Two Copyright Mortgages Recorded in 2010 Put the Fela Kuti Album Catalogue Up as Security. The Counterparty Was MRI Associated Labels, and No Release Has Ever Been Recorded.

September 28, 2026 8 min read

Deal sheet

Status

STILL ON THE REGISTER AS AT 28 SEPTEMBER 2026. NO RELEASE OR TERMINATION HAS BEEN RECORDED AGAINST EITHER DOCUMENT.

A recordation search of the United States Copyright Office for Knitting Factory Entertainment returns two documents and only two, V3589D439 and V3591D680, both classified as security interests. There is no third document releasing them. A recordation search for Kalakuta Sunrise returns nothing at all.

THIS IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT A DEBT IS OUTSTANDING. Parties routinely discharge secured obligations without recording the release, and the Copyright Office does not chase them. What is established is the state of the public register, which is what a buyer, a lender or a catalogue fund actually searches.

A SECOND AND SEPARATE SECURITY INTEREST, NOW DISCHARGED. Kalakuta Sunrise Limited, company number 07423466, the English company that holds the exclusive licence to the Fela masters, created one charge on 10 May 2024 in favour of Coutts & Company. Delivered 13 May 2024, charge code 0742 3466 0001, described on the register as containing fixed charges, containing floating charges over all the property or undertaking of the company, and containing a negative pledge. Registrar's certificate given at Cardiff on 17 May 2024. A statement of satisfaction was filed on 12 June 2026 by Coutts & Company of 440 Strand, London WC2R 0QS, in the capacity of charge holder, recording satisfaction in full. It is the company's only charge and it is now satisfied.

THE COUTTS FIXED CHARGE PROPERTY IS NOT DISCLOSED AND IS NOT ASSERTED HERE. Pages three to eight of the filed MR01 instrument are scanned images from which no text can be extracted, and the filing carries the certification "I certify that save for material redacted pursuant to s.859G of the Companies Act 2006", certified by Maria Merino Sanz. This record does NOT state that the Fela masters were charged to Coutts. It states that the company holding the licence granted a fixed and floating charge, and that what sat under the fixed charge is not on the public record.

MRI'S FOOTPRINT, WHICH IS WHAT SUPPORTS THE ROLE INFERENCE. MRI Associated Labels, Inc. appears on exactly six recorded documents, all classified as security interests, all recorded in 2010, and is Party 1 on every one. Party 2 is Knitting Factory Entertainment, Inc. twice; Partisan Records Corporation twice (V3589D434 of 24 March 2010, "Decline of the West & 11 other titles", and V3591D679 of 14 July 2010, "Decline of the West & 10 other titles", both executed as of 1Mar10); and Instinct Records Corporation twice (V3591D273 of 24 March 2010, "Songs to no one 1991 & 74 other titles", and V3598D257 of 14 July 2010, "Various & 97 other titles", both executed as of 1Mar10).

Type

Investment

Parties

Knitting Factory Records Inc., Kalakuta Sunrise Limited

Amount

Not disclosed

Rights covered

A SECURITY INTEREST OVER SOUND RECORDINGS, NOT A TRANSFER OF THEM. The United States Copyright Office classifies both documents as security interests and the register note on both reads "Short-form copyright mortgage. Exhibit C recorded at request of sender." A copyright mortgage is collateral for an obligation. It is not a sale, not an assignment, not a licence and not a distribution agreement. Nothing in this record says the Fela Anikulapo-Kuti catalogue changed hands in 2009 or 2010.

WHAT WAS SCHEDULED. V3589D439 schedules 53 works, V3591D680 schedules 52. Between them they name the Fela album catalogue from the Koola Lobitos material and the 1969 Los Angeles sessions through Shakara, Roforofo Fight, Open & Close, Afrodisiac, Gentleman, Confusion, Alagbon Close, Why Black Man Dey Suffer, He Miss Road, Expensive Shit, Excuse-O, Monkey Banana, Noise For Vendor Mouth, Everything Scatter, Kalakuta Show, Ikoyi Blindness, Yellow Fever, Na Poi, Unnecessary Begging, Johnny Just Drop, Zombie, Upside Down, Stalemate, Fear Not For Man, Sorrow Tears And Blood, Opposite People, No Agreement, Shuffering & Shmiling, V.I.P., Authority Stealing, Unknown Soldier, Coffin For Head Of State, Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense, I.T.T., Original Sufferhead, Live In Amsterdam, Army Arrangement, Beasts Of No Nation, O.D.O.O. and Underground System, plus the Ginger Baker live album, the Roy Ayers collaboration, a deluxe best-of, a vinyl box set and a Record Store Day 2010 item. The second schedule also lists three works that are not Fela's: Put In Pencil by Taha Rachid, and Chase The Devil and The Edge Of Heaven by Gary Lucas.

THE INTEREST PLEDGED WAS ALMOST CERTAINLY A LICENCE INTEREST, AND THE REGISTER DOES NOT SAY SO. Knitting Factory did not own these recordings. The masters are owned by the Estate of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and licensed exclusively, and the official Fela Kuti site states that the Kuti family has partnered with Knitting Factory Entertainment and Partisan Records to reissue the catalogue since 2008. A licensee cannot mortgage a copyright it does not hold. It can mortgage its own interest: the licence, the revenue under it, and the product made under it. Exhibit C, which sets out what was actually charged, was not obtained. Only two and three recorded pages respectively exist on the register.

PUBLISHING IS A SEPARATE CHAIN AND IS NOT PART OF THIS DEAL. Ninety Fela composition registrations at the same office carry Clouseau Musique, S.A. as claimant, some jointly with Boucharlat, SA, filed November 1984, August 1985, April 1986 and 2 February 1998. One recorded document, V2304P715 of 9 December 1987, names Clouseau Musique, S.A. and Yaba Musique, S.A.R.L. over four compositions. The register gives no document type for it and it is not called an assignment here.

Territory

THE RECORDATION IS UNITED STATES. THE CATALOGUE IS WORLDWIDE. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Recordation under 17 U.S.C. 205 gives constructive notice within the United States. It says nothing about perfection, priority or enforceability anywhere else, and a security interest over rights exploited in Nigeria, the United Kingdom or South Africa would need its own steps in those places. No filing outside the United States was located for these two documents.

Neither recorded page states a territory for the underlying grant. The territory clause of the instrument has not been read because the instrument was not obtained.

THE LATER CHARGE IS ENGLISH. The 2024 charge over Kalakuta Sunrise Limited was created under the Companies Act 2006 and registered at Companies House in Cardiff. Its scope is the company's property and undertaking, which is a corporate scope rather than a territorial one.

Announced

2010-03-24

Primary document

Rights registry

Sources

United States Copyright Office public records, recordation V3589D439, document pages V3589 D439 P1-2, recorded 24 March 2010, executed "as of 6Jul09". Retrieved 28 September 2026. The companion document V3591D680, recorded 14 July 2010, pages V3591 D680 P1-3, is at https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/voyager_24391510 and carries the same parties, the same execution date and the same register note. · The second short-form copyright mortgage, V3591D680, recorded 14 July 2010, 52 scheduled works, same parties and same execution date as V3589D439. · V3589D434, MRI Associated Labels, Inc. and Partisan Records Corporation, recorded 24 March 2010, "Decline of the West & 11 other titles". · V3591D679, MRI Associated Labels, Inc. and Partisan Records Corporation, recorded 14 July 2010, "Decline of the West & 10 other titles". · V3591D273, MRI Associated Labels, Inc. and Instinct Records Corporation, recorded 24 March 2010, "Songs to no one 1991 & 74 other titles". · V3598D257, MRI Associated Labels, Inc. and Instinct Records Corporation, recorded 14 July 2010, "Various & 97 other titles". · Companies House, Kalakuta Sunrise Limited: one charge, code 0742 3466 0001, created 10 May 2024, delivered 13 May 2024, persons entitled Coutts & Company, satisfied 12 June 2026. · Companies House, Kalakuta Sunrise Limited officers: Margolis and Putnam appointed 21 August 2019 at 281 N 7th St #2, Brooklyn NY 11211; Stein since 29 October 2010; Cowan appointed and resigned 29 October 2010. · Companies House, Kalakuta Sunrise Limited: sole person with significant control, Mr Stephen Hendel, 10 Dundee Road, Larchmont, New York 10538, notified 6 April 2016. · New York Department of State active corporations: KALAKUTA SUNRISE LLC, DOS 3795926, filed 7 April 2009, Westchester County, process address 10 Dundee Road, Larchmont, New York 10538. The same address as the English company's sole person with significant control. · New York Department of State: PARTISAN RECORDS LLC, DOS 3598186, filed 28 November 2007, Kings County. · New York Department of State: INSTINCT RECORDS CORPORATION, DOS 2757795, filed 23 April 2002, New York County. · Registration PAu 750-748, Water No Get Enemy, filed 30 August 1985, work created 1970, copyright claimant Clouseau Musique, S.A., author Kuti, Fela Anikulapo. · Registration PAu 669-749, Sorrow Tears And Blood, filed 13 November 1984, copyright claimant "Boucharlat, S.A. & Clouseau Musique, S.A." · Registration PA 970-248, Authority Stealing, filed 2 February 1998, copyright claimant "Boucharlat, SA, Clouseau Musique", author Kuti, Fela Anikulapo 1938-1997. · Recordation V2304P715, recorded 9 December 1987, Clouseau Musique, S.A. and Yaba Musique, S.A.R.L., over Water No Get Enemy and four other compositions. · Official Fela Kuti site: the Kuti family has partnered with Knitting Factory Entertainment and Partisan Records to reissue the catalogue since 2008.

Read this before citing: ESTABLISHED. That two documents recorded at the United States Copyright Office, V3589D439 on 24 March 2010 and V3591D680 on 14 July 2010, both executed "as of 6Jul09", name MRI Associated Labels, Inc. as Party 1 and Knitting Factory Entertainment, Inc. d.b.a. Knitting Factory Entertainment as Party 2, are classified by that office as security interests, carry the register note "Short-form copyright mortgage", and schedule 53 and 52 works respectively, consisting almost entirely of the Fela Anikulapo-Kuti album catalogue by title. Read from the Copyright Office public records service on 28 September 2026.

THE REGISTER DOES NOT LABEL THE ROLES. It gives "Party 1" and "Party 2" and no more. It does not say which party granted the mortgage and which took it. The reading that MRI was the secured party rests on the pattern of all six of its recordations, each against a different independent label, each in the same year, with MRI always in the Party 1 position. That is an inference drawn by this desk from the register, not a statement made by the register.

NOT DISCLOSED. The consideration. No principal sum, advance, interest rate, facility size or maturity appears in any source located, for the 2010 mortgages or for the 2024 Coutts charge. No figure is asserted in this record and none should be inferred. The underlying obligation that either security was granted to secure is not disclosed either.

NOT OBTAINED. The instruments. Only the recorded extracts exist on the Copyright Office register, two pages for V3589D439 and three for V3591D680, and the register note states that Exhibit C was "recorded at request of sender", which means the schedule of charged property sits in a document this desk has not read. For the English charge, pages three to eight of the MR01 return zero extractable characters and the filing is certified with material redacted under s.859G.

NOT ESTABLISHED, AND CHECKED. Whether "Knitting Factory Entertainment, Inc." on the recordations is the same legal entity as Knitting Factory Records Inc. in this directory. The alias is recorded on that profile, but no register was found that resolves the two names to one company number. The New York active corporations dataset returns no entity beginning "KNITTING FACTORY" and no entity beginning "MRI ASSOCIATED". MRI Associated Labels, Inc. therefore has no directory profile here and is not attached as a party: its corporate details could not be established from any register reachable for this record, and mriassociatedlabels.com does not resolve.

A NAME DISCREPANCY, RECORDED NOT SMOOTHED. The recordations name "Partisan Records Corporation" and "Instinct Records Corporation". The New York active corporations dataset shows PARTISAN RECORDS LLC, DOS 3598186, filed 28 November 2007, Kings County, and INSTINCT RECORDS CORPORATION, DOS 2757795, filed 23 April 2002, New York County. A corporation and a limited liability company are different legal persons. Whether the Partisan named on the 2010 recordations is the same entity as Partisan Records LLC could not be established. Both New York filings give the same registered agent, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, P.C., 28 Liberty Street, which is a large entertainment law firm and is not on its own evidence of a relationship between clients.

DATE USED. The announced date recorded here, 24 March 2010, is the date the first of the two documents was recorded and therefore became public. It is NOT an announcement date, because there was no announcement, and it is NOT the date of the instrument, which the register gives as "as of 6Jul09".

THE SECOND RECORDATION IS NOT A SECOND TRANSACTION, ON THE FACE OF IT. Both documents carry the same execution date and the same parties and schedule overlapping bodies of work. The second omits the 1969 Los Angeles sessions and adds three non-Fela titles. Why the same instrument was recorded twice, four months apart, is not explained on the register and was not established.

REGISTER TYPOGRAPHY. The schedules contain obvious clerical errors, including "Expensie shit", "Ikoyi blindess", "Unkown solider", "Alagon close" and "Ciffub fir gead if state". Titles are given in this record in their corrected form where the intended work is unambiguous.

NOT ESTABLISHED. Who controls Clouseau Musique, S.A., Boucharlat, S.A. or Yaba Musique, S.A.R.L. today, and whether the compositions remain with them. No French register was reached for this record. The publishing chain is recorded as a finding to be pursued, not as a current ownership position.

The Fela Anikulapo-Kuti album catalogue was pledged as security. Two short-form copyright mortgages covering the recordings were recorded at the United States Copyright Office in 2010, both executed “as of 6Jul09”, both naming MRI Associated Labels, Inc. as Party 1 and Knitting Factory Entertainment, Inc. d.b.a. Knitting Factory Entertainment as Party 2. Neither has ever been released on the register.

The first, document number V3589D439, was recorded on 24 March 2010 and occupies pages V3589 D439 P1-2. Its title of record is “The best of the Black President & 52 other titles /By Fela Kuti.” It schedules 53 works. The second, V3591D680, was recorded on 14 July 2010 and occupies pages V3591 D680 P1-3. Its title of record is “The Best of the Black President & 51 other titles.” It schedules 52 works. Both carry the identical register note: “Short-form copyright mortgage. Exhibit C recorded at request of sender.”

The schedules are the catalogue. Shakara, Roforofo Fight, Open & Close, Afrodisiac, Gentleman, Confusion, Alagbon Close, Why Black Man Dey Suffer, He Miss Road, Expensive Shit, Excuse-O, Monkey Banana, Noise For Vendor Mouth, Everything Scatter, Kalakuta Show, Ikoyi Blindness, Yellow Fever, Na Poi, Unnecessary Begging, Johnny Just Drop, Zombie, Upside Down, Stalemate, Fear Not For Man, Sorrow Tears And Blood, Opposite People, No Agreement, Shuffering & Shmiling, V.I.P., Authority Stealing, Unknown Soldier, Coffin For Head Of State, Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense, I.T.T., Original Sufferhead, Live In Amsterdam, Army Arrangement, Beasts Of No Nation, O.D.O.O. and Underground System are all listed by name, alongside the Koola Lobitos material, the 1969 Los Angeles sessions, the Ginger Baker live album, the Roy Ayers collaboration, a deluxe best-of, a vinyl box set and a Record Store Day 2010 item. The second schedule additionally lists three works that are not Fela’s: Put In Pencil by Taha Rachid, and Chase The Devil and The Edge Of Heaven by Gary Lucas.

Which party granted the security

The register records the two parties and does not label their roles. It does not say which of them granted the mortgage and which of them took it. That is an inference, and it is recorded here as an inference.

The basis for it is the shape of MRI Associated Labels’ whole footprint on the register. The company appears on exactly six recorded documents, every one of them classified by the Copyright Office as a security interest, every one of them recorded in 2010, and on every one of them MRI is Party 1. The Party 2 position is occupied by three different independent record companies. Knitting Factory Entertainment, Inc. appears twice, on the two Fela documents. Partisan Records Corporation appears twice: V3589D434, recorded 24 March 2010, “Decline of the West & 11 other titles”, and V3591D679, recorded 14 July 2010, “Decline of the West & 10 other titles”, both executed “as of 1Mar10”. Instinct Records Corporation appears twice: V3591D273, recorded 24 March 2010, “Songs to no one 1991 & 74 other titles”, and V3598D257, recorded 14 July 2010, “Various & 97 other titles”, both also executed “as of 1Mar10”.

One counterparty taking identically structured security over the catalogues of three unrelated labels in the same year is consistent with one reading only: MRI was the secured party and the labels were the mortgagors. No document located states this, and the underlying instruments were not obtained.

What could have been pledged, and what could not

Knitting Factory did not own the Fela recordings. The existing record on this site establishes that the masters are owned by the Estate of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and licensed exclusively, and the official Fela Kuti site states that the Kuti family has partnered with Knitting Factory Entertainment and Partisan Records to reissue the catalogue since 2008. A licensee cannot mortgage a copyright it does not hold. What a licensee can mortgage is its own interest: the licence, the revenue stream under it, and the physical and digital product made under it.

The recorded pages do not say which. Exhibit C, named in the register note, sets out what was actually charged, and the recorded extract is two or three pages. The desk did not obtain the instrument. This record therefore asserts that the Fela catalogue was scheduled as collateral, and does not assert that the copyrights themselves were transferred, encumbered or put at risk.

No release, no termination, sixteen years on

A recorded security interest stays on the register until a release is recorded against it. Nothing has been. A recordation search for Knitting Factory Entertainment returns two documents and only two, both of them these. A recordation search for Kalakuta Sunrise, the company that holds the licence today, returns nothing at all.

That is not evidence that the debt is outstanding. Parties frequently discharge secured obligations without troubling to record the release, and the Copyright Office does not chase them. It is evidence that the public register, which is what a buyer or a lender searches, still shows the Fela album catalogue scheduled against a security interest executed in July 2009.

A second security interest, fifteen years later

The licence now sits in Kalakuta Sunrise Limited, company number 07423466, registered in England and Wales. On 10 May 2024 that company created a charge in favour of Coutts & Company. It was delivered to Companies House on 13 May 2024 and carries charge code 0742 3466 0001. The register describes it as containing fixed charges, containing floating charges over all the property or undertaking of the company, and containing a negative pledge. The Registrar’s certificate was given at Cardiff on 17 May 2024. The MR01 was certified by Maria Merino Sanz with the statement “I certify that save for material redacted pursuant to s.859G of the Companies Act 2006”. On 12 June 2026 a statement of satisfaction was filed by Coutts & Company of 440 Strand, London WC2R 0QS, in the capacity of charge holder, recording satisfaction in full. It is the company’s only charge.

The specific property under the fixed charge is not disclosed. Pages three to eight of the filed instrument are scanned images from which no text can be extracted, and the filing carries a redaction certification. This record does not state that the Fela masters were charged to Coutts, because the register does not state it.

The vehicle existed in New York first

Kalakuta Sunrise LLC was filed as a New York domestic limited liability company on 7 April 2009, DOS identification number 3795926, county Westchester, with a process address of 10 Dundee Road, Larchmont, New York 10538. That is the same address recorded at Companies House for Mr Stephen Hendel, the sole person with significant control of the English company, notified on 6 April 2016.

The sequence matters. The New York vehicle was filed in April 2009. The copyright mortgages were executed as of 6 July 2009. The English company was incorporated on 29 October 2010, more than seven months after the first mortgage was recorded. Whether the two Kalakuta Sunrise entities are related, and whether either holds anything the other does not, could not be established: the New York dataset gives no members or managers for a limited liability company.

Who sits on the English board

Kalakuta Sunrise Limited shows four officers and one resignation. Morgan H Margolis, born October 1966, and Timothy Lewis Putnam, born May 1974, were both appointed on 21 August 2019 and both give a correspondence address of 281 N 7th St #2, Brooklyn, New York 11211. Eric Allen Stein, born July 1942, has been a director since incorporation on 29 October 2010 and gives the company’s registered office at 55 Loudoun Road, St John’s Wood, London NW8 0DL. Graham Michael Cowan was appointed and resigned on the same day, 29 October 2010.

The two 2019 appointments are the link back to the 2010 documents. The same Brooklyn address is shared by the two American labels that appear on four of MRI’s six security interests.

The compositions are a separate chain and a French one

Everything above concerns sound recordings. The songs are registered to different companies entirely, and the desk found no reporting of this anywhere.

Ninety composition registrations in Fela’s name at the United States Copyright Office carry Clouseau Musique, S.A. as copyright claimant, filed in four batches: November 1984, August 1985, April 1986 and a large group on 2 February 1998, six months after Fela’s death. Several name a joint claimant, “Boucharlat, SA, Clouseau Musique”. Water No Get Enemy, registration PAu 750-748, filed 30 August 1985 for a work created in 1970, records the claimant as Clouseau Musique, S.A. and the author as Kuti, Fela Anikulapo. The 1998 batch covers Lady, Gentleman, Beast Of No Nation, Colonial Mentality, Sorrow Tears And Blood, Original Sufferhead, Alagbon Close, Kalakuta Show, I.T.T. and Roforofo Fight, among dozens of others.

One recorded document sits on top of that chain. V2304P715, recorded 9 December 1987, executed 12 May 1987 with a certification date of 1 December 1987, names Clouseau Musique, S.A. as Party 1 and Yaba Musique, S.A.R.L. as Party 2, over “Water no get enemy & 4 other titles; musical compositions”. The scheduled works are Water No Get Enemy (PAu 750-748), No Buredi (PAu 750-749), Unnecessary Begging (PAu 750-757) and Expensive Shit (PAu 755-799). The register gives no document type for it, and this record does not call it an assignment.

S.A. and S.A.R.L. are French corporate forms and the registration descriptions are in French, “paroles et musique Fela Anikulapo Kuti”. The publishing side of the most politically consequential catalogue in African music was registered in the United States by French companies. Nothing located establishes who controls those companies now.