Kidayu

When recording Kidayu, the album from Vaudou Game, Peter Solo immersed his Lyon companions in the flourishing Afro-beat rhythms of the 1970s along with traditional song. Marked at times by James Brown-style shouts, Kidayu pairs voodoo harmonies with funk and blues. Born in Anho-Glidji, Togo, the birthplace of the Guin tribe and a major site of the Voodoo culture, Peter Solo was raised with this tradition's values of respect for all forms of life and the environment. At an early age, he made a makeshift guitar, and his music propelled him into the spotlight. Mastering traditional percussion instruments, his desire to discover the world and to carry his practice forward led him to England, where he became immersed in gospel music and then to France, where he calls home today. The idea of integrating the haunting voodoo lines, sung in honor of the divinities, into energetic '70s Afro-funk, is, in Solo's mind, an obvious extension of the analogy he found between this voodoo tradition and trance inducers such as the soul, funk, and rhythm 'n blues of James Brown and Otis Redding. Solo had a vision of codifying the musical scales that are found in sacred songs of Beninese and Togolese vodun music. Entirely produced, recorded, mixed and mastered using vintage material and instruments produced in the '70s, old cassette tapes were the grigris (or lucky charms) which proved most effective to ward off digital corruption of their music and allow them to thrive as a tight-knit group. Kidayu means sharing in Kabye, the language spoken in northern Togo, and sharing, is the philosophy of Vaudou Game. In songs like Natural Vaudou, Chrie Nye and La vie c'est bon, the unbeatable trance rhythm inherited from James Brown and Fela Kuti are evident. Across Kidayu, Vaudou Game sound like the big bands from the golden age of Ethiopian dance music but it's in songs like La dette, Revolution and Elle dcide where they show their greatest inspiration - James Brown. In using the original form of ecstatic voodoo rituals, he decorates his songs with guitars, keyboards, bass, rhythms and counter rhythms, and a steaming pair of brass. On Kidayu, Solo is joined by: Vicente Fritis - keyboards/backing vocals; Jerme Bartolome - saxophone/percussions/backing vocals; Guilhem Parguel - trombone/percussions/backing vocals; Simon Bacroix - bass/backing vocals; Hafid Zouaoui - drums; Stephane Pauze - sound engineer.