Serious Juju
September 27, 2009
So this week’s pick in the great music experiment took me to the fourth country in as many weeks. Apparently, there is a genre of West African music known as juju, built around the talking drum. A guitarist and bandleader named I.K. Dairo helped popularize this music in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s. Mr. Moon’s pick this week is a disc called “Definitive Dairo” an album of unusually radio-friendly numbers by juju standards, because A) they all clock in under 8 minutes, a rarity in the genre, and B) they supposedly contain a ridiculous number of melodic hooks.
I’ll be honest. Not only do I not hear many different hooks, after a handful of listens I have difficulty telling many of the songs apart. They are all based around those distinctive African polyrhythms and choral vocals, with Dairo sprinkling some accompanying phrases from his guitar into the mix. It is good stuff, to be sure, but I have no trouble believing Dairo’s claim that all these tracks were laid down in one day. Perhaps I lack a true musician’s ear, and am just not picking up on the subtle differences.
Anyhow, I find it very upbeat music, as those drums are always beating out a danceable rhythm and those voices are always in harmony. It probably helps that I don’t understand a word of Yoruba. For all I know, they could be singing about any of the myriad perils I associate with Africa, but all I would hear is togetherness and revelry.
Altogether, this is a pretty accessible introduction to juju music for the curious, and it may well be a treat for serious music types who can appreciate the craft on display here. Heck, it even works for those merely looking for pleasant background music. I am officially calling the great music experiment four-for-four.
(As a side note, this was the first album on the list that I could not find on iTunes. I was able to get a lightly-used copy via Amazon and pay about the going rate for cds.)
