Fela Kuti receives Grammys Lifetime Achievement Award

Over the weekend, Fela Kuti was honored with the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan, Cher, Paul Simon and Whitney Houston. Fela’s children Yeni, Femi, Kunle, and Shalewa accepted the award during this year’s Special Merit Awards Ceremony.

A bright light has been shining on Kuti as of late. Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, a 12-episode podcast series, presented by Audible and Higher Ground, and produced by Talkhouse and Western Sound, premiered this past fall. Hosted by 3-time Peabody Award-winner Jad Abumrad (Radiolab, Dolly Parton’s America), this in-depth documentation of Kuti’s life and legacy was culled from over 200 conversations that Abumrad conducted with his family and friends, as well as historians, activists, luminaries and fans like President Barack Obama, Ayo Edibiri, David Byrne, Brian Eno and Santigold. It also includes previously recorded interviews with Paul McCartney, Questlove and Burna Boy. Landing at #1 on the New Yorker’s Best Podcasts of the Year list, the magazine describes it as “bursting with life, humor, pain, interesting ideas, and, of course, sharp, catchy, hypnotic music…I can’t think of another show that’s both danceable and, by its end, profoundly heartbreaking.” Fear No Man has also been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS/CNN’s Amanpour, Washington Post, KCRW and more.

Kuti’s 1976 album Zombie was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2025. It made history as the first Nigerian album to be inducted, and will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Zombie has been widely honored as a groundbreaking work of protest music, and among other accolades Pitchfork named it one of the Best Albums of the 1970s, saying, “perhaps Fela’s most effective fusion of funk and politics, it confronted Nigeria’s increasingly corrupt, detached government head-on, and in doing so both united the public and incensed the ruling party.”