Music of Togo

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Togo has produced a number of internationally known popular entertainers including Bella Bellow and Jimi Hope. The country has a diverse folk tradition, with more than forty ethnic groups, each with their own styles.

Bellow is Togo's best-known musician. Her career began after representing her country in 1966 at the Dakar Arts Festival [1]. She began a career singing love-oriented ballads in 1969, when she worked with Togolese-French producer Gérard Akueson and soon appeared on French national radio and then the prestigious Olympia Music Hall [2]. She toured across much of the world before dying in a car accident in 1973, just after recording the hit collaboration with Manu Dibango "Sango Jesus Christo" [3]. In Bellow's wake came a wave of female singers, including Mabah, Afia Mala, Fifi Rafiatou and Ita Jourias [4]. Other musicians include the afore-mentioned Jimi Hope and internationally known performer King Mensah. Mensah, a former performer at the Ki-Yi M'Bock Theatre in Abidjan, toured Europe and Japan before opening his own show in French Guiana and then moving to Paris and formed a band called Favaneva [5]. Jimi Hope is known for politically incisive lyrics and an innovative rock-based style [6].

[edit] Folk music

Togolese folk music includes a great variety of percussion-led dance music. Folk songs are typically in the Ewe language, but are also in Fon and Yoruba [7]. There are folk songs for fishermen in the south of the country, sometimes accompanied by bells and gongs. Other folk instruments include the flute and the bow [8].

Dances include the southern royal djokoto, the war dances kpehouhuon and atsina, the hunters' dance adewu, the stilt dance tchebe, the miming masseh, as well as regional dances like the coastal sakpate and the kaka [9].

Drums are played all over Togo, and are used to celebrate all the major events of one's life, such as marriage and baptism; drums are also used religiously, by both Christians and Muslims, and for festivals like the Expesoso or Yeke Yeke festival [10]. There are numerous rhythms in Togo, with each area having its own special beat. There are also numerous forms of drums, with OxFam noting, in the Aneho district alone, agbadja, ageche, aziboloe, kple, amedjeame, akpesse, grekon, blekete and adamdom drums [11].

West African music

Benin - Burkina Faso - Chad - Côte d'Ivoire - Gambia - Ghana - Guinea - Guinea-Bissau
Liberia - Mali - Mauritania - Niger - Nigeria - Senegal - Sierra Leone - Togo - Western Sahara

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  2. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  3. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  4. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  5. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  6. ^ Bensignor and Audra, pg. 435
  7. ^ Virtual journey through Togo, music + dance
  8. ^ Virtual journey through Togo, music + dance
  9. ^ World Music Central
  10. ^ Virtual journey through Togo, Togolese drumming
  11. ^ Virtual journey through Togo, Togolese drumming
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