Seun Kuti is continuing a political and musical legacy

“I do pol­i­tics to relax from music and I do music to relax from pol­i­tics,” says Afrobeat musi­cian Seun Kuti. ​“I’m always relax­ing.” Any­one who caught Kuti’s high­ly-ener­getic per­for­mance with Egypt 80 at Glas­ton­bury recent­ly may detect a note of irony in this statement.

The youngest son of the leg­endary Fela Kuti has inher­it­ed more than just his father’s band. The musi­cian and pan-African activist has been involved in a num­ber of cam­paigns in recent years, includ­ing #End­SARS – a social move­ment against police bru­tal­i­ty in Nige­ria. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, he’s revived the Move­ment of the Peo­ple (M.O.P.), the polit­i­cal par­ty his father set up in 1979, which was quashed by the mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment not long after Fela’s failed pres­i­den­tial bid.

Kuti Jr. rein­stat­ed the par­ty in 2020 at a time he believes will be more pro­pi­tious for anti-estab­lish­ment par­ties. The M.O.P. brings togeth­er an array of left­wing activist groups intent on build­ing class con­scious­ness and Black pride. At this stage, he doesn’t intend on run­ning as a polit­i­cal leader himself. 

The 39-year-old sings and plays the sax­o­phone with a spook­i­ly sim­i­lar panache to his father, who taught him how to play and induct­ed him into Egypt 80 while he was just eight years old. Kuti has record­ed four stu­dio albums with what start­ed out as his father’s band, though there have been a num­ber of per­son­nel changes most­ly dic­tat­ed by time (Fela died in 1997). As well as his own records, he has made appear­ances on albums by artists such as Com­mon and Jiden­na, and he’s played with Sinéad O’Connor and Car­los San­tana; the lat­ter appeared on his 2018 album Black Times. 

Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 have recent­ly put out an inspired live record­ing of ​‘Love and Rev­o­lu­tion’. That track and b‑side ​‘Emi Alu­ta’ – anoth­er live offer­ing – are like­ly to get the stu­dio treat­ment for the group’s forth­com­ing album, expect­ed next year accord­ing to Seun him­self (sched­ules per­mit­ting, of course). Ahead of the album’s release, Seun sat down with Huck to share some life lessons, from tak­ing on the elites to keep­ing a lega­cy alive.

“When my father died, peo­ple said: ​‘Oh, Seun inher­it­ed the band’, like it was writ­ten some­where that when Fela dies, Seun must take the band. There was noth­ing like that! Every­thing was cir­cum­stan­tial, but I was play­ing with the band already. I love doing it. So when my father died, the fam­i­ly didn’t want the band to keep play­ing. Nobody want­ed that respon­si­bil­i­ty. The only oth­er musi­cian in the fam­i­ly then was my broth­er [Femi] and he already had a band and they were doing real­ly well, they’d already got­ten his first big hit with ​‘Won­der Wonder’.

“I knew that my father real­ly loved his band. It was the most impor­tant thing to him, he said it all the time. And also, they’re an African musi­cal insti­tu­tion; we kin­da don’t want to let that shit go! So I said to the fam­i­ly, ​‘What if I keep play­ing with the band?’. They said, ​‘You can play with the band but don’t come to us when you’re stress­ing, and you can keep what you make’. I’m like, ​‘Real­ly?’ Real­ly. ​‘Okay’. And here we are today. 

“For me, it was always about duty. Respon­si­bil­i­ty. I felt that my dad raised me up to that point for that moment, to under­stand duty, to under­stand respon­si­bil­i­ty. So it has nev­er been a bur­den, in the sense that tak­ing a show­er is a bur­den. I grew up liv­ing, breath­ing, eat­ing, shit­ting, smelling, crow­ing, rolling, inhal­ing, bathing, walk­ing and talk­ing Afrobeat music. That was every­thing in our life. I went to every show my dad played. He nev­er real­ly said to me: ​‘I want­ed you to play music’, but he kind of nudged me in that direction.”

“I think artists are put under a lot of pres­sure when soci­ety expects us to be the van­guard of change. What can artist’s change, when engi­neers don’t want to change any­thing? Engi­neers don’t reimag­ine hous­ing, for exam­ple, to be more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, how they design homes, or make it more acces­si­ble to more peo­ple. Cap­tains of indus­try, they don’t want to change their neg­a­tive prac­tices, so we can only real­ly high­light what is going on. And I think that is also a part of the fight to keep the pos­i­tive mes­sage out there in the face of con­stant resis­tance. I think that also impacts the fight. To say its the artist’s bat­tle alone; I don’t like say­ing that.”

“Rebuild­ing the M.O.P. par­ty in my coun­try has been one of my most excit­ing adven­tures, and it has real­ly brought me clos­er to the true poten­tial of African peo­ple from all walks of life and across gen­er­a­tions. We tru­ly want to see a new rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what we are as Africans. The only pow­er the African elites have is tyran­ni­cal pow­er. We don’t want that. I believe that what they are tru­ly try­ing to pre­vent is our abil­i­ty to cre­ate a new kind of pow­er that’s for the peo­ple and pow­ered by the people. 

“Instead of us push­ing peo­ple towards feed­ing their minds, the glob­al elite has been work­ing and con­cen­trat­ing on appetites, so they can make you want to sell your labour just so you can buy some more shit; so that you can look bet­ter than your neigh­bour, so you can feel like a big man among your friends, and things like that. So this is the mind­set that they want in soci­ety and it is tru­ly what we are try­ing to counter, the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of humanity. 

“I know they are afraid because they want Africa to con­tin­ue to be con­trolled by tyran­ni­cal forces. They don’t want Africans to under­stand that there can be anoth­er way, they don’t want Africans to under­stand that we are tru­ly chil­dren of sac­ri­fice who are here to change the world.”

“We’re fac­ing evils in Nige­ria today, from impe­ri­al­ist inter­ests and the inter­ests of our local oppres­sors. So many African lives have been mort­gaged so that the wheel can keep turn­ing. We, as African peo­ple, must at some point say we are no longer going to be can­non fod­der for the prof­it inter­est of all these groups.

“We talk about police bru­tal­i­ty but we real­ly want to end all oppres­sion in Nige­ria. I think that is what peo­ple in Africa tru­ly want, the end of oppres­sion, be it in the fac­to­ry, be it in work, be it in our homes, where the African has dig­ni­ty and can exist in his true form.

“In Amer­i­ca, peo­ple say the banks won’t give Black peo­ple loans because all the banks are owned by white peo­ple; in Eng­land they won’t give Black peo­ple loans because all the banks are owned by white peo­ple. But then I come to Africa, and all the banks are owned by Blacks, and they still don’t give us loans! So we have to under­stand that the insti­tu­tions are anti-African. We must pre­pare our­selves and our minds, and we need to cre­ate insti­tu­tions that will ben­e­fit or restore dig­ni­ty to our peo­ple. This is ulti­mate­ly our strug­gle of true decoloni­sa­tion. African insti­tu­tions for African people.”

“The line­up changes are going to be com­plete soon because of time. My dad has been dead now for 24 years, but we still have some mem­bers that are in their late 50s who played with my dad, who were in their 20s when they were in the band back then. We always have new gen­er­a­tions being men­tored and com­ing through. I lost my band­leader last year. I have a new gui­tarist already who had been under him for a while. It’s not just the music, but the spir­its too, and that syn­chronic­i­ty that you need to have to be in a big band, under­stand­ing the man next to you and the man in front of you. We are the same in spir­it but we are chang­ing, definitely.

“Peo­ple are get­ting old, like Baba Ani, who was the band­leader since 1978, until he just retired two years ago. So it’s just time, and get­ting old­er: the core of the band is real­ly chang­ing. And I’m hap­py about that, because the more the body changes, the stronger the spir­it seems to be. So that means that dudes who are leav­ing us are still with us in spir­it, my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty acknowl­edges that. I tru­ly feel that and it’s part of what we do today, and that’s why we’re still going.”