What Does It Feel Like To Marry 27 Wives in One Day?
This one guy actually did it
Have you ever heard the famous name Fela Anikulapo Ransome-Kuti?
No?
Ok how about Fela Kuti?
If you are a lover of jazz or afrobeat, you probably have heard of Fela, or at least know a few songs of his. He was this guy who used to sing in the 80s and was really famous for it. The thing is, he wasn’t just any ordinary musician. I mean, there were a lot of musicians who were famous in the 80s, but Fela was remarkedly different. He was a musician, but he was also a prolific political activist. He was known for his music as much as his political activism. Fela wasn’t just doing this for show or credibility. He was brought up by his activist mom, so he had learned from her how to be a real activist. To Fela, activism was in his blood.
Like any real activist — not these keyboard activists who sit at home and trend hashtags on Twitter (now X) — Fela had the scars to show for it. At the peak of Fela’s career, Nigeria was a military dictatorship. Naturally, military dictatorships are a minefield of talking points for activists — talk about every activist’s wet dream. So Fela took on the military dictatorship. In his music. He criticized them, ridiculed them, and uncalled them unprintable names — except, he forgot the unwritten rule and called them these names on the record.
Oh, you bet your ass the Generals were furious. Really really furious. Fela’s life was a cat-and-mouse game between him and the military regime and in this game, he was the mouse. He was humiliated, beaten, and jailed. There was a coordinated intimidation campaign against him, and the government burnt his house. Imagine that! Your government committing arson just to get you to shut up. Fela was big news, so unlike small-time activists who get beaten all over the world and nobody even notices, news of the government burning Fela’s house even made it to the New York Times. I told you he was big news! On one of those burning and beating campaigns that the military government organized at Fela’s house, his mom was thrown from the second floor. She sustained serious injuries that ultimately took her life. She paid the ultimate price for her son’s activism.
At this point, I would like to imagine that you are in tears. You’ve been moved by Fela’s activism and his willingness to pay the ultimate price for the greatest American gift to the dark and uncivilized world, democracy. Ok, maybe you aren’t really in tears, but can we just pretend you are? Thanks.
Now that you’ve seen how progressive Fela was and how liberal he was, I’m sure you agree he would have made the American founding fathers very proud. But that is not really what I want to talk to you about. Instead, I want to focus on a very small and overlooked detail of Fela’s life. You can even call it gossip — except it really happened and it also made the news because c’mon, Fela’s news sells.
So, it’s 1978, and this progressive guy, Fela, decides to marry 27 wives. No, that was not an error. He married 27 wives, and he did it in one day. Imagine marrying 27 women in a single day! Even for the crazy 1970s, it was a daring move. These women were mostly members of his music band. A rumour had started to spread that he was holding these women captive, so Fela, being the sworn rebel that he was, decided to do what any rebel who is worth their salt would do. He organized a traditional wedding ceremony, complete with marriage certificates and all.
Guys, I have to confess that I still can’t get my head around it. I keep wondering how a guy as progressive as Fela decided to marry all these women. In matters of politics, he was like the freedom-loving, gun-trotting, democracy-crazy Americans, but in matters of wives, family, and marriage, he thought like a proper African — the proper Africans are the ones that make our ancestors proud by marrying multiple wives. Marrying two wives is enough to impress the ancestors but there is an unspoken secret that the more wives you marry, the prouder the ancestors would be. Fela got the memo. At a time when other Africans were getting Westernized and Americanized, Fela decided not to get carried away. He took one for the team, making himself a husband to all those poor women to whom marrying a celebrity musician-cum-activist was probably the biggest achievement of their lives. By doing this, Fela wrote his name in history in more ways than one. I haven’t seen his tombstone but I’m sure it reads; “Fela. Musician, activist, husband material, and saviour of women from desolate spinsterhood”.
This was undoubtedly his greatest achievement.