Tag: Babatunde Olatunji

Title: Babatunde Olatunji – Love Drum Talk (1997) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Jazz, Afrobeat
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Nigerian-born drum master leads an ebullient ensemble of guitarists, singers and percussionists through a series of spirited meditations on the nature of love. Lust, kinship, sensuality, courtship and spirituality are the themes Olatunji uses to fuel his joyous infectious playing. Highlights include “Mother, Give Me Love”, “Don’t Know Why My Love”, “Spell Mónisola” and more.

The drums were a daily backdrop to life in Babatunde Olatunji’s birthplace, the fishing village of Ajido, some forty miles outside Lagos. He arrived in America in 1950 and traveled on a segregated “Jim Crow” train to study at Morehouse College. “I started the whole music thing to protect my sanity,” he explains. Stunned by the ignorance of his fellow students, who assumed all Africans lived among lions in the jungle, Olatunji began inviting them to drum and sing in his rooms and discovered his life’s mission as Africa’s musical ambassador. Babatunde Olatunji’s words are sung in his tribal language, Yoruba, and the drums that surround him – his ashiko, the big, curvaceous mother drum, the smaller, cylindrical djembe, the djun-djun and the talking drum – transmit the message as eloquently as the lyrics. Each track invokes another face of love and tells stories of Olatunji’s own life. On “Spell Mónisola”, Olatunji sings of his American-born granddaughter going to study at her grandmother’s school in Ibadan, Nigeria, as he articulates the young girl’s name in drumbeats. The travails of romantic love are addressed on “Saré Tete Wa”, yearning as it begs, “Lover, please come running back to me”. Fear of commitment permeates Long Distance Lover, and a parallel anguish fuels the doomed passion of “Don’t Know Why My Love”. Upbeat dance floor lust grooves through “What’s Your Number, Mama?”, in which a dancer’s devious routine to acquire a love object’s phone number vies with his mental calculations of her measurements. A more abstract love, the intimate conspiracy between dancer and drummer, inspires “Bebí Alolo” and “Love Drum Talk”.

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Title: Babatunde Olatunji – Drums Of Passion (1960) [Reissue 2002]
Genre: African
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Drums of Passion is an album released by Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji in 1960. Unquestionably, it was the first recording to popularize African music in the west, becoming immensely successful and selling over five million copies. In 2002, it was released as a single layer stereo and 5.1 SACD by Columbia Records. In 2004 the album was added to the National Recording Registry.

Having come to USA. from his native Nigeria to study medicine, percussionist Babatunde Olatunji eventually became 1 of the 1st African music stars in the States. He also soon counted jazz heavyweights like John Coltrane (“Tunji”) & Dizzy Gillespie among his admirers (Gillespie had, a decade earlier, also courted many Cuban music stars via his trailblazing Latin jazz recordings). And, in spite of it being viewed by some as a symbol of African chic, Drums of Passion is still a substantial record thanks to Olatunji’s complex & raw drumming. Along with a cadre of backup singers & 2 other percussionists, Olatunji works through 8 traditional drum & chorus cuts originally used to celebrate a variety of things in Nigeria: “Akiwowo” & “Shango” are chants to a train conductor & the God of Thunder, respectively, while “Baba Jinde” is a celebration of the dance of flirtation & “Odun De! Odun De!” serves as a New Year’s greeting. The choruses do sound a bit overwrought & even too slick at times (partly due to the fact that most of the singers are not African), but thankfully the drumming is never less than engaging. The many curious world music fans who are likely to check this album out should also be sure to look into even better African drumming by native groups like the Drummers of Burundi & the percussion outfits featured on various field recordings. (The 2002 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds the track “Menu Di Ye Jewe (Who Is This?)”, which was recorded at 1 of the 1959 sessions for the album, but was previously unissued in USA).

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