When dis­cussing a musi­cian like Fela Kuti, many of our usu­al terms fail us. They fail us, that is, if we came of age in a musi­cal cul­ture in which artists and bands put out an album of ten or so lyrics-for­ward songs every two or three years, pro­mot­ing it on tour while also play­ing their biggest hits. Fela — as all his fans refer to him — could put out six or sev­en albums in a sin­gle year, and refused to play live any mate­r­i­al he’d already record­ed. Even the word song, as we know it, does­n’t quite reflect the nature of his com­po­si­tions, which got expan­sive enough that two or three of them (or just one, half of it on each side) could fill a long-play­ing record. Wal­ter Ben­jamin said of great lit­er­ary works that they either dis­solve a genre or invent one, and Fela’s musi­cal works invent­ed the genre of Afrobeat. The sound of that genre, as explained by Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic video above, reflects the dis­tinc­tive for­ma­tion of Fela …