Ein Felasophisches Treffen – 2025: The Berlin Afrobeat Company, Mádé Kuti & The Movement

In the organizer's words:

A Felasophic Meeting - 2025
Miriam Makeba Auditorium

18:00-18:45 Maxi Broecking (Lecture, Free admission)
18:30-19:00 Admission, slide show Thomas Dorn
19:00-20:00 The Berlin Afrobeat Company
20:00-20:30 Break, slide show Thomas Dorn
20:30-22:00 Mádé Kuti & The Movement

Every year on October 15, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) celebrates the life and work of Fela Kuti, one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. The title of the initiative, A Felasophic Meeting, refers to the fact that Fela was not just a musician, but also an activist, a politician and a philosopher. His musical legacy has shaped the musical history of all continents. With the invention of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti created a genre that, like hip hop, is loved and played everywhere. The annual gathering brings together musicians, scholars, activists, storytellers and other fellow travelers of Fela Kuti to dedicate themselves to his music and his teachings.

18:30-19:00 & 20:00-20:30 Slideshow Thomas Dorn
Cologne-based photographer Thomas Dorn visited Fela Kuti in Lagos in 1993 and spent three weeks as a guest at his legendary club The Shrine and the family home Kalakuta Republic. Some of the impressive photos taken there of Fela, his band, his family, his club and his estate are printed in Dorn's multimedia photo book Houn-Noukoun: Faces and Rhythms of Africa, published in 1997. At this year's Felasophic Meeting, Thomas Dorn's photos will be shown as a slide show on the big screen in the auditorium before and between the concerts.

19:00-20:00 The Berlin Afrobeat Company
under the direction of Ekowmania
with band members from Sonic Interventions
As in 2024, the concert program of Ein Felasophisches Treffen will be opened this year by the Berlin Afrobeat Company (BAC), which was founded in West Berlin in 1978 following a legendary performance by Fela Kuti & Africa 70 at the Berliner Jazztage. Following the concert, many of the ensemble's key members decided to stay in Berlin. The BAC consists of a group of international, Berlin-based musicians who are dedicated to maintaining and developing Fela Kuti's music through live shows and various initiatives. It is led by Ekow Alabi Savage, who first saw Fela Kuti as a child in Ghana in 1969 and worked closely with his acclaimed drummer Tony Allen. Ekow later founded the band Rhythm Taxi together with guitarist Oghene Kologbo and percussionist Nicolas Addo-Tettey, who is considered one of the best Afrobeat percussionists in the world, and performed several times at HKW in the early 1990s. A core group of other experienced musicians gathered around Ekow, including current and former members of the bands of Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas, Orlando Julius and the Polyversal Souls. They are supported by the next generation and the generation after that: young colleagues, especially from the band Sonic Interventions, who carry Afrobeat forward.

20:00-20:30 Slideshow Thomas Dorn

20:30-22:00 Mádé Kuti & The Movement
The second concert of the evening is also about passing on Fela Kuti's legacy. With the multi-instrumentalist Mádé Kuti, son of Femi Kuti and grandson of Fela Kuti, the third generation of the musical family is now on stage. Even as a child, Mádé Kuti spent a lot of time in the legendary New Afrika Shrine club in Lagos and learned to play the trumpet at an early age, as well as the saxophone, piano, drums and bass. As a child, he toured with his father's legendary band, The Positive Force, with whom he performed at the Glastonbury Festival and the Hollywood Bowl. He went to study at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, where his grandfather Fela had already studied. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, he dedicates his life to Afrobeat, but is also a virtuoso jazz and rock musician and combines all of these into his own style. Mádé Kuti's debut album For(e)word, released in 2021, was sold together with his father Femi's album Stop the Note, on which he plays bass. Like his father and grandfather, he uses music to draw attention to problems such as mismanagement and police violence, but is also politically active, for example at demonstrations. In spring 2021, he presented his band The Movement in public for the first time at the legendary Shrine, his grandfather's place of work, thus taking over the baton from the Kuti family.