Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti on 15 October 1938 in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria into an upper-middle-class family.

His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a feminist activist in the anti-colonial movement; his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, an Anglican minister and school principal, was the first president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers. His brothers, Beko Ransome-Kuti and Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, both medical doctors, are well known in Nigeria.

Fela is a first cousin to the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He attended the Abeokuta Grammar School in Abeokuta and later he was sent to London in 1958 to study medicine but decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music, the trumpet being his preferred instrument

While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos, playing a fusion of jazz and highlife. In 1960, 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.

On 3 August 1997, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, already a prominent AIDS activist and former Minister of Health, announced his younger brother's death a day earlier from Kaposi's sarcoma brought on by AIDS. More than a million people attended Fela's funeral at the site of the old Shrine compound. The New Afrika Shrine has opened since Fela's death in a different section of Lagos under the supervision of his son Femi Kuti.

funlord:



Fela the don! Met him once in lekki sunsplash while still a young gee myself!


Talented, controversial and a straight shooter! I've styled myself after him!

Great egbon..........

funlord:




You think I'm like you? A brain dead _faggot that lives and breathes for deceit and foolishness?



Please getaway from my mentions, this thread is for people who know about fela, his music and his life and times not for ponmo lipped, pimple faced, jamb writing childish imps like you!

Ratello:

I swear you are a murderer with all these adjectives just to qualify a man like you he is just playing with you now.

SurefireFashion:
Legend