A New Musical About a Good Government Advocate

It's rare that the number of a fraud provision (419) is used as the chorus of a musical number, but this is what happens in a song about government corruption in the new Broadway musical Fela. Fela is an amazing concert-biography of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian father of Afrobeat as well as one of the greatest fighters for good government in our time. The play is in previews now (I saw it yesterday), opening officially on November 23.

The music and dancing are fantastic, but government ethicists will be hard put to find a more appealing subject anywhere in popular culture. Fela Kuti went to the extreme of establishing his own country, Kalakuta, in a compound across the street from his nightclub. He ran for president himself, but couldn't get on the ballot. He appears to have had an ego to match some of generals he attacked in his music, but he needed it to continue to take on the big men of his country.

419 refers specifically to taking property by false pretenses. Fela Kuti saw this as the definition of the Nigerian government. Later, 419 became shorthand for the scam we've all seen:  those e-mail messages from Africa asking for money, a scam that started in Nigeria.

I highly recommend seeing this musical, but not taking a deduction for the cost of the tickets.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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