Antoine Dougbé et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou – 1977 - 1982 [2xLP IMPORT] – New LP

Antoine Dougbé – The Devil’s Prime Minister

While I'm far from some expert on West African music, I tend to look for the stuff that locks into the fast-forward propulsive (which describes a huge percentage of  African music...and without that, I'm not sure where we'd be right now, probably not talking to you because African music carried a direct link to folks like James Brown and Bo Diddley and so many other Black artists of that era and earlier...from Memphis, New Orleans, the West Indies.. and the link between Bo Diddley and nearly everyone I love is strong, from Buddy Holly to The Who to The Stooges and thousands of others. But I don't grab every African record I come across, tend to go for the stuff that offers the strong propulsion along with something unique, and this offering certainly offers those two things. Afrobeat (at least the stuff I've heard) is mostly West African, but also shows some influences from Black music of the United States, and while in the 1960s those influences included James Brown, Stax, Isley Brothers, Motown and Sly Stone, this recording is from the late 1970s and early 1980s and the influences are really interesting and sometimes hard to accurately dissect. While disco was showing up a lot in African music by this point, and this does have cool dated synthesizers that connect some of the selections with the disco era (especially as this set progresses), this mostly seems to go back to the 1960s (and earlier) for influences, perhaps even showing some psych Baroque influences on some cuts (but that might be just the cool fuzz guitar and synthesizers blending with the West Indies percussion), definitely showing Latin-American influences, pulling in the Afro-Cuban (to complicate matters, some of those influences were clearly heavily influenced by African music)...maybe some sprinkling of psychedelic, freak-out and acid rock influences (most might use those descriptors synonymously, but I tend to think of them separately). The beauty is that these influences don't distract, but are pulled into the propulsive, sparking like gun powder sprinkled into the fire burning, tossed into the fuel to spark the locomotion, the sounds wrapped up into the groove. Jump up and kick your feet or kick back and flip your wig to the sounds of Antoine Dougbé et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou – 1977 - 1982.  -- winch 

Who was Antoine Dougbé? Even the most dedicated crate-digger might go their whole life without stumbling across any of the three LPs he released in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Yet all the musicians who happened to cross paths with him remember him with a mixture of admiration and fear; for Antoine Dougbé was not merely one of the most inventive songwriters to emerge from the fertile music scene of Cotonou, but also a powerful Vodún initiate whose close connection to the spirit world allowed him to refer to himself as “the Devil’s prime minister.”

As a young man he moved from Abomey to Cotonou, a city that had established itself as one of the centres of the West African music scene. There he encountered most of the popular styles of African and Latin music and, like many of his generation, found himself drawn to Cuban son and rumba. Although he was particularly attracted to Congolese rhythms, it was his fascination with the traditional rhythms of Benin—especially those associated with Vodún ceremonies—that allowed Dougbé to take his music in directions far removed from anything happening in the Congo.

Early in his career, Dougbé was known for intimidating and threatening musicians if they didn’t play to his liking, and when the time came to find a band willing to record with him, he struggled. But according to Mélomé Clément, founder of the mighty Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, Dougbé posed no problem for them, since the band’s drummer, Yehouessi Leopold, and bassist, Bentho Gustave, were themselves initiated into Vodún and Dougbé never dared to challenge them.

Dougbé was unique among the band’s external collaborators in that he neither sang nor performed any of the main instrumental parts. It has been suggested that his involvement with Vodún—in which singing plays a crucial role in important rituals—effectively prohibited him from using his voice for anything as frivolous as a popular song. Instead he provided his songs to Melome Clément, who arranged them for the band; most of the vocals were handled by Lohento Eskill and Amoussou William.

Whether driven by the thrill of the music or by fear of crossing the Devil’s prime minister, Dougbé’s records all feature Orchestre Poly-Rythmo playing at the absolute height of their considerable powers.

Dougbé released three LPs and a handful of singles under his own name, the first, which appeared in 1977 on Disques Tropiques. And although Dougbé achieved moderate success with the early single “Nounignon Ma Kpon Midji”, his other records never quite found the audience they deserved, and by the early eighties he had vanished from the music scene.

Illness struck in 1992, prompting a move to Parakou in northern Benin, where he lived and worked for four more years. Antoine Dougbé died of cirrhosis of the liver on 20 September 1996, while on holiday in his former home of Cotonou—leaving behind a small but extraordinary body of work, and a legacy still wrapped in mystery.