“I be Africa Man Original” – Fela Kuti, Serge Aimé Coulibaly and Africa in the World

Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, (1938-1997), one of the foremost African post-Independence musicians, was a Nigerian musician popularly known as the originator and “king of” Afrobeat music. In this talk, Dr. Annette Bühler-Dietrich explores Kuti’s life, politics, and the negotiation of Africanness in Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s homage to Kuti, Kalakta Republik (2017) as well as the afrotopian vision articulated by both artists.
 
Annette Bühler-Dietrich PhD teaches German literature at Universität Stuttgart, Germany. Her research is on contemporary francophone African theatre as well as on German literature and theatre. She has co-authored Le CITO – un maillon fort du théâtre au Burkina Faso [The CITO, a strong link in Burkina Faso’s theatre], Ouagadougou 2017, with Noufou Badou. She has published on Burkinabè theatre and francophone authors, for example, in African Performance Review. Currently, she is also part of the team organizing the festival Membrane: African Literatures and Ideas to be held in Stuttgart in May 2019.