By JON PARELES


“Move!” Bill T. Jones commanded. “Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm!” He was airborne, being lifted and carried across the stage of the Eugene O’Neill Theater by four dancers, perfecting their timing in a climactic ritual scene. It was hands-on choreography while an actor who would actually be carried, Kevin Mambo, observed from the wings. Mr. Jones, a pre-eminent modern-dance choreographer, was rehearsing his debut as a Broadway director: “Fela!,” based on the life and music of the Nigerian bandleader and political rebel Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

Fela who? On Broadway?

Those were basic questions that “Fela!” faced when it opened on November 23. The show moved from a widely praised Off Broadway production last year to the larger and more mainstream realm of the Broadway musical - from 299 seats to 1,050.

Although the music that Fela invented, Afrobeat, and the central events of “Fela!” are familiar to Africans, in the United States Fela (as Kuti is usually called) is largely unknown except by African-music devotees and fans of political music.

“We have an uphill battle,” said Stephen Hendel, the producer who started the project, “because we don’t have a recognized star, and Fela is an international artist and musician who’s outside the mainstream of American culture.”

The goal “Fela!” has set for itself is to be true to his music and his impact while reaching a Broadway musical audience. “Fela!” juggles the conflicting demands of Mr. Jones’s own artistic leanings - in a celebrated career that has often pondered history, race and sexuality - and the commercial imperatives of Broadway.

There’s also the legacy of Fela himself, well documented in recordings and films from the 1970s until his death in 1997 and cherished by fans. “There are people who, when they heard we were going to make a musical about him, were very upset,” Mr. Jones recalled. “Because Fela’s underground, and Broadway’s mainstream.”

In Africa, Fela, who died at 58 of complications from AIDS, is a figure to rival Bob Marley as both a musical innovator and a symbol of resistance. Afrobeat, the style he forged in the early ‘70s, combined African rhythms and messages with the jazz and funk that Fela absorbed during his education in Britain and the United States. Ghanaian highlife, Nigerian Yoruba rhythms, Afro-Cuban mambos, James Brown, John Coltrane, Nina Simone and, yes, Frank Sinatra all flowed into his music, which sounds exactly like none of them. Within the grooves Fela’s lyrics denounce corruption and injustice, call for African values and challenge authority.

Fela was defiant by both instinct and ideology, and he was repeatedly arrested, beaten and imprisoned for his opposition to a succession of Nigerian regimes. In 1977 soldiers burned down the compound where he lived.

“I’m not interested in hagiography,” Mr. Jones said. “Fela Kuti is a sacred monster, and no progressive, democratic-leaning society should be without one - this provocateur, this enfant terrible.” Mr. Jones said he was attracted to the character because he was willing to suffer for his beliefs. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he was about,” he said. “At least that’s what we make him in the show to be about.”

The show prefers the mythic to the mundane and presents its story not through linear narrative but in songs, explosive dances, recollections and flashbacks.

“Obviously it’s a departure from the conventional American musical,” Mr. Hendel said. “But I’m hoping that audiences respond to its authenticity.” He added, “We’re not going to dumb it down.”


SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES / The Broadway musical Fela! is drawn from the life of the Nigerian bandleader and political rebel Fela Anikulapo Kuti.