Rhythm Revolution

Album review

Ferry Djimmy's Rhythm Revolution from Benin is one of the rarest examples of African funk to emerge from the 1970s. Independently recorded at Cotonou's Satel Studio, only about 200 copies survived a fire. Its scarcity is one reason it hasn't seen reissue until now. England's Acid Jazz label has painstakingly remastered the original eight-track album from physical sources (no tapes remain) and packaged it with eight bonus cuts drawn from Djimmy's singles. Rhythm Revolution was recorded at the same time Fela Kuti and Tony Allen were wedding hard core funk, out jazz, and militant politics in Afrobeat. Djimmy, a multi-instrumentalist, former schoolteacher, and boxer, was hanging out with friends Fela and Benin's president, Matheiu Kerekou. Both loved his music, and Kerekou provided him with a small budget to record this album. Its proceeds were to be donated to charity. Kerekou arranged airplay and ordered his cabinet ministers to buy multiple copies. Nonetheless it failed. The iconic cover art by Djimmy's artist friend Gratien Zossou perfectly captures this period of the African liberation struggle. Though the set is credited to Ferry Djimmy and Dji-Kins, the leader sought to stretch the budget and played almost all the instruments himself. Djimmy was no stranger to the innovative sounds coming from the U.S. at the time. He loved James Brown, War, Santana, the Meters, Jimi Hendrix, and Parliament-Funkadelic. He wove these influences -- as well as Kuti's -- in. Go no further than the extremely dirty wah-wah guitar funk in opener "Be Free." It truly sounds like Hendrix playing on Miles Davis' Tribute to Jack Johnson. "When I Come in the Road" carries an English title, but its lyrics -- and the rest -- are in Yoruba, as the music expands on harmonic and rhythmic concepts in the Meters' Fire on the Bayou. "Yong Revolution" juxtaposes Stax Volt-style funk with Latin rhythms and soul. It's an anthem of syncopated beats, hypnotic singing, and wailing, revue-style horns. "Atinga" is primitive Afrobeat appended by soul-jazz piano (à la Ramsey Lewis) atop furious horn and rhythm sections. Original closer "Ichango" combines Afro-Cuban rhythms and Afrobeat in a hurricane of B-3 as Djimmy chants feverishly over the pummeling groove. "A Were We Coco" and "Egbemi Black" were officially released as one of two singles he cut in Paris in 1972. The former's driving bassline bridges the sexy call-and-response between singer and horns before whomping snare and a frenetic wah-wah guitar join in. The other single, "Oluwa Loranmi Nichai" b/w "Toba Walemi," weds Cotonou-style club R&B with Brown's late-'60s funk grooves, as well as hypnotic guitars, snaky snare breaks, and circular horn vamps under a raspy vocal. Though Djimmy appropriates, combines, and filters many inspirational sources on Rhythm Revolution, what emerges from these intense, raw jams, is an idiosyncratic yet profound political and aesthetic vision that's at once dangerous, incendiary, and eternally relevant. Don't sleep on this.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo