“It's like feeling that a doll in your image is being pierced through and that the needles are in the hands of James Brown.”
LES INROCKUPTIBLES
“At times the funk turns into hypnosis, and the rest is unstoppable dance music.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Some best-kept secrets are worth revealing, and the eternal youth of the legendary Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou is just one of those hidden treasures. The West African band offered 43 years of an exquisite groove, a home made voodoo funk, “Made in Bénin”, that conquered Nigeria, Togo, Niger, Angola, and much of West Africa where the band played with Manu Dibango, Fela, and Gnonnas Pedro. And, despite their age, they are still on shape!
Down the years, Poly-Rythmo stunned the market of connoisseurs, deejays and aficionados with their pure African funky sound. But they never had a chance to take their music out of Africa. That oversight is about to end. In 2009 the founding members of the band are to perform in Europe with guests from Africa’s pantheon of international stars, starting with the opening of the great Jazz A La Villette Festival in Paris in September. They are to star in a special African night, also featuring Seun Kuti and Amadou and Mariam.
From the start, the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou swept away the tiny nation of Benin, sandwiched between Ghana and Nigeria, with their music. Their voices, brass section, guitar and percussion weaved together to crystallise a golden age in this nation of 8 million souls. Under the eccentric reign of Mathieu Kérékou, their irresistible Afro-funk lit up the mornings on national radio - despite reflecting as much an unbridled admiration for the marathon funk jams of James Brown, or the singing of Dalida and Johnny Haliday, as the frenetic urban sounds of Cotonou.
Drawing from one of the richest cultural melting pots in the world, the band has recorded over 500 songs, and become Benin’s most identifiable name.
Their music is also deeply anchored in voodoo music, principally the Sato rhythms, beat out by an immense vertical drum and the Sakpata, which is devoted to the voodoo divinity protecting people from smallpox.
What marks out Orchestre is its ability to modernise these vibrant traditional rhythms by integrating psychedelic guitar riffs, unreal organ harmonies, funk and soul. The result is a thrillingly hectic music that has been given new life last year thanks to the labours of the Frankfurt based label Analog
Africa, which is devoted to the rediscovery of the musical repertoire of the 1970s in Africa’s major cities.
Like many others fans in England, Germany and New York, (including David Byrne and the owners of the label Soundway), Elodie Maillot, a French journalist, travelled to Benin in 2007 to track down those African legends. As a reporter who has crisscrossed the world as part of her work in the world music genre for Radio France and Vibrations magazine, she was gripped by Poly-Rythmo’s vibrant energy and their love for the radio!
After enjoying a fruitful interview of the band-members and watching an impressive live performance by Poly-Rythmo for Benin’s National Day in Abomey (former capital of Dahomey), Maillot agreed to make a dream come true for the band: embark on perhaps their most exciting musical adventure, and bring these rare and raw grooves out of West African to stages throughout Europe!.
