VAUDOU GAME

Lyon-based voodoo men take the funky train to trance-central, where digital is forbidden and nature talks back. “Vodun is a culture, a way of living, an art”: Vaudou Game with Peter Solo (at rear) “BANG, BANG, BANG. PURE SOUND. NATURAL SOUND. VODUN SOUND.” Peter Solo

“Vodun without music is not vodun, brother,” laughs Peter Solo, leader of the Lyon-based octet Vaudou Game. “If you know Togo, we don’t have any kind of harmonic instrument like balafon or kora; the only things we have are percussion, vocals and bells. It’s about the rhythm. You put on the rhythm, you don’t change the groove. No arrangements. You let people get into the groove to find themselves, get into a trance and get to the next level.” Having released their second album, the splendidly funky Kidayú (Hot Casa), Vaudou Game have been laying down that groove around Europe for the past six months, yet the first thing anybody ever asks Solo about is his backstory – his mother was not only a successful businesswoman, she was also a vodunsi, or to put it in Hollywood terms, a priestess of voodoo (known as “vodun” in West Africa), and Solo’s music is rooted in those traditions. So if you want to get an interview off to a lively start, ask him about zombies… “Vodun is not something negative, or mystic or dark. That’s a film version. No, vodun is a culture, a way of living and an art. I need to talk about this. My mother taught me to respect nature, be in harmony with nature, talk to nature. That’s vodun. I was born in this culture and I believe in it and practise it, and Vaudou Game was born to talk about vodun.” A backing musician in Togo, where he played guitar for visiting stars, Solo wound up in London with new music to grasp: reggae, Nigerian juju, gospel and salsa. “I played all those musics but I never did my own thing. I wasn’t ready, and those guys were very bad good, you know? I had to go to school.” It was the attitude to his religion, though, that pushed him towards making his own music. “I couldn’t talk about it openly. People would say, ‘This is sorcery, evil, evil, you will die if you speak about vodun’, and I preferred to die but talking about my culture.” Things changed when he started mixing James Brown with veterans and fellow believers El Rego and Roger Damawuzan (Solo’s uncle) and Orchestre Poly Rythmo De Cotonou. Finding the same energy in funk and vodun, he realised that to stay true to his culture meant going right back to nature: digital music was forbidden. “We had a 15-track Magnetophon. I fought with my band for the first time. I said no digital, no computer, no anything. We rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed. Recording was one shot. If people love it they love it, if they don’t we know that we did something naturally. One shot. Bang, bang, bang. Pure sound. Natural sound. Vodun sound.” David Hutcheon