From Lagos to Hull: Felabration, The Gidi Vibes and a new cultural connection in the city

This Saturday, Felabration Hull comes to Browse Studios for a full day and night of art, film, conversation and music. The event also says something bigger about Fágbèmí Ọ̀ṣìnúgà, The Gidi Vibes and a Nigerian and African community that is actively finding its place in Hull’s wider cultural scene.

Fágbèmí Ọ̀ṣìnúgà - The Gidi Vibes

Felabration arrives at Browse Studios this Saturday, but what we’re interested in is what has been building around it.

Over the last couple of years, Fágbèmí Ọ̀ṣìnúgà has been growing The Gidi Vibes™ in Hull, putting on African music, comedy, art and cultural events, finding an audience for them and, just as importantly, making links with the wider city.

That has meant working with Hull Museums since 2024, including the 2025 exhibition at Wilberforce House, as well as getting involved with the Hull Music Board, connecting with H&H Agency and other creatives, and steadily making The Gidi Vibes part of the conversation rather than something happening off to the side.

There’s a difference between being programmed into a city and actually becoming part of its cultural life. This feels much more like the latter.

The Gidi Vibes is building from within the community, then reaching out. New audiences are coming into existing Hull spaces, local organisations are getting involved, and people who may not previously have crossed paths are starting to work together.

Why it fits Browse Studios

It also chimes with what we’ve been trying to build at Browse. Browse started as a magazine in 2014 because we wanted to give more space and visibility to the people, places and ideas shaping Hull. Browse Studios is really the physical version of that.

We took a city-centre unit that had been empty for around three years and started turning it into somewhere people can actually use: gigs, exhibitions, talks, workshops, markets, business events, community projects and creative development. The plan was never to fill every date ourselves.

We want people to come in with their own ideas, their own audience and their own reasons for using the space.

With Felabration, The Gidi Vibes brings the programme, the story and the cultural knowledge. Browse brings the building, bar, kit and operational support. Other people around the project bring production, media, art and content.

Femi Kuti performs at Felabration at the New Afrika Shrine, Lagos, 21 October 2013.
Credit: AP Photo / Sunday Alamba, Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo · Image ID 2N6B5K0EN Productions.

Felabration returns to Hull

Felabration Hull returns for its third year on Saturday 17 October, celebrating the life, music, ideas and legacy of Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti.

This year’s theme is WHO ARE YOU?, taken from Fela’s 1971 track Who’re You.

For the Hull edition, that question becomes a conversation about identity, heritage and belonging. What do we carry with us? What gets left behind? What changes when people build a life somewhere new? What do younger generations keep, reject or remake?

That runs through the daytime programme, from The Underground Spiritual Game exhibition to the Felabration Forum later in the evening.

The Underground Spiritual Game, a photography and art exhibition curated by Fágbèmí Ọ̀ṣìnúgà, was previously shown at Wilberforce House Museum and returns at Browse Studios this weekend. Nnaemeka Ugochukwu, a photographer, writer and curator, will also have his work Liminal Spaces: Home ~ Abroad on display. Masks courtesy of Abolore Sobayo. The exhibition sits alongside a documentary screening, The Felabration Forum and the night-time Tribute Session.

The Felabration Forum is moderated by Lydia Idakula, a producer, writer and arts manager, with panellists Adéṣínà Ayẹni (Ọmọ Yoòbá), Nnaemeka Ugochukwu, Noah Misan Okwudini, Tarè Kagbala and Onyi Anekwe.

Why the sound feels current

Browse has always had one foot in club culture, so it’s hard not to notice how well the timing lines up. Afro house is everywhere at the moment.

Black Coffee has helped make the sound a fixture in Ibiza and on the biggest international dance floors, while Rampa, &ME and the wider Keinemusik crew have pushed percussion-led, melodic house into the centre of current DJ culture.

To be clear, Fela’s Afrobeat is not Afro house, and Afrobeats is another thing again. Different histories, different sounds.

But the wider point is obvious enough: African music, rhythm and influence are not sitting on the edge of global club culture anymore. They’re right in the middle of it.

Plenty of people now know Black Coffee, Rampa or a Keinemusik record before they know much about Fela. Felabration gives people a chance to follow some of that conversation backwards.

Fela was never just a musician with records that still work on a dance floor. Music, politics, identity and resistance all ran through what he did. Earlier this year he was posthumously recognised with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, nearly three decades after his death.

The influence has travelled a long way.

The night closes on that thread. From midnight until 2am, the Tribute Session ends with ÀRỌ̀NÌ, a masked Afro house DJ whose long, restrained blends treat rhythm as a language.

Built in Hull

What we like about The Gidi Vibes is that Hull isn’t being treated as a stop-off. The work is being built here.

That means creating events, bringing people together, working with local organisations, making African and Nigerian culture more visible and giving people outside those communities a way in too. Hull’s cultural scene is strongest when people can plug into it properly, rather than having to circle around the edges waiting for an invitation.

Browse Studios can be one of those places. Not the only one, and not the answer to everything. Just another useful room where people can meet, put something on, test an idea and see where it goes.

Felabration is a good example of what that can look like. This weekend brings The Gidi Vibes, Browse Studios and a growing network of local collaborators into the same building.

We’re looking forward to seeing what comes next.