Orchestre Poly Rythmo, Barbican

They played their first concert in 1969, and 40 years later the TP Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, to give them their full name, had their UK debut last night at the Barbican as part of their first European tour. They are the latest expression of a growing cult of classic bands who hit their peak in 1970s Africa. The music of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti has never been more popular, strange jazz from 1970s Addis Ababa has been selling impressively on the Ethiopiques series of records, while Senegal’s Orchestre Baobab have reformed to great acclaim.

Three cult albums, culled from a repertory of over 500 songs, primed an expectant audience. Having the tag “voodoo funk” attached doesn’t do any harm to the band’s mystique either and, for once, it is more than a publicist’s fantasy. Benin is one of the main homes of the ancient pre-Christian religion of voodoo (Vodun is the more politically correct term these days) and the band use assorted rhythms used in voodoo ceremonies but adding guitars, brass and keyboards as well as whatever bits of pop music from abroad that appeal to them, particularly James Brown-style funk (although the funk conversation was, they rightly point out, a two-way thing, being based on African rhythms in the first place). 

Until their recent revival in fortunes, the band were ticking along playing weddings and cheering people up at funerals in Benin (where they usually turn up with topless dancing girls who were, sadly for some members of the audience, left behind). The 11-piece band, anyway, are pros at revving up an audience.  The band’s brilliant brass stabs, sometimes psychedelic keyboard runs and choppy, fuzzed-out guitar backed three vocalists including the sweet-voiced Cosme Anago and their veteran bandleader Clement Melome, who has kept them going for 40 years, through all the vicissitudes of the decades. 

Earthing the band was the sharp rhythm section with those fierce beats and shuddering, melodic bass lines. The songs variously melted down bits of Nigerian Afro-beat, Congolese choruses, and Ghanaian high-life.  Flashes of disco found their way in, as though Studio 54 circa 1977 had found a cosmic worm-hole to Benin and got fabulously distorted in the process. Some gear shifts propelled the band on a couple of numbers into salsa territory, and one song even swerved into French chanson for a while (Johnny Halliday, is, I’m assured, huge in Benin) but the primary funk trajectory was resumed with increasing urgency.

For several years they were an official state band after the Marxist Regime came into power in Benin in 1975, but we were not subjected to any of their songs from the time extolling the Five-Year Plan for agriculture. Instead we got a selection of classics from their vast repertoire, including their biggest hit, the delirious "Gbeti Madjro" from 1972 (a track cited by Franz Ferdinand as an influence – both bands jammed together on the song last week in Marseilles). See below for an archive video.

The drummer, who glories in the name of Gbetognon Banaventure Didlanvi, is apparently new, and they say they are only now getting into full speed with him.  When they do their voodoo funkiness will, finally, be unstoppable.

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