Fela Kuti died of AIDS, it doesn't get more political than that.
Or does it?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by dolivas
Not to leave the author of this tome completely off the hook on his popular music charge... there have been cases in recent history where "pop artists" clearly affected politics/policy. Case in point Fela Kuti who in Nigeria literally had the dictatorship hot on his heels during the 70s. He ran his own night club where every album he put out had some railing against the dictatorship at the time. He was in fact Nigeria's biggest pop artist next to the truly poppy Sunny Ade.
He suffered various legitimate death threats against him from the military side of the government to the point that when his famous compound (a large compound in Lagos he built to declare independence from Nigeria, and armed with armed bodyguards) was involved in a gunfight/standoff with the Nigerian military. It ended with the military raiding his compound, throwing his own mother out of a building which seriously injured her, and killing some of his friends.
To cut to the chase he ran for president of Nigeria, and nearly upset the Nigerian dictatorship which won on a rigged vote. I mean the author clearly doesn't have a grasp of history outside of "mainstream" pop culture he has some surface knowledge of. To add, Caetano Veloso and Tom Ze, or Bob Marley had some of the same experiences with their own governments in their own time. Nothing as clearly influential as Kuti of course. Hell, even in the not so recent history in the Civil War era one of the most famous pop songs reference John Brown (famous abolitionist) and was the rallying cry for the troops going into battle (it helped turn whites who were apathetic to the slaves case into singing compatriots trying to stomp out slavery for the good of mankind).
|