I'm sure we've all seen or heard various documentaries about the history of popular music in North America that have traced the roots of jazz and blues music back to the tribal sounds of Africa. The blues developed out of the songs, "hollers", that the slaves used to sing while working in the fields that were a mixture of old tribal rhythms and the Christian hymns that the slave owners forced down their chattel's throats in an attempt to pacify them. However, most of us are probably unfamiliar with how the music that developed in both North and South America returned to Africa to influence the popular music scene in various West African nations.
In the 1980s, thanks to Peter Gabriel's World Of Music and Dance (WOMAD) festival, African popular music started to come to the attention of European and North American audiences. Performers like King Sunny Ade from Nigeria exposed us to the previously unheard of genres high life and juju: guitar driven, high energy, and exuberant music that kept people on the dance floor for hours on end. However Nigeria was only the tip of a widespread pop music scene in Africa. Thinking that King Sunny Ade represented African pop music would have been as stupid as thinking a blues musician from Chicago represented all of North American pop music.
Benin lies on the West coast of Africa and butts up against Nigeria in the south, Niger in the east, and equally tiny Togo to the north. What distinguishes Benin from its neighbours is the fact that it happens to be home to Vodoun - or as we know it over here Voodoo. So it should be no surprise that the popular music of Benin draws heavily upon the rhythms of Vodoun rituals, but what is surprising is the other influences that have come into play. The Vodoun Effect: Funk & Sato From Benin's Obscure Labels 1973-1975 a recent release on the Analog Africa from Germany, that has collected together fourteen tracks by one of Benin's most popular bands, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou. Recorded in the 1970s on a variety of small independent labels, they show not only the Vodoun influence but how music from both South and North America found its way back across the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the publicity material that came with the disc, in the late 19th century a group of freed slaves from Brazil returned to Benin and over the years their dances and songs were incorporated into Beninese ritual, and from there worked their way into the popular culture. In the 1960s and 1970s American soul and funk music started making its presence felt in Africa, and along with the sounds of pop music from neighbouring Nigeria were assimilated into the popular music scene in Benin.
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