Fela In The Footlights?
As someone who spent a few years deeply obsessed with Fela’s catalog (the vinyl reissues came with trading cards of his wives!), the idea of an off-Broadway musical based on his life threw me for a loop, even with prominent Afrobeat soundalikes Antibalas as the house band. Still, the guy playing Fela in the above commercial seems believable, and Fela’s life story is certainly interesting enough to fill the space between his songs, so maybe this could be the new Rent, or at least the version of Rent that’s about Nigerians struggling under a dictatorship, and not pseudo-Bohemians musing on life). The sales of the Mamma Mia soundtrack prove that the musical is back, and who could get upset about Fela’s music shooting to the top of the charts? [Official site]
