MFM SPEAKS OUT

EP 53: Kaleta on Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, and the Power of Collective Music

Episode Summary

Legendary Afrobeat guitarist Leon "Kaleta" Ligan-Majekodunmi joins "MFM Speaks Out" to share his 50-year journey through music, activism, and survival. From growing up in Benin and Lagos to touring with Fela Kuti, King Sunny Adé, Shina Peters, and Lauryn Hill, Kaleta reflects on Afrobeat as both a musical language and a political force. The conversation explores Kaleta’s firsthand experiences inside Fela’s world, and what it means to carry cultural responsibility as an artist in diaspora. Along the way, Kaleta reflects on immigration, artistic survival, gun violence in America, and why music must always carry a message. This is a powerful, unfiltered look at Afrobeat’s past, present, and future — told by someone who lived it.

Episode Notes

Guest: Leon "Kaleta" Ligan-Majekodunmi (Afrobeat guitarist, composer, bandleader)
Host: Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, aka SoSaLa, MFM President

Key Topics & Highlights

• Kaleta’s early life in Benin
  • Growing up near the Nigerian border
  • Secretly learning guitar against family expectations
  • First musical breakthroughs through church and street performances
• Moving to Lagos at age 15
  • Learning English while building a music career
  • Immersion in juju, highlife, and early Afrobeat
  • Joining King Sunny Adé’s band as a teenager
• Writing and recording “E Ba Mi Dupe”
  • Kaleta’s composition recorded by King Sunny Adé
  • Breakdown of juju guitar techniques
• Joining Fela Kuti
  • Auditioning at the Shrine
  • Life inside Kalakuta Republic
  • Afrobeat as discipline, politics, and collective thinking
  • Touring globally with Fela through the 1980s and early ’90s
• Immigration and life after Fela
  • Staying in the U.S. after Fela’s final tour (1991)
  • Rebuilding from scratch
  • Founding multiple Afrobeat projects in New York
• Working with Lauryn Hill
  • A chance rehearsal encounter led to touring together
  • Afrobeat’s influence across genres and generations
• “Country of Guns”
  • Writing the song after witnessing gun violence news in the U.S.
  • Music as social commentary, not just entertainment
• Afrobeat in America
  • Thoughts on Antibalas and non-African Afrobeat bands
  • Afrobeat vs. modern Afrobeats
  • Afrobeat as “roots music,” not museum music
• Music, organizing, and musicians’ rights
  • FESTAC 77 FESTIVAL and Pan-Africanism 
  • Why musicians must act collectively
  • Parallels between Fela’s activism and MFM’s mission

Music Featured in the Episode

King Sunny Adé – E Ba Mi Dupe (composed/arranged by Kaleta)

Zozo Afrobeat – Country of Guns

Kaleta & Super Yamba Band – Mr. Diva

Kaleta & Super Yamba Band – Ajogan Blues