Fela Kuti wins the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, making him the first African to do so
Decades after his passing, Fela Kuti, the late Afrobeat pioneer, is honored with the Grammys’ Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming the first African to receive this honor.
Nearly thirty years after his passing, the world has recognized the impact of the legendary Nigerian singer and Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti by naming him the first African to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Recording Academy revealed the distinction before of the next Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, where members of his family, friends and colleagues are due to receive the award posthumously on his behalf. With the emergence of Afrobeats and the addition of the Best African Performance category in 2024, African music is receiving increasing attention on a worldwide scale.
Reacting to the announcement in an interview with BBC, his son and fellow Afrobeat singer, Seun Kuti, hailed the accolade as overdue. “People have held Fela in their hearts for a very long time.” Now the Grammys have acknowledged it, and that’s a double victory,” he said. “It’s bringing balance to a Fela story.”
Longtime friend and former manager, Rikki Stein told the BBC that the accolade was “better late than never.” “Africa hasn’t previously rated very highly in their interests,” he continued. That seems to be changing a lot these days.
Music giants like Bing Crosby have previously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which was first given out in 1963. This year’s honourees also include Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan and Paul Simon, but Fela stands out as the first African recipient of the accolade.
Widely considered as the creator of Afrobeat, Fela pioneered the genre alongside drummer Tony Allen, combining West African rhythms with jazz, funk, highlife and politically charged poetry. Throughout his roughly three-decade career, which ended in his death in 1997, he put out over fifty albums and left a legacy that combined music with cultural identity and resistance.
Beyond music, Fela was recognized for his outspoken resistance to social injustice, corruption and military authority in Nigeria. Stein noted during the same media encounter that he “castigated any form of social injustice, corruption [and] mismanagement” in government.
His activism culminated in 1977 after the release of Zombie, which criticized military authority. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was killed when soldiers attacked and set fire to his Lagos commune, Kalakuta Republic, and brutalized the locals. Rather than withdraw, Fela replied through protest music, releasing Coffin for Head of State and dragging his mother’s coffin to government buildings.
Reflecting further in the conversation, Seun Kuti stated, “The global human tapestry needs this, not just because it’s my father.” He noted that Fela’s influence was built in discipline and humanity: “The human part of him, leadership, musicianship, fatherhood, that was the epitome of who he was.”
With the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Fela Kuti’s effect on music and activism is now formally inscribed into global history, cementing his reputation as a cultural icon whose art transcended entertainment and became a vehicle for liberation.
