The Poly-Rythmo revival

First European tour for voodoo veterans

Paris 

01/09/2009 - 

The Orchestre Poly-Rythmo from Cotonou have become living legends in Benin, mixing funk and Afrobeat with their native Voudoun tradition. 41 years after their debut, the band are embarking on their first ever European tour. RFI Musique catches up with one of the group's founding members, Vincent Ahéhéhinnou.

RFI Musique: How do you feel about the fact that this is your first major tour outside Africa after all these years?
Vincent Ahéhéhinnou: I feel extraordinarily happy and extraordinarily proud because these songs - many of which date back over 40 years - are taking us to France and pretty much anywhere else in Europe we want to go. We're finally getting the chance to share the music we've always believed in - and the music we could still be playing for years to come if God lets us live that long! This European tour is like the best Christmas present you could ever imagine… It's amazing, here we are in our old age and people are discovering that we've still got something going! Right now I'm just hoping that the dream will continue and I'll be doing this till the day I die!

Were Poly-Rythmo still active on the music scene in Benin before this revival?
Well, people tend to think of us as a group from the older generation, but we're a living legend in Benin these days. Poly-Rythmo have always been in demand for live performances because everyone knows we've got a great repertoire. There hasn't been a moment since we got together in 1968 when we ever officially retired although I'm sad to say we've lost a few of our founding members along the way. And I'd like to pay tribute to them in some way because if they'd still been here with us it would have been one hell of a party!

Poly-Rythmo released a phenomenal number of records in Benin and in neighbouring countries in the seventies. What made you so prolific?
We had one aim in life and that was to become as famous in Benin as the big European stars were at home. We played songs by The Beatles, Johnny Hallyday, Charles Aznavour and all the other big French music stars and one day we vowed we'd be just like them. But we drew on broader sources of inspiration, too. When you have a dozen guys in the band, each writing their own songs, you've got multiple rhythms going on and we integrated outside influences into our sound, too, like funk and soul… At one stage in our career we were putting out a new single every week!

What conditions were you recording under?
Our regular producer had the best sound of the day. He used to take us off to the EMI studios in Lagos, Nigeria, where we used the same studio as Fela. Other producers were happy with the local sound, working with a single microphone and a Nagra (a reel-to-reel tape recorder) which basically meant if you made a mistake you had to wipe the whole track and start all over again. But whatever the sound quality, whatever label we worked on, people would go out and buy a record as long as it was by Poly-Rythmo!

What typically Beninese ingredients do you use in your musical mix?
We've always used a lot of rhythms associated with Voodoo rituals which we mix with modern sounds. The Voodoo repertoire is extraordinarily rich. It's so big that we could go on drawing on it till the end of our days without ever getting to the bottom of it. The songs are really beautiful and they sound contemporary despite the fact they're actually hundreds of years old. Voodoo's got a bit of a negative image these days, but that's what Poly-Rythmo is based on in terms of melody and rhythm. Before Christianity reached Africa, we had our own way of seeing things and singing about things - and that's never gone away! 

Read album review  Poly Rythmo  The Vodun Effect

Concert at the Jazz Festival at La Villette, Paris, on 1 September 2009

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou The Vodun Effect (Analog africa / Socadisc) 2009

Bertrand  Lavaine

Translation : Julie  Street