All right, listen, so my top artists ever are Tupac, Bob Marley, and Felakuti.

I have those guys in my top three, not just because their music is incredible, but because they

added social consciousness to their music in a way that's just timeless.

And today, we're going to focus on probably the least known of those three, Felacuti,

the inventor of Afrobeat. And we're going to talk on probably the least known of those three. Fellacuti, the inventor of Afrobeat.

And we're going to talk about a specific event.

On February 18, 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria,

Fela, who's probably at that point already the biggest musical artist in African history,

had his home surrounded by the Nigerian army.

Here's an actor reading a part of an interview

Fela did years later, remembering the scene.

A thousand soldiers surrounding your house.

This really draws a lot of crowds.

There were about 60,000 people watching this scene.

It was like a big theater show.

At that point, Fela had been a critic of the Nigerian government for about 15 years.

He felt the politicians were all corrupt and didn't really care about the progress of Nigeria.

He went so far as to declare his home, a home that was in Lagos, Nigeria, an independent state.

He called it Calacuda.

My name is Baudelaire, and today on Atlas Obscura,

we're going to hear the story of the Calacuda Republic

and about the day the Nigerian army invaded.

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