Fela Kuti to be first African to get Grammys Lifetime Achievement Award

Lagos: Nigeria s Afrobeat king Fela Kuti will this weekend be posthumously recognised by the Grammys with a Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming the f...

Lagos: Nigeria's Afrobeat king Fela Kuti will this weekend be posthumously recognised by the Grammys with a Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming the first African artist to receive the distinction.

After a lifetime of clashes with successive powers in Nigeria, the recognition comes nearly three decades after Fela's death and long after his influence reshaped global music.

He is one of several artists getting the award at a ceremony in Los Angeles on Saturday, the eve of the main Grammys gala. Others are Cher, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon and Chaka Khan.

In the 1970s, Fela the multi-instrumentalist and full-of-life performer invented Afrobeat: a mixture of jazz, funk and African rhythms.

That laid the groundwork for Afrobeats -- a later genre that has attracted a global audience by blending traditional African rhythms with contemporary pop sounds, with its roots in Nigeria.