On January 31, 2026, Fela Kuti was honored in Los Angeles, on the eve of the Grammy Awards ceremony, becoming the first African artist to receive this distinction posthumously.
The “Black President”
Born in 1938 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti quickly became an iconic figure in African music and political activism. A masterful multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer, he invented afrobeat in the 1970s—a style blending traditional African rhythms, jazz, and funk—that would go on to influence global…
