The play's dynamic score borrows compositions from its eponymous subject: the legendary Nigerian musician, composer and activist Fela Kuti.
Born into a well-off family in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Kuti initially planned to pursue a career in medicine, following the wishes of his well-educated parents.
When Kuti moved to London to attend medical school, however, he discovered the legendary music of Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra and James Brown. Kuti dropped out of medical school and enrolled at the Trinity College's School of Music.
After finishing his studies, Kuti returned to Nigeria to form the musical group Koola Lobitos.
When the group visited the United States to tour and record its music, Kuti became interested in Black Nationalism and Afro-centrism movements.
Upon Kuti's return to Nigeria, he renamed his group The Africa '70. Before long, its music an eclectic mixture of traditional Nigerian Yoruba, jazz, funk and R&B became the rallying cry of the disenfranchised Nigerian people, who were suppressed by their nation's totalitarian military regime.
The Nigerian military reacted strongly against Kuti's new fame, arresting the musician more than 200 times. Fearful that Kuti was inciting a revolution, Nigerian authorities charged him for every crime imaginable, from currency trafficking to murder. They threatened his family members and even murdered his mother.
However, despite the government's attempts to quell his voice, Kuti remained one of the most influential Nigerians throughout the second half of the 20th century.
"He was a folk hero, a hero of Nigeria because he was someone at the time that could speak and be heard," Dartmouth music professor Hafiz Shabazz said.
The combination of Kuti's compelling life story and his masterful compositions in one spectacular show proved to be a recipe for Broadway success.
"FELA!" began its run off-Broadway in 2008, playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. The show then premiered on Broadway in November 2009 and ran through Jan. 2, 2011.
Despite its short run, "FELA!" has achieved international renown.
The musical received 11 Tony Award nominations for the 2010 awards season and won three: Best Choreography, Best Costume Design of a Musical and Best Sound Design of a Musical. The show's soundtrack has also been nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
Kuti's Afrobeat blends have inspired a number of American musicians, including Shabazz.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Shabazz said he first heard Kuti's music after moving to Boston, where he encountered "a number of non-Western musicians" who were experimenting with Afropop and Afrobeat.
Meeting musicians from Boston and hearing the distinct sounds of Kuti's compositions "revolutionized my concept about how to play African and Afrobeat music," Shabazz said.
Like many of the musicians he encountered in Boston, Shabazz soon began to incorporate elements form Kuti's work into his own musical stylings.
"I saw a way to convert the music that I was playing jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues and use the forms that Fela was using," Shabazz explained.
Kuti's musical style makes use of strong horn arrangements which foreground the sounds of trumpets and saxophones, Shabazz explained.
"[Horn arrangements] are situated in such a way that they would punctuate and frame the lyrics," Shabazz said.
Shabazz also praised the diversity of Kuti's rhythmical influences.
"He was a revolutionist in the sense that he used not only Nigerian rhythms, but he used rhythms from the Ashanti people of Ghana," Shabazz said. "He even used Latin rhythms. By combining all these, he came up with a signature sound that no one at the time had produced."
Apart from his musical accomplishments, Kuti garnered acclaim for his work as a human rights activist during his lifetime.
Bill T. Jones, the show's celebrated director and choreographer, also received praise for his work on the show. Jones won the Lucille Lortel Award a prestigious accolade for accomplishments in Off-Broadway productions for Best Choreography in addition to the 2010 Tony Award in the same category.
A renowned theater artist, Jones has travelled the world choreographing, directing and speaking on his experiences in performance art. In April 2010, he spent a week at Dartmouth as a Montgomery Fellow, directing his company in three Hopkins Center-sponsored performances.
From Jones to Shabazz, Kuti has demonstrated a profound impact on key members of the Dartmouth artistic community. Thus, it is a fitting choice for one of the first shows screened at the Hop as part of the National Theatre Live's HD broadcast series.
The Hop added these screenings which bring live performances from the National Theatre's stage in London to international audiences via satellite transmissions to its offerings for the first time Fall term. The first broadcasts to air at Dartmouth were "Phedre" and "A Disappearing Number."
