RFI Musique - - Independence and music - Togo and Benin, non-identical twins

Togo and Benin, non-identical twins

From censorship to unabashed groove

Paris

10/09/2010 -

Togo and Benin might share the same cultural roots, but the sound of independence had a very different flavour either side of the border. While Togo hurriedly murmured the anthem of a single party, Dahomey brandished tracks smacking of revolution.

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For Togo, the sixties revolution was as brief as the life of one of its greatest singers: Bella Bellow, killed in a car accident at the age of 27. The arrival to power of plenipotentiary General Eyadema in 1967 dealt a smothering blow to any nascent post-independence enthusiasm. In neighbouring Benin, though, the period saw the blossoming of a whole generation of self-assured creators who were up for anything, just as long as it was groovy.

Dahomey, as Benin was formerly called, celebrated its independence on 1 August 1960 with the mellifluous tones of the Togolese Bella Bellow, a young singer with a remarkable voice. Bellow did some brilliant new versions of traditional songs and her reputation quickly spread over the border of her homeland. When she appeared on a television show in Côte d’Ivoire, the TV company switchboard was blocked for 240 minutes by viewers caught in her spell.

In 1969, having just released her first single Zelié, she met Myriam Makeba at the Pan-African Festival in Algiers, who greeted her with the words: “You’re the greatest singer in francophone Africa”. Gorgeous, spontaneous and pan-African, she touched Europe, filled the Olympia in Paris and was a resounding sell-out at the Rio festival, where she sang Bem Bem in front of a 100,000-strong audience. Yet her career was tragically short-lived. At just 27 years old, the singer was killed in a car crash on the road to Atakpama, 60 kilometres from Lomé. The whole of French-speaking Africa went into mourning and the woeful death of Bella Bellow marked the end of the short liberation of Togolese music.

Sixties fever

Etienne Eyadema Gnassimbé, who had come to power in 1967, already had the Togolese people shaking with fear. His RPT party censored the song 27 avril, an ode to Togo’s accession to independence by Felix Boccovi, also known as “Tonton (uncle) Boccovi”, judging it as too nationalist.

The highly popular saxophonist, guitarist and broadcaster Félix Boccovi nevertheless played in several fashionable bands in Togo. He was also the protégé of Bob Esseine, a very visible trumpet player in Lomé at the time, and fascinated by Louis Armstrong and the highlife music of neighbouring Ghana. In 1965, the Beninese Ignace de Souza arrived in Accra with his own trumpet and his Black Santiagos. Enjoying the same stature as the star of the genre, the Ghanaian E.T. Mensah, he played highlife mixed with twist, rock ‘n’ roll and Congolese rumba, which was completely new in Accra at the time.

At the end of the 1960s, popular dances and the radio where keeping a low profile in Togo, while over in Dahomey the volume was pumping up. Despite a highly unstable political context, life was sweet in Cotonou, and musicians quickly spread the word. Radios constantly played hits by Célia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, soul by Otis Redding and funk by James Brown. In 1966, G.G. Vickey (who apparently sang instead of cried when he was born) became the premier male star of West African song. His first singles, Gentlemen Vickey and La Berceuse du Mono, shot to the top of the charts in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and Gabon.

His resounding success gave ideas to other musicians. That same year, Mélomé Clément founded the Sunny Black Band and composed his first Afro-Cuban song, Angelina. In 1969, his group became the Tout-Puissant Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, in homage to Franco’s TP OK Jazz and especially to its patron, Poly Disco, a record shop providing musicians with new instruments. Poly-Rythmo was inspired by funk, salsa, afrobeat from neighbouring Nigeria and the Vodun rhythms of Ouidah, hometown to many of the group’s members.

Funky propaganda

The Poly-Rythmo sound quickly reached the radio airwaves of Niger and Upper Volta. In Cotonou, the singer Gnonnas Pedro created Los Panchos de Cotonou, reworking Cuban tracks and updating the agbadja rhythm from southwest Benin’s Mono region. With Poly-Rythmo and Gnonnas Pedro, the battle for musical supremacy was fought out with singles, advice in song and incandescent melodies. Emulation was beneficial, judging by some of the afro-funk gems of the time, like the Poly-Rythmo-style Gbeti Madjro and Gnonnas Pédro-inspired Von o Von Non.

In 1972, Matthieu Kérékou came to power and Poly-Rythmo immediately took up the revolutionary cause. Propoganda has never been so funky! Gnonnas Pedro continued to gain popularity. Artists, who were encouraged and supported by the state, invented a truly revolutionary music style: a new sound for a new era. In “year III of the revolution”, otherwise known as 1975, Dahomey became the People’s Republic of Benin. Little by little, the regime was tightened up, the atmosphere soured and optimism faded. Tracks like Yiri Yiri Boum by Gnonnas Pedro and Poly-Rythmo’s Setche We djomon are lovely reminders of this feverish period in history.