Jad Abumrad’s new show - Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Dolly Parton's America

WNYC Studios & OSM Audio

Music History, Nashville, Music, Tennessee, Society & Culture, Parton, Documentary, America, Dolly

4.6 • 17.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In a world that’s on fire, what do we do with art? Like, what can music actually do? Today, Jad Abumrad is back with his first major project since Dolly Parton’s America. Fela Kuti: Fear No Man is a twelve episode exploration of the life, work, and legacy of the Nigerian singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, one of the most important musical artist of the 20th century.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Dolly fans, Dolly Parton's America fans, Chad I boomrod here.
0:04.4	I know it's been a minute.
0:06.1	But I wanted to drop into your feed to tell you about this new project,
0:09.4	share with you a new project that I think you might love.
0:16.0	It's sort of a continuation of the Dolly Partons America approach,
0:19.2	but it is looking at someone very, very
0:21.1	different, the Nigerian musician and activist Felakuti.
0:25.3	Podcast is called Felakuti Fear No Man.
0:28.1	Fela, if you don't know him, he invented back in the 1960s and 70s a style of music that
0:34.4	became synonymous with rebellion.
0:36.9	It was killer dance music, but it was also so
0:40.0	dangerous to the dictatorship in power that they burned his house down. They threw his mother
0:44.2	out of a window. He's one of those figures that like Dolly just transcends every usual idea we have
0:52.7	of what a musician should do or be.
0:55.8	I mean, okay, there's no one like Dolly.
1:00.2	She is singular.
1:01.6	And especially in this moment, a lot of us are thinking about her greatness, her impact.
1:08.7	He's one of the few musicians I would put in her category.
1:12.3	I didn't think I was going to do another podcast after Dolly Parton's America,
1:16.0	but I could not do this one.
1:18.2	We're about to release the series, but I wanted to play it for you all first.
1:21.7	The first episode is the story of one person who knew Fah played with him and was healed by him.
	...

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