Los Angeles

Fela's ten-month stay in 1969 proves catalytic, exposing him to Black Panther politics and the revolutionary consciousness of African Americans that would reshape his music's purpose. Though he arrives playing highlife-jazz fusion, encounters with Sandra Smith (later Sandra Izsadore) and the Black Power movement provide the ideological framework he'd been missing, transforming his artistic mission entirely. The city's fusion of political activism and musical experimentation—from Watts to the Sunset Strip—gives Fela the template for making music that's simultaneously danceable and defiantly political.

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