Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti; 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997) also known as Abami Eda was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is regarded as the pioneer of Afrobeat, an African musicgenre that combines traditional Yoruba percussion and vocal styles with American funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa‘s most “challenging and charismatic music performers”. AllMusic described him as a “musical and sociopolitical voice” of international significance.

Kuti was the son of a Nigerian women’s rights activist, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. After early experiences abroad, he and his band Africa 70 (featuring drummer Tony Allen) shot to stardom in Nigeria during the 1970s, during which he was an outspoken critic and target of Nigeria’s military juntas. In 1970, he founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, which declared itself independent from military rule. The commune was destroyed in a 1978 raid. Since his death in 1997, reissues and compilations of his music have been overseen by his son, Femi Kuti.

Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti was born into the Ransome-Kuti family, an upper-middle-class Nigerian family, on 15 October 1938 in Abeokuta (the modern-day capital of Ogun State), which at the time was a city in the British Colony of Nigeria. His mother, Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was an anti-colonial feminist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was an Anglican minister, school principal, and the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. His brothers Beko Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, both medical doctors, were well known nationally. Kuti was a first cousin once removed to the writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the first black African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, as they are both descendants of Josiah Ransome-Kuti, who is Kuti’s paternal grandfather and Soyinka’s maternal great-grandfather.