Some moments are destined for perpetual remembrance just like the stirring image of the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, back in August 1997, holding a big spliff one last time before the world queued up to pay their last respect at his burial.

How the spliff made it to Fela’s fingers was thanks to his British co-manager Rikki Stein who had the opportunity of anchoring him from 1983 up to his death. Now 81 years old, the Brit would have just been a year younger than the deceased had he been alive today.

Remembering Fela’s extraordinary journey has led Stein to a chronicle titled Moving Music: The Memoirs of Rikki Stein, released on Tuesday 4 June 2024 by WordVille, an award-winning independent publisher with offices in London and Barcelona.

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The publication captured the lifetime manager’s 60 years of carrying iconic musicians around the planet, the way his X profile tweet described the newly published work. But most of the juicy and sometimes exhilarating encounters stay concealed in the memoirs until a curious reader makes the gratifying move to unravel them.

In the meantime, this traditionalist-era-born talent manager has revisited flying to Lagos in Nigeria the moment he heard of Fela’s passing reportedly due to AIDS complications.

Fela was laid-in-state in Tafawa Balewa Square – like Trafalgar Square in the middle of Lagos, says Rikki Stein speaking to the BBC’s Richard Hamilton. I’d shaved him in the morgue, combed his hair and put a big spliff in his hand. He was in a glass coffin and he was laid in state under a canopy at the top of the stadium.

Next was a crowd trickling into the arena until they reached hundreds of thousands, Stein recalls. The 70s and late 80s marked the Afrobeat pioneer’s most active life, churning out music with the following decade seeing less of him musically. Still, at the time of his death in the 90s, his influence or hold on the people stayed visibly strong.

Painting a picture to portray just how tight Fela’s hold became during the 11 August 1997 funeral at the TBS, Rikki Stein remembers seeing: At the other end of the stadium was a stage; bands were playing, people were playing. People started arriving and this was about 07:30 – 08:00 in the morning. More and more people coming by to pay their respects.

There was a queue and they would come by the coffin and just look inside. And it got longer and longer, and it exploded. The square was full of people. I would say about a hundred and fifty thousand people were inside that square.

After that, we carried the body to his house. People started to arrive. We danced all night with Fela on the balcony. He was buried outside that house in the morning. During that period, no crime in Lagos at all.

Today’s Nigeria has yet to see any other individual that has replicated the mettle that characterised the legend known as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

His life represented unprecedented courage and self-sacrifice that undoubtedly led to the country’s final transition away from military rule to democratic governance in May 1999, and for this, he enjoys the sort of immortality similar to that adorned on state figures when they are no more.

ALSO READ: This week in June 1996 trying to keep democracy alive in Nigeria

Readers are expected to find Rikki Stein’s remembrance of Fela in his memoirs capturing artistry that allowed the two to combine professionalism with unstrained friendship rarely seen.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.