Search - Voodoo-Gang :: Return of Turtle: Old & New Songs From Africa

For the Africanist and virtually any other fan of international music, this 1984 recording is simply stupendous. Natives of Cameroon, the Voodoo Gang is composed of three Darouiche brothers who enjoy, as they say in the CD's liner notes, "fusioning with jazz, Beethoven, and funk," and despite what you might think of such a mix, the threesome makes grandly West African music. Despite the group's somewhat grandiose name (not to mention the "fusioning"), the Voodoo Gang is a world away from Cameroon's best-known exports, Manu Dibango and Les Têtes Brulées, in that they play neither the horn-rich makossa that Dibango made famous nor the politically (and rhythmically) charged bikutsi made popular by the elaborate Brulées stage shows. There is lots of layered rhythm here, for sure, as there are elaborately dense balafon pieces. But the emphasis is mostly on narrative songs, many of them both sung antiphonally and performed with the percussion riffing off the voices. One of the Darouiche brothers, Jean Nkodo Ferouze, plays lovely folk guitar and adds lyrics that could easily end up in countless coffeehouses around the world. Such is the breadth here: from the intimacy of a singer-songwriter showcase (ahem, with much percussion) to rapturous percussive pounce. By the end of this CD, you'll want more, more, more. --Andrew Bartlett