Here’s something that’s got people talking this week: Tekno just said Fela Kuti didn’t build Afrobeats alone. And honestly? He might be onto something.
Speaking on Hot 97, the singer shared that growing up in eastern Nigeria meant he grew up on highlife music, not just Fela’s sound. One name he kept coming back to was Oliver De Coque, the highlife legend whose records used to play in his dad’s house.
“They’re legends like Oliver De Coque. He’s a legend that makes pure highlife music, and highlife is also Afrobeats,” Tekno said.
That’s the whole point he’s making, really. Highlife, in his view, is part of the same family tree that gave us the Afrobeats we stream today. It just doesn’t get talked about as much.
Now, before anyone thinks Tekno is trying to erase Fela’s legacy, he made it clear that’s not what this is about. He knows exactly how big Fela’s shadow is. He even admitted that his own hit song, Rara, was heavily inspired by Fela’s music.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Tekno thinks Fela gets more credit than he deserves, not because his music wasn’t great, but because he had the exposure others didn’t.
“He obviously stamped the Afrobeats thing on the world map, but we have some other legends that sang very good music that if you heard today, you wouldn’t even believe that those songs were made in those times,” he explained.
He went further, saying a lot of those older musicians never got their flowers simply because they didn’t tour the world the way Fela did.
“People don’t know them as much, but my dad used to play these records, and it was so many artistes that made it, but Fela gets the credit because he kind of traveled and he had the band that went around the world,” he said. “To some people, he’s the originator of Afrobeats, but to me, there are a lot of them.”
It’s a fair point when you think about it. History tends to remember whoever traveled furthest, not necessarily whoever did the most. Fela toured, performed abroad, and built an international audience, so his name stuck. Meanwhile, artists just as talented stayed closer to home and slowly faded from the global conversation.
So maybe the real story isn’t about taking anything away from Fela.
Join the conversation