Music of Benin
Encyclopedia
Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...

 has played an important role in the African music scene, producing one of the biggest stars to come out of the continent in Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, commonly known as Angélique Kidjo is a Grammy Award–winning Beninoise singer-songwriter and activist, noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Time Magazine has called her "Africa's premier diva". The BBC has...

. Post-independence, the country was home to a vibrant and innovative music scene, where native folk music combined with Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

ian highlife
Highlife
Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s and spread to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920...

, French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

, American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 rock
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 and soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

, and Congo
Music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Describing the music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is difficult, due to vagaries surrounding the meanings of various terms. The country itself was formerly called Zaire and is now sometimes referred to as Congo-Kinshasa to distinguish it from the Republic of the Congo...

lese rumba. Ignacio Blazio Osho was perhaps the most influential musician of this period, alongside Pedro Gnonnas y sus Panchos
Gnonnas Pedro
Gnonnan Sossou Pierre Kouassivi, known by the stage name Gnonnas Pedro was a singer and musician from Benin. He is perhaps best known as the lead singer of Africando between 1995 and his death in 2004, but had been well known in his home country of Benin since the 1960s.Pedro produced the song Feso...

, Les Volcans de la Capitale and Picoby Band d'Abomey. Pedro produced the song Feso Jaiye, which became a hit and was performed by many bands at the 2nd All-Africa Games in 1973.

In 1972, however, the Kérékou government came to power and instituted curfew
Curfew
A curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...

s and other measures that inhibited musical expression.

After Kérékou, the first musician to become a star was Nel Oliver, who debuted in France in 1976. His distinctive style took elements from all over Africa and the United States to create "Afro-akpala-funk". The last few decades of the 20th century saw numerous other developments, including the rise of reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 (brought from Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 by Yaya Yaovi) and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 (most popularized by Ardiess Posse), as well as a new wave of musicians, including Cella Stella, Africando
Africando
Africando is a musical project formed in 1990 to unite New York-based salsa musicians with Senegalese vocalists. Musicians from other African countries were later included under the name Africando All Stars....

, Ambroise Coffi Akoha, Bluecky d'Almeida and Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, commonly known as Angélique Kidjo is a Grammy Award–winning Beninoise singer-songwriter and activist, noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Time Magazine has called her "Africa's premier diva". The BBC has...

.

Kérékou encouraged indigenous folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

. Some musicians, like Tohon Stan, adapted folk styles for mainstream audiences at home and abroad, including tchinkoumé, a funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

 music played using water percussion which was adapted into tchink-system music.

The Gangbe brass band
Gangbe brass band
The Gangbé Brass Band is a 10-member Beninese musical ensemble founded in 1994. The word "gangbe" means "sound of metal" in the Fon language. They blend West African juju and traditional Vodou music with Western jazz and big-band sounds...

 is an internationally-prominent Beninese ensemble.

Despite their relative obscurity outside of Benin, The “Tout Puissant” Orchestre Poly-Rythmo
Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou
Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou are a band from Benin, which plays Afrobeat, Funk, Soukous and other styles, often based on Vodun ryhtmns. Active since the late 1960s, and having recorded around 500 songs, they are still touring around the world today, playing in venues such as London's Barbican...

 are still a household name in Cotonou and were one of the most prolific groups to ever exist in Africa with over 50 full-length LPs and hundreds of 45s. Le Tout Puissant Poly Rythmo got their start in 1967 in Professor Wallace Creppy’s group, Sunny Black.

Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke is a guitarist born in the west African country of Benin. He moved to Ivory Coast in 1990 to study at the National Institute of Art. He attended the American School of Modern Music in Paris, France from 1994-1998...

 is one of the most important young musicians in jazz, successfully fusing African influences with modern jazz. Loueke currently lives in New York and is a member of Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

's band.

In 1994, a young artist decided to make professional music. Zeynab Ouloukèmi Abiba, born in Abidjan
Abidjan
Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire, while the current capital is Yamoussoukro. it was the largest city in the nation and the third-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, and Kinshasa but before Montreal...

, has been proven through various albums and singles. In 2001, Zeynab released "Intore" her first album. In 2002 she released Rhythm and blues, a bridge between RnB
RNB
RNB is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* Nankai Broadcasting – , a broadcasting station in Ehime Prefecture, Japan* Rhythm and blues* Contemporary R&B* Russian National Library...

 and Beninese culture. Zeynab Abib has had concerts, invitations outside of Benin, and a Kora
Kora (instrument)
The kora is a 21-string bridge-harp used extensively in West Africa.-Description:A kora is built from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator, and has a notched bridge. It does not fit well into any one category of western instruments and would have to be...

trophy nomination. Zeynab released a second album "From one location to another" comprising 14 tracks.

External links

Audio clip: traditional music of Benin. Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève. Accessed November 25, 2010.
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