With Avoudé, Dogo du Togo and the Alagaa Beat Band have created music infused with Togolese culture, history, and tradition while also sounding excitingly modern and intriguing.
The history of Togo presents, in many respects, as a dismal one. Until the 19th Century, it was a centre for the Slave Trade, after which it was subjected to colonisation, at first by the Germans and, following the First World War, by the French and British. Independence was achieved in 1960, and following a military coup, The Gnassingbé family has ruled Togo since 1967. With a poor record on human rights, the latest available figures also show nearly 50% of the population living below the poverty line. That there is some fine music emanating from the country offers somewhat of an antidote to this picture, brought to our attention in this case by the good folk at We Are Busybodies, the Toronto-based record label.
Togolese singer and guitarist Serge Massama Dogo, the eponymous Dogo du Togo, who has resided in the US for twenty years and fronts Elikeh, a Washington D.C. Afro-pop band, now divides his time between there and Togo’s capital Lomé, building on his dream of creating a new form of psychedelic Afro-rock music that incorporates Togolese musical traditions, which he terms the alagaa beat.
As Dogo explains, alagaa means ‘trance’ in Ewe, one of the languages spoken in Togo, “because when you listen to this music, if you don’t get in a trance, then something’s wrong with you! The alagaa beat brings the energy right away. As soon as you bring it in, it just feels different, it takes you somewhere else.”
With Avoudé, he has literally returned to his Togo roots, introducing the world to his new Lomé-based Alagaa Beat Band, a reunion of friends who grew up playing music together on the streets of Lomé in the 1990s. Indeed, lead guitarist Oya Yao was Dogo’s original guitar teacher. The songs on the album are firmly based on traditional Togolese rhythms, including bobobo, kamou and kpanlogo, from the Ewe, Mina, Ga and Kabye people, with alagaa itself deriving from an intricate interplay between the drum kit and rhythm guitar, characterised by a distinctive double snare-hit and a guitar part modelled on the traditional gankogui kinka bell pattern.
The melodies are also securely rooted in the country’s cultural history, using unique pentatonic scales derived from the local Vodún (Voodoo) music, religion and more festive traditions. On Avoudé, recorded live in less than two days in Lomé with help from much sought-after engineer Patrick Jauneaud (Elton John, Kate Bush, Queen), these sounds are reinforced by a driving horn section, graceful retro-synths and the striking addition of the electric violin. Careful listening will also reveal funk, reggae, rock and soul influences, whilst the lyrics talk of immigration, social justice and hope, alongside other aspects of quotidian Togolese life.
Doors and barriers are torn asunder as the album’s title track kicks things off with a bang. Described by Dogo himself as “alagaa par excellence”, soaring guitar, understated synth and rattling percussion underscore the multi-language lyrics, which encourage the hard work necessary in striving for a successful life,
“Life no go be easy oh. You got to fight for it.
Né olakpo esron a déa dé, you got to work on it.”
The third track, Enouwo Lagnon,continues this lyrical theme with the message that no matter how hard things get, through hope, prayer and struggle, things will get better. Although again pulsating with irresistible rhythms and vocals, musically, this song takes a different route to the Avoudé track, with the lyrics punctuated by tremendous trumpet and synthesiser solos from Aklama and Daniel Meinecke, respectively.
Squeezed between these two tracks is Zonva, its plaintive opening electric violin notes giving way to a thrumming bass groove, hand-clapping rhythms, more luscious synth lines, strident brass and harmonious group vocals on what is a funky roller-coaster ride of a song.
For those seeking a psychedelic wig-out, look no further than Adzé Adzé, one of the few songs on this collection that do not use alagaa. Instead, it has a martial 12/8 agbadza beat, originally used to celebrate victorious warriors. The opening vocal ululations are quickly subsumed by spacey, psych, fuzzy electric guitar notes, esoteric synth and more glorious brass on what is a tremendously busy track, the overtly political lyrics of which encourage and urge the youth of Africa to work to create a bright future and to refuse to bow down and allow their countries to become puppets of Western governments.
Adzé loo Adzé adzé” here they are coming again. This time, I won’t let them take over my place…
The opening track on Side B of the album’s vinyl version is the very brass-heavy Nye Dzi. Catchy in the extreme, the treated guitar effects and tremendous synthesiser patterns epitomise the total energy created by the band, which here is redolent of 1970’s Osibisa.
The sonic palette changes, once more, with Xenophobia, a song which, lyrically, reflects the importance of welcome and hospitality to strangers and guests in Togolese culture.
Here, the brassy opening develops into a disco beat, with shuffling percussion and strong bass lines moving the piece along at a pace.
Tsikwol’s fluid bass-playing features heavily on the penultimate track, Africa. In a song where interesting and varied time signatures are a key feature, the seamless melding of the electric guitar, brass and pulsating percussion belies the group’s short time to prepare and record this album.
The final, short offering, the appropriately entitled Happiness, is reached all too soon. An instrumental, if one discounts the vocalised shouts and whoops that embody the sheer enjoyment of the piece, a return to a trippy, psych world ensues, wobbly synth sounds trading with the scuzzy, fuzzy guitars and frenetic percussion—a Gulf of Guinea meets Frank Zappa moment.
With Avoudé, Dogo du Togo and the Alagaa Beat Band have created music respectfully infused with Togolese culture, history, and tradition while unashamedly incorporating modern sounds and techniques. The result is an album that both intrigues and excites in equal measure.
Avoudé (8th November 2024) We Are Busy Bodies
Bandcamp: https://dogodutogo.bandcamp.com/album/avoud