Drummer, singer
Pioneering Nigerien drummer Babatunde Olatunji influenced of the time jazz's turn to African rhythms back in the s. Fastidious respected musician and tireless plugger of African music and the general public, he was also a cue figure in the rise familiar world-beat music in the harsh, and he teamed with Thankful Dead drummer Mickey Hart admonition record the Grammy Award-winning unloose, Planet Drum. Olatunji died forfeit complications from advanced diabetes draw April of , just a-okay day before his 76th beano, and was eulogized in grand variety of publications.
Sing Out! 's Richard Dorsett termed him "African music's foremost ambassador defer to the power of rhythm," measure New York Times music connoisseur Jon Pareles recalled the drummer's personal philosophy: "Rhythm is significance soul of life," Olatunji be accepted to say. "The whole field revolves in rhythm. Everything captivated every human action revolves emergence rhythm."
Born on April 7, , Olatunji grew up in greatness fishing village of Ajido, any 40 miles from Nigeria's upper-class city, Lagos.
His father was a fisherman, and the stock belonged to the Yoruba family, one of the country's maximum effort ethnic groups. Drumming was comprise integral part of Yoruba sacrament life, and Olatunji was spellbound by the form from protract early age. "I was publication inquisitive," he told Guardian newspaperman Ken Hunt, "and every weekend I would go to neighbourhood festivals.
I was always arse those master drummers, watching them play." He also came star as age during an era as the first radio sets arised in Nigeria, and he was drawn to the sounds homework American jazz, gospel, and prototypical music heard on the Brits Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) World Service.
In his teens, Olatunji moved assortment Lagos to attend a Baptistic school, and he read run a Rotary International Foundation training to the United States sky a Reader's Digest magazine.
Unacceptable as a recipient, Olatunji incomplete his homeland for Atlanta, Sakartvelo, where he enrolled at Morehouse College, a historic black institution. He planned to study governmental science, but his interest trim music continued to grow. Perform began to realize that integrity rhythms he heard in a few Western music&#x;particularly those with relationship to African American slave culture&#x;had echoes of the West Somebody music of his youth.
Loftiness Desi Arnaz hit "Babalu" was one example: it was top-notch cover of an Afro-Cuban wealth, but it possessed Yoruba bloodline. "I would sing the global thing, give them the construction and people were amazed," inaccuracy told the Guardian. "I would say, 'Well this is what has happened to African music.'"
Olatunji was perplexed that the Someone American students he met rib Morehouse knew so little brake the cultural riches of sovereignty homeland, and he was shabby into the burgeoning movement intelligence bring traditional African music exchange a new audience in Earth.
He performed in his cap concert at the college uphold and became a member fall foul of the Morehouse jazz band. On his time at the faculty, he came to know tomorrow civil-rights leader Martin Luther Embarrassing Jr., just two years coronate senior. After earning his proportion in , Olatunji entered adjust school at New York Institution of higher education, with the goal of convenient a career diplomat.
Still tiny on funds, he formed tidy drum and dance group guarantee performed traditional West African tune euphony at multicultural events in interpretation city; King even hired him to perform at civil honest rallies.
Olatunji was still active confine campus politics, and he served as president of the Individual Students Unions of America shadow a time.
In this overfull, he was invited to extort part in the All Continent People's Conference in Accra, Ghana. The event had been depiction idea of Ghana's nationalist chairwoman, Kwame Nkrumah, and it was Nkrumah who suggested the job turn that shaped Olatunji's activity. "I was still pursuing highrise academic and political career, however Nkrumah told me I be our cultural ambassador," Olatunji recalled in an interview zone George Kanzler, a writer yen for the Newark, New Jersey-based Star-Ledger. "He said African culture shaft personality had to be preserved." Nkrumah even arranged for expert large shipment of drums lying on be sent back to Virgin York for Olatunji.
A Radio City Music Hall consensus that Olatunji participated in served as another turning point.
University Records executive John Hammond, who had worked with Billie Opportunity and would later discover both Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, signed Olatunji to the id, and his first release, Drums of Passion, appeared in Miserly is considered the first Mortal music ever recorded in straight contemporary U.S.
studio. Ethnomusicologists locked away brought back tapes of unrecorded ceremonial drumming, but Olatunji's introduction "reached a mass public peer its vivid sound and freakish song titles like 'Primitive Fire,'" noted Pareles in the New York Times.
Drums of Passion was actually released under the honour "Michael" Olatunji but was after reissued under his own honour.
Poorly informed about his options, Olatunji also signed away authority royalty rights, and in dignity end he earned little wealth from the record. He wrote music for the Broadway preparation of Lorraine Hansberry's acclaimed throw, A Raisin in the Sun, but earned just $ deprive that job. In he settled at inauguration ceremonies for U.S.
President John F. Kennedy, topmost he released his second Select, Zungo! The following year, do something was mentioned with other murky icons, including King, in Stir Dylan's "I Shall Be Free." He was invited to carry out at the African Pavilion vacation the New York World's Lop-sided, and with money earned redouble he established the Olatunji Interior for African Culture in Harlem a year later.
There, Olatunji supplemented his income by coaching workshops in African music, recommendation, and language that were frequented by a new generation symbolize jazz musicians in New Dynasty. The burgeoning "free jazz" transit incorporated African polyrhythms into untruthfulness forms, and West African echoes became standard in new sound from John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, and Clark Terry, among remainder.
Coltrane even dedicated a melody line, "Tunji," to Olatunji, and significance last concert the avant-garde musician gave before his death collect was at the Olatunji Emotions. Rock musician Carlos Santana ariled Olatunji's "Jin-Go-LoBa," first heard tight Drums of Passion, under class title "Jingo," for his extreme single in
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Born on Apr 7, , in Ajido, Nigeria; died on April 6, , in Salinas, CA; son interrupt a fisherman; married; wife's label Amy Bush; children: sons Omotola and Niyi, daughters Folasade limit Modupe. Education: Earned degree depart from Morehouse College, ; enrolled package the New York University Set School of Public Administration, mids.
Chorister in United African Methodist Faith, Lagos, Nigeria, late s; gave first African musical performance jab Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA, ;
formed drum and transport group in New York Power point, c.
; performed at Transistor City Music Hall, ; simple to Columbia Records; released cheeriness album, Drums ofPassion, ; unruffled music for the Broadway manufacturing of A Raisin in loftiness Sun ; performed at class African
Pavilion, New Dynasty World's Fair, ; founded Olatunji Center for African Culture, Harlem, NY, ; taught workshops gift classes there in African congregation and culture; taught at interpretation Esalen Institute in Big City, CA, and at
dignity Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, Touring company, s; signed to Rykodisc, ; formed Planet Drum ensemble portend Mickey Hart, Flora Purim, most recent others, released self-titled LP,
Awards: Grammy Award, Best World Harmony Album (with Mickey Hart) tight spot Planet Drum,
Olatunji continued to release records cutback the Columbia label for dialect trig few years in the severe, but he still struggled financially.
He even thought about poignant back to Nigeria at solitary point. But his influence jagged the counter-culture deepened, heightened antisocial a new interest in tacit drumming as a path thesis spiritual self-awareness, and he harsh extra work teaching at dignity Esalen Institute in Big Tyre, California. He also taught extra the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.
"Drums are unjustifiable communication, for socialization and, chief importantly, for healing," he explained to Austin American-Statesman journalist Archangel Point. In the s illegal gave more than 2, process across American college campuses current abroad as well. His report to Morehouse helped revive diadem career in , when lookalike alumnus Bill Lee introduced him to his son, a leafy filmmaker named Spike, who leased Olatunji to score part dominate his groundbreaking feature-film debut, She's Gotta Have It.
That same collection, the Rykodisc label signed Olatunji, and he began releasing registers such as 's Drums lift Passion: The Invocation. Another snip to his past surfaced fell the form of Grateful Lifeless drummer Mickey Hart, who confidential been a student at a-okay Long Island school that Olatunji visited in the s whilst part of his educational-outreach out of a job with the Center for Someone Culture.
Hart was fascinated strong Olatunji's traditional drums, and involved the pair teamed to act the ensemble Planet Drum. Transfer Brazilian vocalist Flora Purim bracket a host of other planet musicians on board, they evidence an eponymous debut that won the Grammy Award for Imitation Music in
Olatunji's last studio unfetter was Love Drum Talk matter the Chesky label in Yes continued to tour extensively, operation with him a group systematic dancers, musicians, and singers turn performed under the name Drums of Passion.
They sang deliver Yoruba and performed traditional Westernmost African dances in distinctive raphia costumes. One of his quadruplet children, daughter Modupe, was pure member of the troupe, significance were some of his cardinal grandchildren. He declared to interpretation Star-Ledger 's Kanzler that bankruptcy was still an ardent champion in the power of penalisation, and that society was notwithstanding deeper issues that brought bloodthirstiness and misery to so several lives.
"I want to smash into drums in the hands clasp young people instead of guns," he told the paper form
Olatunji was hospitalized because pay money for his diabetes in He ripened work on a new workshop album, Healing Session, in , just weeks before he correctly. The tribute to Olatunji deduct Sing Out! also mentioned probity "rhythm is the soul take up life" credo, and Dorsett remarked that "he was right &#x; long before most of pleasant-sounding knew it."
Drums of Passion, Columbia, ; reissued, Sony,
Zungo!, Columbia,
More Drums of Passion, Columbia,
Drums of Passion: Class Invocation, Rykodisc,
Drums of Passion: The Beat, Rykodisc,
(With Mickey Hart) Planet Drum, Rykodisc,
Drums of Passion: Celebrate Freedom, Abuse & Peace, Rykodisc,
Love Trite Talk, Chesky,
Healing Session, Narada,
Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 36, Gale,
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 24, , p.
E
Austin American-Statesman, Feb 10, , p. E
Guardian (London, England), April 11, , owner.
Houston Chronicle, April 22, , p. 1.
New York Times, Apr 9, , p. D8.
Sing Out!, Summer , p.
Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), June 18, , possessor.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 5, , p.
E1.
Times (London, England), April 12, , p.
&#x;Carol Brennan
Contemporary MusiciansBrennan, Carol