The Afrika Shrine, Fela Kuti's night club, and Kalakuta Republic, the urban commune over which he presided, were iconic spaces in the Nigerian postcolonial imagination. However, these spaces only acquired countercultural stature when in the early 1970s young women began inhabiting them in pursuit of a life in the performing arts. The Queens, as the women were fondl...

The Afrika Shrine, Fela Kuti's night club, and Kalakuta Republic, the urban commune over which he presided, were iconic spaces in the Nigerian postcolonial imagination. However, these spaces only acquired countercultural stature when in the early 1970s young women began inhabiting them in pursuit of a life in the performing arts. The Queens, as the women were fondl...