00:00Nigeria's Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti is finally getting his flowers.
00:05The Grammys have posthumously honoured the music legend with a Lifetime Achievement Award
00:10in Los Angeles.
00:11He's celebrated alongside icons like Cher, Whitney Houston and Carlos Santana, an honour
00:17his musician grandson believes is long overdue.
00:20I've always believed that Fela was on the same professional level as the best of the
00:25best in the world that have ever existed.
00:26There are not many people you can trace back as an originator of a style of music that
00:31would take that risk and be so creative that it's really truly developed into a genre that
00:37lives on its own.
00:39Fela's legacy lives on through his sons Femi and Sheon Kuti, as well as his grandson Made.
00:46In the 1970s, the multi-instrumentalists created Afrobeat, blending jazz, funk and African rhythms,
00:52laying the foundations for today's global Afrobeat sound born in Nigeria and heard around the
00:58world.
00:59And having this much of a global impact is honestly to me even more phenomenal because it shows
01:06just how incredible, incredibly detailed and rich the music is.
01:14For it to take its life on its own on so many, past the Nigerian border, past the African border,
01:21even though it's really hard to understand what he says lyrically to people that even speak
01:26English because, you know, he's speaking in pidgin.
01:28So really it's the core, it's the core of the music that has transcended so well.
01:33And I think it makes him, without any doubt, one of the greatest musicians I have ever lived.
01:40Fela Kuti made history, becoming the first African artist to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
01:45Award.
01:46The activist and music legend died in 1997 at just 58, but his influence still resonates worldwide.
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