Tejumola Olaniyan’s Arrest the Music!, Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics, published in 2004 by Indiana University Press, examines Fela Anikulapo Kuti as more than a musician or cultural icon. The book presents Afrobeat as a public art form created for confrontation, shaped to challenge power openly and persistently. Rather than isolating music from politics, Olaniyan places sound, performance, and public address at the centre of political life in postcolonial Nigeria.
The study focuses on how Fela used music, sharp tongued lyrics, and derisive humour to confront the failures and contradictions of Nigerian and postcolonial African states. Afrobeat is treated as a language of public engagement, one that spoke directly to listeners about corruption, repression, and everyday injustice. In this framing, music is not background entertainment but a form of argument carried through rhythm, repetition, and voice.
The purpose of Arrest the Music!
The book sets out to understand how Afrobeat functioned as a social and political force. Olaniyan examines lyrics, instrumentation, visual presentation, and performance spaces, alongside the networks of people and organisations involved in producing the music. This approach places Afrobeat within a living social system, showing how artistic choices, labour, and public reception combine to give political meaning to sound.
By framing the study as rebel art and politics, the book connects cultural expression to political struggle without separating the two. Art is not treated as decoration for protest but as a site where protest takes shape.
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Afrobeat as confrontation
Afrobeat emerges in the book as music that refused restraint. Fela’s songs named names, mocked authority, and exposed the distance between official promises and lived reality. Derisive humour played a central role, turning ridicule into a public weapon that undermanned authority by laughing at it.
Fela’s claim to speak for ordinary people shaped how audiences understood his performances. Concerts became public gatherings where criticism of the state was not whispered but performed aloud. In this sense, Afrobeat worked as a collective experience, drawing listeners into a shared political moment.
Fela’s shifting public identities
One of the book’s defining features is its attention to Fela’s changing public roles. Chapters such as “The ‘Apolitical’ Avant Pop Hustler,” “The Afrobeat Moralist,” and “Dissident Tunes, The Political Afrobeat” reflect how Fela moved through different identities over time. These roles were not contradictions but responses to changing political conditions and public expectations.
By tracking these shifts, the book avoids simplifying Fela into a single image. Instead, it shows how performance identity itself became part of political struggle, shaping how messages were delivered and received.
Lagos and the postcolonial state
The city of Lagos occupies a central place in the book, particularly in the chapter “Fela, Lagos, and the Postcolonial State.” Lagos is presented as a lived political environment where power was visible through policing, surveillance, and control of public space. Afrobeat performances unfolded within this environment, giving the music immediate political stakes.
The postcolonial state is not treated as an abstract concept. It appears through institutions, confrontations, and daily pressures that shaped how music was produced and heard. By grounding analysis in Lagos, the book keeps political conflict concrete and visible.
The social production of Afrobeat
In “On the Shop Floor, The Social Production of Afrobeat,” attention shifts to how the music was made. Afrobeat depended on collective labour, rehearsal discipline, organisation, and economic survival. Musicians, venues, and support networks all played roles in sustaining the sound.
This focus highlights how political pressure extends beyond lyrics. Control over venues, livelihoods, and public gatherings becomes another way power intervenes in cultural life. Afrobeat’s endurance depended on navigating these pressures.
Humour and public judgement
Humour stands out as a defining element of Fela’s political voice. Derisive humour did not soften critique, it sharpened it. Mockery exposed hypocrisy and invited audiences to judge authority collectively. Laughter, in this context, became a form of resistance that travelled easily among listeners.
By emphasising humour, the book shows how Afrobeat communicated political meaning in ways that were memorable, repeatable, and difficult to suppress.
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Public address and moral voice
The chapter “Pedagogue, Pedagogy, and the Pedagogic Form” addresses how Fela spoke to audiences as a public moral voice. Afrobeat performances combined music with extended verbal address, explanation, and commentary. The form of the music shaped how political claims were delivered and understood.
This focus on public address highlights how Afrobeat created a space where moral and political arguments could be made outside formal institutions, reaching listeners directly through performance.
Why the book endures
Arrest the Music! remains significant because it documents how culture operates within political struggle. It shows how Afrobeat functioned as a public language, shaped by humour, performance, labour, and place. The book offers a way to understand why Fela’s music provoked sustained reaction from authorities and lasting loyalty from audiences.
Author’s Note
Fela’s Afrobeat mattered because it refused silence, turning music into a public confrontation with power, and Arrest the Music! captures how sound, humour, and performance fused into a political voice that people could hear, share, and carry beyond the stage.
References
Indiana University Press, Arrest the Music!, Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics.
Lisa A. Lindsay, review of Arrest the Music! in Africa, Volume 76, Issue 4.
African Studies Association, memorial notice for Tejumola Olaniyan.
