On 15 October every year, HKW celebrates the life and work of one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century, Fela Kuti. The initiative’s title, A Felasophical Gathering, alludes to the fact that Fela was not only a musician, but also an activist, political being, and philosopher. The annual gathering brings together musicians, scholars, activists, storytellers, and other co-voyagers of Fela Kuti to unpack the Fela curriculum.

18:30–19:00 & 20:00–20:30 slide show Thomas Dorn
The Cologne photographer Thomas Dorn visited Fela Kuti in Lagos in 1993 and was a guest at his legendary club The Shrine and the family home Kalakuta Republic for three weeks. Some of the impressive photographs of Fela, his band, his family, his club, and his estate are printed in Dorn’s multimedia photo book Houn-Noukoun: Tambours et Visages, published in 1996. At this year's Felasophical Gathering, Dorn’s photos appear as a slide show on the big screen in the auditorium before and between the concerts.

19:00–20:00 The Berlin Afrobeat Company
led by Ekowmania
with band members from Sonic Interventions
As in 2024, this year’s concert programme of A Felasophical Gathering is opened by the Berlin Afrobeat Company (BAC), founded in West Berlin in 1978 following a legendary performance by Fela Kuti & Africa 70 at the Berlin Jazz Days. After that concert, many of the ensemble’s most important members decided to stay in Berlin. The BAC consists of a group of international musicians based in Berlin who are dedicated to preserving and developing Fela Kuti’s music through live shows and various initiatives. It is led by Ekow Alabi Savage, who first saw Fela Kuti in Ghana in 1969 as a child and worked closely with his celebrated drummer Tony Allen. Ekow later founded the band Rhythm Taxi together with guitarist Oghene Kologbo and percussionist Nicolas Addo-Tettey, considered one of the best Afrobeat percussionists in the world, and who performed several times at HKW in the early 1990s. Ekow gathered a core group of other experienced musicians around him, including current and former members of the bands of Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas, Orlando Julius, and the Polyversal Souls. Today they are supported by the next and future generations: young colleagues, mainly from the band Sonic Interventions, who are carrying on the Afrobeat tradition.

20:00–20:30 slide show Thomas Dorn

20:30–22:00  Mádé Kuti & The Movement
The second concert of the evening is also about passing on Fela Kuti’s legacy. With multi-instrumentalist Mádé Kuti, son of Femi Kuti and grandson of Fela Kuti, the third generation of the musical family is now on stage. As a child, Mádé Kuti spent a lot of time at the legendary New Afrika Shrine club in Lagos and learned to play the trumpet, later moving on to the saxophone, piano, drums, and bass. In his youth he also toured with his father's legendary band, The Positive Force, with whom he performed at Glastonbury and the Hollywood Bowl. He also studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, where his grandfather Fela had also studied. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, he has dedicated his life to Afrobeat, but is also a virtuoso jazz and rock musician, combining all these influences within his own signature style. Mádé Kuti’s debut album, For(e)word, released in 2021, was sold together with his father Femi’s album Stop the Note, on which he plays bass. Like his father and grandfather, he uses music to draw attention to issues such as misgovernance and police violence, but he is also politically active beyond the musical sphere, regularly attending demonstrations. In spring 2021, he presented his band The Movement to the public for the first time at the legendary Shrine, his grandfather’s venue, thus taking up the family Kuti baton.