- artist:ORCHESTRE POLY RYTHMO DE COTONOU
- featured artist:Diawara Fatoumata, Kidjo Angelique
- region:West Africa
- release year:2011
- style(s):Afro, Afrobeat
- country:Benin
- formats:Audio File / Digital, CD (Compact Disc), LP / Vinyl
- record posted by:Radio France-Sons d'Ailleurs-POLY RYTHMO-Elodie MAILLOT
- label:Sons d'Ailleurs/Strut
- publisher:SONS D'AILLEURS/SOUND'AILLEURS
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FROM NEW YORK TIMES by JON PARELES
It took far too long for Orchestre Poly-Rythmo — with or without “Tout Puissant” (all-powerful) appended — to make its name beyond Benin, where the group was formed in 1968, and elsewhere in West Africa, where it did all its performing until it toured Europe in 2009 and the Americas in 2010. Now it has made its first studio album since the 1980s: a chance to hear in detail the workings of a great funk band that still plays like young men.
The 11-man Orchestre Poly-Rythmo merges once-forbidden voodoo rhythms from Benin with the many other sounds that were percolating through West Africa in the 1960s and ’70s, among them Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, James Brown’s funk, Afro-Cuban rumba and salsa, disco’s analog synthesizers and Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Horns punch out soul riffs; singers rasp, hoot and sometimes shout. The syncopated layer of brisk triplet voodoo rhythms from bells, hand drums and shakers — prominent in “Oce,” in which they intertwine with staccato guitars, and in the wah-wah-laced “Tegbe” — may well be the catalyst that makes the songs always seem to be eagerly leaping ahead.
For this album the group combed its huge repertory for surefire material, reviving older songs. The grooves lean toward salsa in “Koumi Dede” and Afrobeat in “C’est Moi ou C’est Lui,” but Orchestre Poly-Rythmo ratchets up the rhythms. Its singers work hard too; in the speedy “Gbeti Madjro,” which has a guest vocal by Angélique Kidjo (also from Benin), the bandleader, Mélomé Clément, answers her with a flat-out raspy scream.
“Cotonou Club” is the latest example of the symbiosis between wrongly obscure funk makers and once-distant fans who push them toward the wider world. It was produced by a determined French journalist, Elodie Maillot, and its final track, “Lion Is Burning,” is a collaboration with Paul Thomson and Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. The opening rhythm, British-style dance-rock, is a little stiff, but Orchestre Poly-Rythmo doesn’t let it stay that way. It piles on stuttering horns, wah-wah keyboards, quick-scrubbed rhythm guitar, group vocals and a very busy cowbell, and the polyrhythms ignite.