Here’s my chat with Conor McCreery and Jibola Fagbamiye about their new graphic novel Fela: Music is the Weapon published by HarperCollins.

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Conor McCreery, based in Toronto, Ontario, is a former journalist turned comics scribe. After making the move into the world of comics, he’s worked for many of the industry’s top publishers including DC, IDW, BOOM!, Titan, and Dark Horse. His recent work, The Last Witch from BOOM!, received critical and popular acclaim.

Jibola Fagbamiye is a local emerging visual artist based in Toronto, Ontario. His work draws inspiration from his two great loves: African history and North American pop culture. He uses a hybrid of digital design and traditional painting with influences of propaganda poster art, pop art and graphic novels to celebrate that history while inviting viewers to question their presumptions on consumerism, culture and normality. In 2020, Jibola worked alongside social critic Miles Marshall Lewis on Kendrick Lamar’s biography titled Promise that you will sing about me, as well as Michael Harriot’s New York Times best seller Black AF:The Un-Whitewashed Story of America. Recently, Jibola and Conor created Fela: Music is the Weapon graphic novel.

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Fela: Music is the Weapon recounts the “once-in-a-lifetime musical talent who innovated the musical genre Afrobeat, Fela was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian military regime. Fela focuses on a pivotal moment in his life, when he and his mother Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the renowned Nigerian suffrage activist, were ruthlessly attacked in their own home by soldiers who suffered no repercussions for their violence. It also explores Fela’s complex relationship with women, including his mother and Sandra Izsadore, the American singer and activist who revitalized and inspired him. Over the course of his life, Fela married 27 women, fathered numerous children, and founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, where he and his band lived, declaring themselves independent from military rule. As rich and original as its subject, Fela complements the historical with the surreal, featuring parallel dream world sequences, set between this realm and the next, in which Fela receives visions about his future and the dangerous path he will have to walk. Chronicling Fela’s perilous journey to capture his destiny—to become the King of Afrobeat, and to advocate for Pan-African unity in the face of European imperialism and white supremacy—this masterful biographical graphic novel celebrates this enduring legend and his legacy, offering inspiration for our own troubled time.”

Editor’s Note: Fela: Music is the Weapon is not authorized by, affiliated with or otherwise connected to the Fela Kuti family or estate.

You can discover more about Conor McCreery online at KillShakespeare.com and on Instagram at @therealconor

You can discover more about Jibola Fagbamiye online at JibolaStudios.com and on Instagram at @jibolastudios

Discover more about the graphic novel Fela: Music is the Weapon online at FelaGraphicNovel.com

Listen to a previous chat with Conor McCreery here.

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