I learned responsible management growing up around Fela

Bose Ogulu, mother and manager to Grammy-winning singer, Damini Ogulu, aka Burna Boy, has revealed the lessons she got from growing up around afrobeat progenitor, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

She revealed that she learnt responsible management from being around Fela.

She explained that a strong management team is paramount for an artist’s success, adding that even at a young age, she understood that Fela’s manager, Benson Idonije, who is her father, had more responsibilities than the artist.

She emphasised the importance of proper management for an artist, stating that it has significantly influenced her current profession in artist management.

“A manager is more responsible than the artist, “Ogulu is quoted as saying.

“You need to have responsible management that you respect for you to do well.”

She concluded that growing up around Fela did have some influence on the kind of woman she ended up becoming.

“I think I spent a very short time around them. I was a baby, but I was old enough to realise that a manager was more responsible than the artist and his responsibility. The owner of the band paid the manager, not the artist. I saw them never go to Fela for anything; they went to my father.

“For anything, that’s the only thing that remained helpful in what I am doing today, where it’s kind of in my mind that you need to have responsible management that you respect for you to do well because I saw that firsthand as a little child.

“It made it very clear to me, and not just with the artists I manage, but I see an artist, and I understand immediately what their strengths are and their weaknesses are and I hope that they can have management that can buffer that, you know and it always makes them more successful and it helps tremendously in what I’m doing.”