National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Broadway's storied Eugene O'Neill Theater rolled out the red carpet last night for the official opening of FELA!, the much-talked about new musical based on the life and music of Nigerian musical legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

Producers Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith were on hand for the opening, as well as dozens of other luminaries, including Harry Belafonte, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Angelique Kidjo and Ben Stiller. Carter told Nat Geo Music that his interest in Fela extends beyond his music: "what makes Fela's life and story universal is how he rose above the adversity of his situation... how he defied the odds stacked against him to make art that still lasts today."

With a book by Jim Lewis and direction and choreography by Tony-winning Broadway veteran Bill T. Jones. FELA! imagines a night at The Shrine, Fela's now-legendary nightclub in Lagos, circa 1978. The current production had its genesis over a year ago at the decidedly Off-Broadway 37 Arts theater, and has managed to make the transition without losing it's cool.

Nat Geo Music was lucky enough to catch a recent preview of the production and we were well impressed. Walking into the Eugene O'Neill felt more like walking into an ongoing party than a theater. Before the show even began, the audience was treated to the percussive rumble of Fela's afrobeat music played live from the stage (more on that later) and a set that literally spilled off the stage and into the theater. The set was ambitiously made up to recreate the funky, day-glo, corrugated-zinc and barbed-wire vibe of Lagos in the '70s, complete with a larger-than-life shrine to the Yoruba gods and Fela's ancestors - with a framed portrait of his formidable mother, Funmilayo Anikulapo Kuti (played by Lillias White) taking pride of place.

Fela himself was played with remarkable fidelity by Sahr Nagaujah, who alternates in the role with Kevin Mambo. And it's a demanding role, too, trying to recreate Fela's volatile mix of charisma, rebelliousness, righteous anger and keen, mocking wit. Luckily, Mr. Nagaujah, who portrayed Kuti in the original, Off-Broadway production, easily inhabits the role, rightly emphasizing Fela's wry humor and considerable charm over his more militant leanings. The role's many monologues and flashbacks call for a lead who can seduce the audience, not browbeat them, and Mr. Sahr Nagaujah delivers. Black rage, no matter how righteous, has seldom played well on Broadway.

The supporting cast, too, is excellent. Dressed to dance in a mix of high '70s polyester and neo-traditional Yoruba finery, the 22 member ensemble portrays the various friends, bandmembers, hangers-on, wives and other members of Fela's extended enterouge. Saycon Sengbloth and the aforementioned Lillias White both stand out for their vocal performances, as (respectively) Fela's love interest and mother.

The cast also doubles as a honed and polished dance company, advancing the story through lavish and exhilarating set dance pieces. The choreography is Bill T. Jones at his finest: a fluid and dynamic Afromodernism that fits Fela's original compositions like a glove - even incorporating some of the original choreography of Fela's "Queens".

But the real star is the music - Fela's sinuous, percussive Afrobeat sound is the lifeblood of the production; coruscating through every scene like a living pulse thanks to an onstage band that includes more than a few members of Antibalas. For those who don't know, Antibalas is the Brooklyn-based Afrobeat ensemble who've done more than anyone to preserve and push forward the sound after Fela's passing in 1997. It's hard to imagine the Afrobeat revival happening without them, and the group's trombone player Aaron Johnson ably steps into the role of conductor here, leading the 11-piece band through a nonstop catalog of some of Fela's most memorable compositions (as well as a few hymns, highlife songs and other lagniappes).

It's also hard to imagine Afrobeat without Tony Allen, Fela's drummer and the music director of his first great band, Afrika 70 - whose intricate, polyrhythmic drum patterns are imprinted on the music's DNA. Yet, for whatever reason, Allen gets no mention anywhere in the production - a curious lapse sure to be noticed by obsessive music geeks everywhere. Still, the music is so outstandingly alive that it's an easy lapse to forgive.

And it's a good thing the music and dancing are this good, because, frankly, the story is a bit thin. Told mostly through a series of monologues disguised as nightclub patter delivered by Kuti, the narrative is an episodic tangle of the high and low points of Fela's life. There's a lot of necessary exposition - making sense of Nigeria in the '70s is no mean feat, even for experts - and it's handled deftly overall. And the retelling of Fela's own story and the stories behind his songs works well, from his early nightclub gigging abroad in London to his Black Power awakening in L.A. to his musical cat-and-mouse with Nigeria's military dictatorship and their climactic crackdown on his "Kalakuta Republic" are all imaginatively and faithfully retold. Even better are the sometimes bawdy stories behind some of his songs. "Expensive Shit" alone may merit a Broadway first.

But the narrative doesn't quite build up to anything. When Fela is jailed and beaten by the military government we understand the what, but not very much of the why. When his compound is raided and his supporters beaten and his wives violated, it feels jarring, but for the wrong reasons. The shift in tone doesn't feel entirely earned. We know that Fela stands against the powers that be, but we know little of those powers (represented ominously by a faceless uniform, wielding a truncheon), other than their role as a generic "oppressor". Which is a shame, because Fela himself named names - calling out President Olesegun Obasanjo and the rest of the ruling junta individually in his songs (which astute audiences can still hear if they listen closely). The audience is told that the government is corrupt - which, of course, it was - but the weight of that corruption, and the dissappointment that Fela's generation felt in replacing British colonial subjugation with a corrupt, homegrown neocolonial elite - is only vaguely sketched out, robbing the work of some political punch.

Of course it's a little too much to ask of any Broadway musical to bear the full weight of Nigeria's military dictatorship - not many folks want to follow their fixe-price dinner with an evening of rape, torture and systematic human rights abuses. But Fela was never shy about his provocations, and gleefully rubbed his public's nose in their own hypocrisy and complicity - and most Nigerians loved him for it. But the production doesn't suffer from a lack of courage, just the occasional nagging lack of causality.

Still, even the biggest narrative lapses are so beautifully staged that you barely notice them. For instance, Fela's fantastical flight to the Yoruba spirit world to beg his mother's permission to flee Nigeria is such a show-stopper (with a tour-de-force vocal performance from Lillias White) that it's easy to overlook how absolutely laughable the idea that a maverick egoist like Fela would ask anybody for permission to do anything - even his mother.

Maybe the problem is in trying to reduce a character as complex and irascible as Fela into the kind of cardboard saint that Broadway demands. The real Fela was a shape-shifter, a musical conjurer who took the Yoruba name "Anikulapo" - "He Who Keeps Death In His Pouch" - and kept Nigerian society dancing while they were guessing at his next public outrage. It would have been just as plausible to make him a devil as an angel.

It may be that Fela the man is just too big for Broadway. But FELA! The Musical comes remarkably close... and, if the people dancing in the aisles are anything to go by, that's more than enough.