UNDERGROUND SYSTEM

1992 s Underground System is a magnificent swansong one more blazing masterpiece in a career full of them. Fela often cited an underground spiritual game as a weapon with which to fight oppressive regimes and reactionary ideas. He used underground system to describe its evil opposite - the network of secret conclaves through which military and political elites conspired together to silence emergent leaders who threatened the status quo. Fela wrote the first draft of the rocket-fuelled title track as a tribute to Burkina Faso s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara. The two men knew and liked each other: Sankara admired Fela s music as much as Fela admired Sankara s espousal of African values and commitment to radical social change. There was evidence that the Nigerian regime had been involved in Sankara s 1987 assassination: the underground system had been at work.