Lomé, TG · Togolese voodoo-pop

Nana Benz Du Togo

2 festivals played ↓

Togolese voodoo-pop — call-and-response trance over analog synth bass, women's voices carrying ritual into the club.

Nana Benz Du Togo take their name from the wax-print traders who ruled Lomé's central market and became known for the Mercedes cars their success paid for. The group describes itself as an organic-electronic project: women musicians who set voodoo ceremonial singing against machine-made rhythm rather than a conventional band lineup, aiming the tradition and its soul at the dancefloor.

The instruments are as improvised as the music: a vintage Korg synthesizer supplies the bass and texture, ceremonial pots stand in for drums, and one bass guitar is built from two lengths of PVC tubing fitted into a suitcase that belonged to one of the members' grandfathers.

Over this the singers keep the layered, repeating call-and-response of ritual chant, trance patterns built for endurance rather than climax, pushed toward a dancefloor pulse rather than left as ceremony. The group performs in the same printed cloth that gives them their name.

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Togolese voodoo-pop