Nigeria sings new tune with opening of Fela Kuti museum

In the 1970s, Fela Kuti's Afrobeat music became the anti-establishment soundtrack of Africa, an anthem for those railing against the many despotic regimes that gripped the continent at the time. But 15 years after his death in 1997, the man whose music was a constant thorn in the side of officials in his native Nigeria has been honoured by the authorities with whom he so often tangled. The Kalakuta commune – a three-storey building down a potholed road that "seceded" from Nigeria – has been turned into a museum with the help of a $250,000 (£156,000) grant from the Lagos government. "The Afrobeat movement is going stronger," his son Femi Kuti said as visitors streamed through the house in downtown Lagos. "More people are aware about what my father stood for … and the plight of the ordinary African.

That's why we have to keep fighting for a just society for everybody." Femi, whose own music has won him countless awards, says the museum is not a sign that the Kuti family's attitude towards the authorities has softened. But any form of government endorsement would have been unthinkable in the 1970s, when Fela created Afrobeat – a blend of traditional Yoruba music laced with jazz, brass sounds and stinging political messages that made him the constant target of government beatings, harassment and jailings. continued