A biography for Fela Kutihasn’t been written yet.
“My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'”
“American record companies seem to feel I am antiwestern, anticapitalism, anti the kind of society they like. They think I'm a troublemaker.”
“Without Tony Allen, there would have been no Afrobeat.”
“It is a false belief to think you can own somebody, I'm out of that now. The man should understand he does not own the woman, and the woman should understand she does not own the man.”
“A police uniform is just a piece of clothing sewn by the same tailors who sew your clothes.”
“When I do things, I do things honestly.”
“My mother wasn't any better than my father.”
“My mother was the most wicked mother ever seen in life when it came to beating. Oh-la-la! Every time I would say, 'This is the end of me.' Oh, how she would beat me.”
“I would never run away from my country. Even at the point of death, I doubt I would move out, because what is the point of leaving your own country?”
“People thought I was trying to say that women had no say, no rights. I was not saying that. I was saying that women had a role, a duty. When they want to have a say in government - though in Africa they are not expected to do that - they are not discouraged. They can do what they want to do.”
“My ideas are threatening to the government.”
“Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.”
“Being African didn't mean anything to me until later in my life.”
“By the time I finished school, I found out I wasn't qualified to study anything but music.”
“If a female wants to do a man's job, no one will stop her from doing it, but women have duties to perform as mothers.”
“I've studied my culture deeply and I'm very aware of my tradition.”
“Even death doesn't worry me, man. When my mother died it was because she finished her time on earth. I know that when I die I'll see her again, so how can I fear death?”
“I've suffered quite a lot, to the point where I've experienced death. Years before I wasn't fit to die, but I understand life better now. Death is nice, death is beauty.”
“Marriage is a terrible institution, it creates such a regression of the mind.”
“When I was young we weren't even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it 'vernacular,' as if only English was the real tongue.”