Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Rewrite into neutrality 1

The last exercise for today is some quick rewriting. So I want to show you some non-neutral sentences, and I want your help in identifying what is non neutral about them and how to fix them. How might we rewrite them to be neutral, like we did with the Bob Dylan example? So look at this sentence:.

"Fela Kuti is the greatest musician from Nigeria. His work met with astounding success over the years, conquering all of West Africa and beyond."

This is not Wikipedia's voice, is it? What's the problem with this sentence, and how might we fix it? I see in the chat we have identified the words "greatest" and "astounding" as non-neutral. Very good. "Astounding". Are we astounded as Wikipedia? Wikipedia is not astounded by anything at all, ever. So *Wikipedia* shouldn't assert that something is astounding. So yes, whether or not we personally feel Fela Kuti is the greatest musician from Nigeria, *Wikipedia* shouldn't say that. A more neutral phrase contributed in the chat here is "Fela Kuti is a musician from Nigeria"? Yes, that is factual. How can we express his importance in a more neutral way? Because he isn't just one of thousands of musicians from Nigeria, right? We all agree he is a very, very *significant* musician from Nigeria.

How might we express this success, this influence, without using a word like "astounding", without saying "conquering"? "Conquering" is also not neutral. "Conquering West Africa". I mean, did he raise an army and militarily conquer West Africa? He did not. It's a metaphor, it's a figure of speech, "conquering all of West Africa". And remember, in the encyclopedia's voice, we shouldn't use such metaphors. So what can we say? How can we rewrite it to say something more neutral about Fela Kuti?

On the chat we see this proposed: "Fela Kuti is a Nigerian musician. His music is played across West Africa." Better. And of course we would need citations for this. We would need to somehow *show* that his music is played across West Africa. Any other thoughts? "His work is known throughout West Africa". Yes. Again, we need to *show* that somehow. So remember how we showed how influential Bob Dylan was? We showed how other musicians felt about him. We can do the same with Fela Kuti. We can look for other influential, major musicians, who will say "Fela Kuti was an inspiration to me". "I grew up listening to his music". "I still perform some of his works". These are some ways we can demonstrate just how influential he is or was.