. https://www.academia.edu/35867159/Fela_Kuti

Labinjoh, J. (1982). Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Protest Music and Social

Processes in Nigeria. Journal of Black Studies, 13(1), 119–134.
https://doi.org/10.1177/002193478201300109

Sebastine E. M. (2017). The Afro Beat Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti In

Nigeria.
https://www.academia.edu/33286472/Afrobeat_Legacy_of_Fela_docx

Howden D. (2010). Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: The Ghost Resurrects and the

Beat goes on, a Preview by the Independence.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140117023623/http://emn-news.com/fela-
anikulapo-kuti-the-ghost-resurrects-and-the-beat-goes-on-a-review-by-
the-independence/

Makinde A. (2017). Remembering Fela Anikulapo-Kuti; Revolutionary

African Musician.
https://www.academia.edu/34119453/Remembering_Fela_Anikulapo_Ku
ti_Revolutionary_African_Musician

Femi Odugbemi. Constructing the Dramatic Narrative of “Fela” for

Cinema.https://www.academia.edu/9577956/_Constructing_the_FELA_
Narrative_in_Cinema._

Ozar, M.A. (2017): Gender and Reflexive Modernity in Fela Anikulapo

Kuti’s Music in Musical Horizons in Africa (Essays and Perspectives), A
Festschrift for Daniel Chikpezie Christian Agu, Association of Nigeria
Musicologists (397-409)

Fisher, A., & Idowu, S. A(2023). Music as a Tool of Political Activisim

in Nigeria: A Case Study of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Journal Eduvest.
Eduvest - Journal of Universal Studies, 3(3), 535–543.
https://doi.org/10.59188/EDUVEST.V3I3.780

Olaniyan, T.. (2004). Arrest the music!: Fela and his rebel art and
politics. 1-256.

Gegauff, D. (Producer), & Tchal-Gadjieff, S., & Flori, J. J. (1982). Fela

Kuti: Music is the weapon [Motion picture]. France: Antenne 2, K.I. C.S.
Ministere de la Culture.