Spending Time with the Effervescent Members of the Gangbé Brass

° GANGB É BRASS BAND ° ° GANGB É BRASS BAND ° eep in the green bush that Spending time with the eight effervescent surrounds the ancient members of the Gangbé Brass Band is a bit Beninese city of Abomey, a like being immersed in one huge African voodoo priest specialising in living dictionary. Between them they speak at affairs of the heart prepares least ten different African languages, all mixed D his ceremony. In order to correctly divine up into one huge linguistic spaghetti. Each the destiny of the curious, lovesick patient member comes from a different region of the who has been sent to see him, he calls upon country, with its own rhythms and melodies. the fetishes to enter the spiritual circle. First ‘La Porte du Non Retour’, a song on the a bell sounds, hard metal on metal, and then What do you get when you mix West African ritual music new album, is sung in the adja language, says a crying out, almost like a mourning wail as with colonial marching band traditions? Rose Skelton finds Yovogan: “Before I joined, there was no one a line of young children, wrapped in hessian out with Benin’s Gangbé Brass Band from my region in the group, so to get that sacks, their bare backs rubbed with some kind PHOTOS MICHel DE BOCK diversity, we sang this song in my language of dark oil, creep into the mud compound and I translated it for everyone. It has the led by a woman who leads the rhythmic rhythms of my region, which anyone who chanting. Kneeling in front of the patient, knows the music can identify.” SPAIN Alcoy Catanzaro TURKEY the children and the bare-breasted woman Cordoba Cagliari Messina Athens The band also has a bursting passion for Murcia Palermo ITALY GREECE Nicosia rock backwards and forwards humming and PORTUGAL Alicante pan-West African music, squeezing Ghanaian, Seville Jaen Catania CYPRUS chanting a rousing wave of notes, sounding Cartagena Niger, Togolese, and Nigerian sounds in there Atlantic Cadiz Malaga Algiers Siracusa Iraklion almost like an Islamic zikr, a passionate GIBRALTAR Tunis too, acknowledging that ethnic groups have Ocean MALTA remembrance of god. This is the invocation Voodoo Valletta no regard for colonial borders. So while the to the spirits to attend, the beginning of a Rabat fanfare-style pom-pom-pom of trombone, Casablanca Mediterranean Sea voodoo ceremony. In Benin, a tiny West sousaphone and bugle form the backbone of Alexandria African country wedged between Nigeria MOROCCO TUNISIA Tripoli Gangbé Brass Band pictured many of the band’s songs, there is also a to the east and Togo to the west, voodoo (or in Porto-Novo, left, and in generous tipping of the hat to the Yoruba Benghazi Cotonou, below, in vodun as it is also commonly known) still Cairo September 2008 music of Nigeria, such as the Afro-beat of thrives more than any other spiritual practice, P“Every kind ofeople music from a given region of and army their own style of music, the fashion and with it, the eerie, irresistible chants and Benin is influenced by the voodoo [spirits] of caught on as the Beninese – ever adaptable rhythms that are so much a part of it. that region. Every region has its spirits, and its and open to outside influences – quickly took Worlds away, in a small provincial theatre music, so the music is necessarily voodoo it on as their own. ALGERIA in eastern Belgium, worlds collide. From music,” explains James Vodounnon, as he “In Benin we have a three-metre long brass EGYPT behind the auditorium door comes the patiently takes apart his sousaphone, polishes trumpet called the kakaki,” says Yovogan, LIBYA unmistakable sound of metal on metal, the and oils every piece and then fits it all back whose father was in the military. “There are ringing of the bell that appears throughout together. “But thereWESTERN is also SAHARA the region’s pop also lanzo (cow horns), stones where we drill (OCCUPIED BY MOROCCO) this marching-like music. Then parading music. This is what every member of Gangbé holes and play it like a flute, there are wood softly, light-footed along the gangway and up brings with him, the music that he had from and bamboo flutes, snail shells where we blow towards the stage, come a group of brightly birth, that he grew up with.” through the holes… We have a tradition of dressed men, one with a military-style Benin, which was once a powerful wind instruments going back many centuries,” MAURITANIA marching drum strung around his neck, kingdom, was colonised by the French in he says. “And then there is the zangbeto, our ratter-tat-tatting on its tight skin, another 1893, making it part of French West Africa. traditional brass band!” he laughs, as the rest “This divinity looks after the security of the their hero Fela Kuti. While the towering with an enormous bellowing sousaphone What its colonisers found was a culture rich of the group become more animated at the village, its music chases away bad spirits that brothers Martial and Magloire Ahouandjinou wrapped, quite literally, around his body like a in Nouakchotmusical thistory, especially in its spiritual mention of this musical voodoo ceremony. bring illness and scares off robbers. They play blast out a funk-driven duet on trumpet and large, consuming sea creature. Arriving on the at night all around the village.” trombone – a tribute to the late Fela – and stage, the musicians pick up saxophones, Spending time with the effervescent Voodoo music, like much spiritual music, SUDAN Lucien Gbaguidi plays a sweet solo on sax, the bugles, trumpets and trombones and the members of the Gangbé Brass Band is a bit is traditionally restricted to the temple and to audience in the concert hall look about as strains of softer-toned instruments replace Dakar the appropriate ceremonies,CHAD like the bewildered as I was when I was taken off to the hard metal bell as two enormous men, like being immersed in one huge African MALI zangbeto. But, says Athanase Dehoumon, the Benin forest to consult a voodoo priest. SENEGAL brothers sparring on trombone and trumpet, livingBanjul dictionary another trumpet player, these traditional The irony is not lost on the musicians. “Thank step forwards as the sound folds into a fast, GAMBIA rhythms were being forgotten. “Gangan, you for staying until the end,” says Martial, rapturous beat with Yoruba juju-like rhythms. practices. What it left behind when the Niamey agumé, bon, pahulé… these traditional ever so sweetly, as the concert is all but This is the Gangbé Brass Band, the colonisers GUINEA-left in 1960 was a traditionBamak of o Ouagadougou NIGER rhythmsLake Cha andd the instruments they used to finished. And then they climb down off the Bissau BISSAU N'Djamena exuberant, eight-man band from Benin whose European-style military marching band BURKINA FASO play them were used in the temples, and only stage and in their irresistible way, parade GUINEA ROSE SKELTON brassy charms have the power to warm even music, which now seems incongruously deep in the temples, and many of them were through the audience with their drums the coldest of concert halls. Their music is the rooted amongst the Beninese people. BENIN locked away, forgotten. And it’s not just “Before,” chips in Vodounnon, “you couldn’t Voodoo fetishes at a suspended around their necks, whipping up a NIGERIA shrine in Abomey place where West African spirituality coupled But, explainsConakr Ericy Yovogan, who plays the anyone who can use these instruments ask a young musician to play zinli, a very thoroughly Beninese storm of fun and with unaffected vivaciousness meet the strains trumpet, there is a tradition of metal wind GHANA either.” He goes on to explain how between complicated ceremonial rhythm. We worked laughter. This is fanfare, African style. l Freetown SIERRA LEONE of Western jazz and regimental marching instruments in Benin that goes back many COTE D'IVOIRE Abuja 1994, when the band first got together, and hard to renew this music and dance, and now band sounds in a loud and complex collision centuries, and the region has a tradition of TOGO 1999, when the band brought out its first we even see zinli danced in nightclubs!” The REVIEW is a Top of the World album Yamoussoukro Lake Volta Abomey Assiko of cultures and musics. But it is history – bronze casting too, as the celebrated Benin Cotonou Lagos album, the musicians travelled from region to band CENTRALfall about laughing. “The elders saw that this issue and is reviewed in the Africa section Monrovia AFRICA REPUBLIC spiritual roots and colonial takeovers – that Bronzes from the ancient Kingdom of Benin, Porto- region seeking authority from the highest our music was being forgotten, now that hip- CD ‘La Porte du Non Retour’ is on the LIBERIA Lome Novo CAMEROON inspired this band of brothers and friends in in what is now neighbouring Nigeria, attest. Accra spiritual elders in the land to be able to hop and reggae is taking over. That’s how we covermount CD their quest to revive, renew and remember When the French arrived with their A t l a n t i c reproduce this music which up until then had got the authorisation to reproduce anything ONLINE Hear excerpts from the new album O c e a n Beninese music. military marching bands and taught the police Malabo only been heard during spiritual ceremonies.Bangui we liked.” on www.songlines.co.uk/interactive/058 Yaounde DEM REPUBLIC OF CONGO EQUATORIAL 42 Songlines March 2009 GUINEA March 2009 Songlines 43 SAO TOME & PRINCIPE CONGO GABON.

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