Culture

Yeni, Fela's oldest child, is sitting upstairs, somewhere in the warren of rooms above the stage. "My father was a very charismatic person," she says. "For someone like me, it was easy to follow his ideology because, as a black person, he made me proud. Fela's father - my grandfather - was a pastor, but he was still a radical; he was very outspoken. And my great-grandfather was responsible for taking Christianity to Abeokuta [a city north of Lagos]. He used music to get people to believe, so in his way he was a radical as well. And my grandmother was an activist. So we come from a long line of revolutionaries.

Vanity Fair is not a news magazine, and therefore usually avoids putting people it dislikes on its cover. Carter, in his editor’s note, reveals his differences with Bono about including Bush and Rice, but the rock star appears to believe Bush’s Africa policies may be the “silver lining” of the current U.S. administration. But if silver linings were the criteria, then Thabo Mbeki, probably the most recognizable African political leader for his promotion of democracy, good governance and economic development, ought to have been included — perhaps Editor Bono deems Mbeki’s strange politics on HIV/AIDS and his “quiet diplomacy” on the crises in Zimbabwe are somehow worse than the Iraq war.