Love Drum Talk (Remastered) Babatunde Olatunji

• 1 Saré Tete Wa 06:06
• 2 What's Your Number, Mama? 06:53
• 3 Love Drum Talk 09:08
• 4 Bebí Alolo 09:12
• 5 Spell Mónisola 07:37
• 6 Don't Know Why My Love 05:38
• 7 Mother, Give Me Love 01:29
• 8 Long Distance Lover 09:46
• Total Runtime 55:49

Info zu Love Drum Talk (Remastered)

Legend Babatunde Olatunju unleashes the rhythm of passion on his first Chesky release. Featuring an ebullient ensemble of guitarists, singers and a myriad of percussionists, "Love Drum Talk" is a heart-pounding celebration of love. This disc is simply staggering. It's as if some elemental, primeval, mystical musical force were somehow magically captured on a piece of polycarbonate, that sound quality is as staggering as the music.

In a church on a leafy street in Chelsea, Manhattan, saints in stained glass windows smile benevolently down on the drums of Africa beating out their message of spiritual love. At the center of a group of players from Africa, the Caribbean and America is the venerable Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian drummer whose landmark 1958 release, Drums of Passion, first restored Africa's ancient and always modern rhythms to the land that had banned them in slavery days, America. This recording is the tenth in Olatunji's Drums of Passion cycle that explores integral facets of the human experience, from healing to liberty. Now Olatunji turns his attention to life's brightest aspect. ""This one is about love,"" he declares exuberantly. ""What is love? I'm trying to give the different meanings that we think about love. Love is a lifetime process. It might take a lifetime for me to know you."" He quotes an African saying: ""What one desires most in one's heart finds frequent expression in one's words."" Olatunji's words are sung in his tribal language, Yoruba, and the drums that surround him - his ashiko, the big, curvaceous mother drum, the smaller, cylindrical djembe, the djun-djun and the talking drum - transmit the message as eloquently as the lyrics. Each track invokes another face of love and tells stories of Olatunji's own life. On Spell M6nisola, Olatunji sings of his American-born granddaughter going to study at her grandmother's school in Ibadan, Nigeria, as he articulates the young girl's name in drumbeats. The travails of romantic love are addressed on Sare Tete Wa, yearning as it begs, ""Lover, please come running back to me."" Fear of commitment permeates Long Distance Lover, and a parallel anguish fuels the doomed passion of Don't Know Why My Love. Upbeat dance floor lust grooves through What's Your Number, Mama?, in which a dancer's devious routine to acquire a love object's phone number vies with his mental calculations of her measurements. A more abstract love, the intimate conspiracy between dancer and drummer, inspires Bebi Alolo and Love Drum Talk. The drums were a daily backdrop to life in Babatunde Olatunji's birthplace, the fishing village of Ajido, some forty miles outside Lagos. He arrived in America in 1950 and traveled on a segregated ""Jim Crow"" train to study at Morehouse College. ""I started the whole music thing to protect my sanity,"" he explains. Stunned by the ignorance of his fellow students, who assumed all Africans lived among lions in the jungle, Olatunji began inviting them to drum and sing in his rooms and discovered his life's mission as Africa's musical ambassador. Before the birth of the Civil Rights movement, Olatunji played racially mixed gigs in the South; in New York, he jammed with Cannonball Adderley, Max Roach and John Coltrane, who helped establish his ongoing Harlem-based organization, OCAC (the Olatunji Center for African Culture). The former political science student grew to be the confidante of leaders from Kwame Nkrumah to Martin Luther King. A recent association with the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart, with whom he formed the influential percussion supergroup, Planet Drum, further expanded his influence. Olatunji remembers, ""When I first came to Harlem, people would insist, 'I'm not from Africa!' It went from there to saying, 'I'm a black person,' then it became 'I'm an African American.' Now, they say, 'I am an African.'"" That evolution of identity and consciousness may be Olatunji's greatest triumph.

Babatunde Olatunji, ashiko and ngoma drums, lead vocals
Hui Coz, acoustic guitar, mandolin
Adesoji Odukogbe, acoustic guitar
Jeff Andrews, fretless electric bass
Todd Turkisher, drum set
Sanga of the Valley (Anthony Francis), djembe
Gordon Ryan, junjun, agogo
James Cherry, sekere
Della Flack, vocals
Branice McKenzie, vocals
Ty Stephens, vocals

Digitally remastered

Babatunde Olatunji
was a Grammy award winning virtuoso drummer, percussionist, producer, social activist, educator and recording artist who first rose to prominence in the late 1950's.

Born in Ajido, a small town in Badagry, near Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria, Baba was educated at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia after receiving a Rotary Scholarship to the school. At Morehouse, he began a small drum and dance company to dispel the misconceptions about Africa.

In 1957, while pursuing graduate studies at NYU, Baba began to play his drum at private functions. During this time he came to the attention of Columbia Records A&R man John Hammond, who eventually signed him to the label. In 1959 Baba released Drums of Passion, the first of six records on the Columbia label, which became a major hit, and sold millions of copies worldwide and served as the introduction for many Americans to World Music.

Early career milestones included residencies at Radio City Music Hall with a 66 piece orchestra, the World's Fair in New York City, in 1964 and 1965, and TV appearances on programs including the Tonight Show, the Mike Douglas Show and the Bell Telephone Hour.

He secured foundation grants to tour colleges and universities across the country. Among the countless students who were impressed by his performances was Mickey Hart, who would go on to join the Grateful Dead and later recharge Baba's career.

Baba wrote many musical compositions including the percussion section of the scores for both the Broadway and Hollywood productions of "A Raisin In The Sun". He also assisted his fellow Morehouse alumni, Bill Lee, with the music for "She's Gotta Have It".

In 1966, Baba's dedication to the preservation and communication of African culture led him to establish with his wife Amy, their "dream", the Olatunji Center of African Culture in the heart of Harlem, New York. At the Center, Baba made a commitment to education by providing low cost classes in a wide range of cultural subjects to adults and children. His expertise in the area of African music and dance led to his direction of educational television series, co-authoring the book, "African Musical Instruments, Their Origin and Use", as well as acting, as a consultant and authority for numerous museum shows, documentaries, interviews and publications.

In 1991, Baba was a partner in forming the drum and percussion ensemble "Planet Drum" with Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. "Planet Drum" produced a recording of the same name that has been a best-selling recording on commercial charts. The ensemble also had a 15-city tour of the US, playing to sold out audiences at such venues as Carnegie Hall in New York City. The "Planet Drum" CD also received a Grammy Award in 1991.

Some of Baba's later released recordings were, "Celebrate Freedom, Justice and Peace", "Healing Rhythms, Songs and Chants", including the 1998 Grammy nominated release, on Chesky Records of "Love Drum Talk".

Baba was a member of the faculties at both the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, where he continued to pursue his strong commitment to disseminating knowledge of African culture through teaching of traditional drumming, dancing and chanting for people of all ages.

In 1996 Baba was named the Impresario of the Ghana Dance Ensemble, one of two National Dance Companies of Ghana. Through an agreement with the University of Accra, Ghana, Baba led yearly workshops at the International Centre for African Music and Dance. Also in 1996, Olatunji received an Honorary Doctorate from The City University of New York, Medgar Evers College, in Brooklyn, for his outstanding service and contribution to the arts and culture.

Baba made his transition on April 6, 2003, in Salinas, California, due to complications from diabetes.

The family of Babatunde Olatunji and The Drummers and Dancers of Passion, continue their vision of the shared experience of joy, energy and exhilaration stimulated by the sounds and rhythms of the Universal Language from the deep tradition of African drumming, dancing and chanting.

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