ANIKULAPO

London, 1958. A young man from Abeokuta arrives to study medicine, because that is what his family expects. Within months he has walked into Trinity College of Music instead, and the trumpet becomes the first thing he truly chooses for himself.

This bust holds him at that age: the horn pressed to his chest like something he is afraid to lose, the face still soft, the fight not yet visible. He did not know then that his music would be called a weapon, that soldiers would burn his home, or that he would rename himself Anikulapo, “he who carries death in his pouch.” Here he is simply a young man holding the sound he would spend his life protecting.

Why Fela is still revered

• He created Afrobeat, joining Yoruba rhythm and chant with jazz, funk and highlife into long, hypnotic grooves.
• He sang in Pidgin English so his songs could cross Africa’s many languages and belong to everyone.
• He turned his Lagos home, the Kalakuta Republic, into a self-declared free state with a studio and a free clinic run by his brother.
• In 1977, after his album Zombie mocked the military, around 1,000 soldiers stormed Kalakuta. His studio, instruments and master tapes were destroyed, and his mother, the activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was thrown from a window and later died of her injuries.
• He kept playing and kept speaking, even when it cost him his freedom; he was jailed in 1984. He died in 1997, leaving close to 80 records, and his sons Femi and Seun carry the music on.

Art style: Figurative portrait bust
Medium: Plaster on plinth
Dimensions: 58 × 38 × 32 cm (H × W × D)
Themes: Legacy, courage, music
Collection: Form, Memory & Movement
Catalogue number: 01

Unique original. Dimensions are estimates and will be confirmed on physical measurement.