Recording more than 50 albums and hundreds of 45s, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were one of the most prolific bands of the 20th century. They were also one of the best. An innovative group that developed its own distinctive style of hard-driving funk but still found time to record in just about every style imaginable, from highlife, Afrobeat, and rumba to rock, jazz, soul, and folk. And yet, as of today, they don't even have a Wikipedia page. That peers of Bembeya Jazz National, Orchestra Baobab, Rail Band, OK Jazz, Fela's Africa 70, and every other great African band of the 1950s-70s has managed to remain this obscure and unheard is frankly baffling-- and attributable more to the capricious nature of fame than any other single factor.

The band's geographic location probably didn't help. Their home country of Benin, a relatively small nation bordering Nigeria, is often overshadowed in the eyes of the rest of the world by its neighbors, and because the former French colony and its even smaller neighbor Togo are surrounded by the Anglophone giants Ghana and Nigeria, their recordings sometimes found it difficult to travel far outside their borders. (Though they did tour much of Africa and even France during their 1969-1982 heyday.) Still, Poly-Rythmo and its most prominent members are household names in their homeland.

Compiled by Analog Africa's Samy Ben Redjeb, The Vodoun Effect gathers 14 of the band's rawest, funkiest cuts into a thrilling hours-plus album. The generous, 44-page liner notes inform us that while the band did most of its recording, and certainly its most prominent recording, for the Albarika Store label, it also cut dozens of sides for smaller labels of more modest means. This compilation focuses on those releases. Many of these tracks were recorded with a microphone or two plugged into a Nagra reel-to-reel machine, but you'd never guess the setup was that simple from the incredible depth and fidelity of the sound. Pressings of these 45s rarely exceeded 500 copies, and distribution scarcely ever reached outside the coastal cities of Cotonou and Porto Novo, so this is the first any of these songs save one have ever been available outside Benin. (There's no overlap at all between this and the other two Poly-Rythmo comps available in the West, Sound Way's excellent, funk-focused Kings of Benin Urban Groove and Popular African Music's highlife-centric and also great Reminiscin' in Tempo.)

The engine of the band was its rhythm section: drummer Yehouessi Leopold, lead guitarist Bernard "Papillon" Zoundegnon, and bassist Gustave Bentho. Leopold was a master of the polyrhythmic foundations the band was named for, effortlessly playing three against four to give the band's songs a swaying, unstoppable feel and adapting the Vodoun (aka voodoo) ceremonial rhythms sato and sakpata into unique funk that drove the band at a frenetic pace. Just as the sound is stripped down on these recordings, so too is the band, with the horns frequently absent, leaving just the core of drums, bass, and two guitars, with some buzzing organ and a singer or two. The immense rhythmic power of the music is the primary attraction, but the compositions are also quite sophisticated, setting contrasting sections against each other, hinging on memorable refrains and still leaving space for the band to stretch out and strut its stuff.

The telepathic tightness of the band is a strength: The group latches onto the relatively slow sakpato beat of "Mi Ni Non Kpo", entwining the guitars around the sturdy bassline and crackling percussion to create a psychedelic whirlwind of intertwining rhythm. Elsewhere, "Se Tche We Djo Mon" simply rides a pulsating, non-stop groove, slathering it with Papillon's weightless lead guitar, which carries one of the disc's most memorable riffs. Papillon's solo on "Assibavi" is jaw-dropping, deploying rippling waves of notes soaked in heavy reverb to create a shimmering soundscape above the din of the band. "Mi Homlan Dadale" features a dramatic rhythmic shift to a majestic organ and guitar phrase between its verses, then jumps back into pocket again while the vocalist hangs on for the ride. There's not a single track that doesn't have a groove worth talking about, and there's not a single groove whose power can be adequately translated into words.

Papillon and Yehouessi Leopold both died within a year of each other in the early 1980s, just as mainstream artists and listeners around the world were finally getting clued in to African sounds, and it's tough not to think what might have been had the classic rhythm section been able to carry them into that era. At the very least, those outside Benin are finally getting to hear this music, delivered in a beautiful, informative package stuffed with photos and even a small-label 45 discography, and for that we should be grateful.

— Joe Tangari, February 6, 2009 

I'll seed between 0.00 & 08.00 GMT