Drums of Passion

Two of my favorite hobbies are to explore music and to observe the evolution of things. I’m combining these simple pleasures for this post. Last year I fell in love with Mongo Santamaria a Cuban percussionist who included African and santaria ceremony drumming in his albums. I’ve always loved layered percussion in Jazz and Latin jazz. Especially Perez Prado’s “Caballo Negro”, Tito Puente’s “Ran Kan Kan”, Mongo Santamaria’s “Me and You Baby”, Fela Kuti’s “Fefe Naa Efe”, Jorge Ben Jor's "Taj Mahal", Art Blakey’s “Drum Thunder Suite”, anything Gene Krupa, and anything Buddy Rich. Heck I even usually date a drummer if I date a musician. Thank god I got to see Tito Puente two weeks before his death. I think like some sort of mythical being he was the incarnate spirit of the timbale. It was my all time most memorable concert experience; I was totally star struck.

Then Last month I found an old Santana’s Greatest Hits CD in my closet. I grew up on Santana and hadn’t really listened to him much since I was younger but remembered he had some great percussion in a lot of his songs. The first song is Evil Ways, skip, they play that all the time on the radio but the second song Jingo blew me away! I blared it on my stereo system. I played the opening over and over. The thunderous drums in the back drop and the guitar playing over took me.

So when I got to work the next day, well of course I needed to listen to the damn song all day long. I looked it up on youtube and in the related video list was a video for Babatunde Olatunji Jin-Go-Bo-La (Drums of Passion). I clicked it and hello! it was the original version, all traditional drumming no rock band added in its beautiful raw hypnotic African form. Then I noticed a Fatboy Slim Song by the same name so I clicked on it. This time it was a much more modern high octane version used on the Just Dance Wii Game. It’s entirely electronic but still has its basic soul that makes you feel like you have to move.

Millions of people all over the world are now dancing along to this song via Nintendo Wii everyday in their living rooms; just as thousands of people in the 70's were blown away by the drumming that inspired the uber passionate cries from Santana’s guitar on this song while they were smoking pot and hanging out with their friends. All thanks to a Legendary African percussionist that loved his native music enough to bring it to the world and inspire others.

Other Percussion favorites :