Friday, Jul 25, 2008
A strange stranger in a strange land, decades ago Baba introduced millions to the medicine of drumming. Now 72, he's still got the beat.
Jan 8, 2000 | The '60s loomed and Fabian-soaked America needed a musical fix. Elvis, only two years into his career, had been drafted and shipped off to Germany, where he recorded not one note. And the void only deepened when three of the country's most promising young talents, Richie Valens, J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) and Buddy Holly, died in a plane crash one wintry night in February 1959. On the jazz front, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker experimented with Caribbean and South American rhythms, and Miles Davis' revolutionary album "Kind of Blue" set the precedent for a decade of modal riffs and was considered quite groovy. Neither, though, caused any mass hysteria. Of course, there was Sinatra, who by then was more popular than ever, but he just ring-a-ding-dinged like always.
Then, out of nowhere, out of Africa, came Babatunde Olatunji, drummer, singer, sage. He of the primal chants and flowing robes and tribal beats, a strange stranger in a strange land. No one, not even his African-American brothers and sisters, really knew what to make of him at first. But if ever the country was primed for something new, something wild, it was now, and soon he turned gapes and murmurs into smiles and cheers, and hi-fi's everywhere pulsed with the strains of the aptly titled "Drums of Passion," Olatunji's breakthrough release on Columbia Records. Four decades later, the album has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and has inspired beyond measure, musically and otherwise.
But then, it's always been Olatunji's nature to inspire, to teach, to enlighten. In fact, he has long looked the part of the proverbial sage on a mountaintop, the serene soul perched at the precipice, ready to illumine world-weary travelers. His visage, strikingly beatific, is the sort of preternatural mug that quells evil spirits and tames wild beasts. His voice, still thick with the timbre of his native Nigeria, is both soothing and fervid, equally suited for bedtime stories and suicide prevention. And his graceful comportment radiates an aura of supreme confidence, which no doubt helps stoke the illusion that he is vertically endowed, a veritable giant among men, when in fact he is only 5-foot-7. But these extraordinary attributes are mere complements to his most dazzling quality, that which has rendered Olatunji a near diety in the eyes of millions: his undisputed mastery of conga drums.
"Rhythm," he often says, "is the soul of life!" It is a credo to which he has subscribed since he was raised on rhythm in Ajido, a Nigerian village peopled by the millions-strong Yoruba tribe. There, he was schooled early in what he has termed the "evocative power" of drums, specifically, conga drums hand-fashioned from wood and goat hide. They gave voice to happenings profound and mundane, to births and deaths and everything in between. They were, in effect, the chief chroniclers of village life and thus were carefully hand-crafted so as to resonate with maximum effectiveness. Even today, Olatunji's instruments retain a certain proletarian quality owing much to workmanship that has changed little in centuries.
"There's a trinity about drums," he has noted. "There's got to be a spirit in the body of the drum. And the wood has to stay alive in order for it to produce sound. The skin on the drum is alive, too. But you've got to know how to tan it, because when it [encounters] the spirit of the person playing it, it then becomes an irresistible force."
In 1950, Olatunji applied for and received a Rotary scholarship to attend Moorehouse College in Atlanta. Bent on bettering the lives of his Nigerian compatriots, he strove to become a diplomat, spending his undergraduate years studying political science, sociology and psychology, disciplines in which he might find ways to quell the civil unrest that threatened the world, especially his motherland, Nigeria, and his adoptive land, America. It wasn't until he formed a small drum and dance ensemble during his postgraduate days at New York University, where he continued his diplomatic track with the study of public policy, that he rediscovered the captivating, transcendent effect of his native music on American audiences. Olatunji soon ceased his academic endeavors and dedicated himself to the drums.
It was 1958, and the boy who had dreamed of one day becoming an ambassador was now a man on the way to attaining his goal. Not officially, and certainly not in the traditional sense, but what did it matter? Music and rhythm spoke louder than words, anyway. And the time was ripe for social revolution: His sudden rise to fame came during an era that witnessed America's most epic (and tragic) struggle for civil equality.
In this same period, the year before he and his congas would pierce universal consciousness, he began his musical ministry in earnest. He even toured portions of the United States with Martin Luther King Jr., drumming at civil rights rallies and other such assemblies. He would do likewise later with Malcolm X. Consequently, Olatunji's name soon became linked as much with social issues as with music, though his ardent activism never overtook his affinity for the stage.
Among the countless performances he gave was a high-profile gig with the Radio City Symphony at New York's Radio City Music Hall, where there happened to be a Columbia Records executive in attendance. Impressed by Olatunji's raw, exotic riffs, he immediately signed his new find and introduced him to one of Columbia's top music producers, John Hammond. An A&R wiz who would go on to bring Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen into the Columbia fold, Hammond helped sculpt Olatunji's unique sound while maintaining its searing integrity. The resulting "Olatunji! Drums of Passion" set ears and souls afire.
Get Salon in your mailbox!