1958

Fela leaves Abeokuta for London. His parents had hoped he would study to become a doctor but Fela is determined to continue with music, and his mother reluctantly acquiesces. In London, Fela takes the entrance examination for Trinity College of Music, but fails the music-theory paper. Because he has travelled so far to attend the college, and because of his talent on the trumpet, the college principal allows him to enroll and resit the theory exam later. JK Braimah also moves to London, where he plans to study law.

Fela is a diligent student at Trinity but his after-hours musical education in London’s jazz clubs, where he and JK spend a lot of time, is important too. The drummer Ginger Baker, who lived in Nigeria during the first half of the 1970s and hung out with Fela at the Shrine, first encounters Fela when he jams with one of the bands Baker plays in at the Flamingo Club in Soho. “He was playing trumpet then,” Baker remembered in 2012. “And he was good.”

More information on Fela's time at Trinity College of Music can be found on their website here.