| Babatunde Olatunji Mp3, Babatunde Olatunji Music Lyrics
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Babatunde Olatunji biography, Babatunde Olatunji discography
April 6, 2003) was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist and recording artist.He came to the United States of America in 1950.John Hammond who signed him to the Columbia label in 1957.Santana recorded on his debut album, Santana, as "Jingo."Olatunji favoured a big percussion sound, and his records typically featured more than 20 players, unusual for a percussion based ensemble.Drums of Passion also served as the band's name.Clark Terry, Bill Lee, Horace Silver, Yusef Lateef, Sikiru Adepoju and Charles Lloyd, among others.He assisted Bill Lee with the music for his son Spike Lee's hit film She's Gotta Have It.When he performed before the United Nations General Assembly, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoes and danced.On July 21, 1979, he appeared at the Amandla Festival along with Bob Marley, Dick Gregory, Patti LaBelle and Eddie Palmieri, amongst others.Ta" method after the different sounds made on the drum.Over the years he presented workshops nationally and internationally at too many colleges, universities, civic, cultural and governmental organizations to list here.Dietz (John Day Company, 1965).He also taught at the Esalen Institute in California from 1985 until shortly before his death from diabetes in 2003, on the day before his 76th birthday.EP)
Dance to the Beat of My Drum
Olatunji
Flaming Drums (1962, Columbia Records CS8666)
Zungo!This page was last modified on 21 February 2008, at 04:57.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.Babatunde Olatunji was a virtuoso of West African
percussion.Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart on
their Planet Drum album.It's been too long since Santa Cruz has had the pleasure of hearing and experiencing the healing rhythms of Babatunde Olatunji.World Cultures Festival given by "One Earth, One People" to be held at the San Juan Bautista Mission on May 4th and 5th1 there will also be a "Gathering of Spirits" for freedom, justice and peace on March 9th featuring Babatunde Olatunji at the Pacific Cultural Center.Sunday, April 6, 2003, 7:30 am, at the age of 75.Sorry, I've been doing some updates and the page numbers have changed.Use the search box above to search again for the quote, or browse the categories at the home page.Please feel free to borrow a few quotations as you need them (that's what I did!More information on copyright and credits on the Main page.Your search did not match any products.Too many keywords can constrain your search.Use fewer keywords to find more results.If you want to specify which of your search terms should match the author's name and which should match the title, you should conduct an Advanced Search.View or change your orders in Your Account.Power of African Music to U.Olatunji, with over 3,000 performances
to his credit, accumulated numerous awards and accolades.Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame in Harlem.Babatunde Olatunji's autobiography is projected to be
published by Temple University Press in the near future.Public Administration at New York University.Professor Akiwowo, as well as a
world of devoted friends and fans.Best World Music Album Grammy Award in 1991 for the CD Planet
Drum.It hits people in so many different ways.It is a feeling that makes you say to yourself, '
I'm glad to be alive today!Babatunde Olatunji died Sunday morning, April 6, 2003 just ten days after being admitted to Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, of complications due to his long struggle with the effects of Diabetes.Babatunde Olatunji was born 1927 in the small village of Ajido, Nigeria, about forty miles from Lagos, the capital of the country.The drumbeat of his childhood became the life blood of his adult experience as Olatunji grew and traveled throughout the world popularizing the music of his Yoruban heritage.Throughout his American education he had a unique perspective on the cultural divides between black and white Americans.America was thought to be in those days.These sorts of insights were the motivating factor that brought Olatunji to begin performing the drumming of his Yoruba ancestors.To cover his expenses he started a small drumming and dance group.Released in 1959 by Columbia Records, Olatunji's first album became an unprecedented, worldwide smash hit.It was the first album to bring genuine African music to Western ears, and it went on to sell over five million copies and is still a popular recording.In 1964 Olatunji performed at the African Pavilion at the New York World Fair where he was able to raise enough money to open the Olatunji Center for African Culture (OCAC) in Harlem, offering classes in African dance, music, language, folklore, and history.Baba's love for the drum all over the world.Mickey Hart first encountered Olatunji in one of those educational African programs.In his classes Baba always asked the students to come and beat on the drums and he first recognized Mickey's talent over 25 years ago in one of those programs.Everything and every human action revolves in rhythm.Both in concert and in the studio, Olatunji opted for a big sound, often using 20 or more singers, percussionists, and dancers.In 1991 he and Hart joined forces on Planet Drum, a group that toured around the country and later recorded an album that won a Grammy Award.In 1997, Chesky Records released Love Drum Talk, which went on to be nominated for the 1998 Grammy for Best World Music Album.Baba was the single most important contributor to the popularization of African hand drumming in the United States.This simple method revolutionized the learning rate for thousands of hand drum students in the West.Liberian rhythm Fanga (a song of welcome to which he added words), which was often played for him by his students when he would enter a workshop.Olatunji traveled throughout the world for almost half a century giving percussion workshops spreading his love of the drum, song, music, and African culture inspiring generations of American musicians, many of whom have devoted their careers to African music and who are, in turn, spreading Baba's message to their students.It hits people in so many different ways.Olatunji's Page in The African Music Encyclopedia.Babatunde Olatunji and Arthur Hull.About the author: Janet Planet is a writer and drummer and one of many seeds planted by Babatunde Olatunji during his lifetime.Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji's ensemble
heard on Drums of Passion not only was released on a major label
but became a top 10 record in America.Even at that time, folklorists and historians
had recognized the enormous debt that homegrown styles like blues and jazz
owed to African music and its rhythms.Olatunji was much more than a gifted, groundbreaking
artist.By the time that his music was making the charts, he was also making
the lecture circuit, going around colleges to talk about African culture.He also decided to create his own arts center to promote the work of other
musicians and teach young people about music.His work schedule was punishing
but Olatunji was tireless: from 1968 to 1982, he taught at Roxbury (Massachusetts)
two days a week then teaching two days a week a class at Kent State and
then traveling back to New York for the weekends to teach at his own school.Olatunji in April 1999 to talk about the span of his career.Sad news as Baba passed away in California on April 6th at the age of 76 from diabetes.He will be missed and he will be remembered.So you grow up as a child seeing all of this
and being part of it.It's just like any
young man here in America will wake up at any time during the summer and
can grab a baseball bat or pick up a basketball and play around with it.In retrospect, I remember very well that I was always on the side
where the musicians were instead of where the audience was at all festivals.You are just there
and you are a part of it.But for me, I would always stand where the musicians,
the drummers were.PSF: Who were some of these musicians who influenced
you early on?These are really professional musicians whom you
would see at all the occasions that I mentioned.They acknowledged
their presence and really had a place for them in society.Those who wake
up every day to play music, those who go to the marketplaces to perform
where the women sell their wares, those are the professional musicians.These are events
that are announced by word of mouth.Really, it wasn't what we
thought it was or all of things that we read about it.We went to school
in the South.At our arrival at Morehouse Campus, which is a black college,
we saw some people who looked like people we knew at home.They would tell
us "No, we're not from Africa."We went through all that whole period of trying to
educate our brothers and sisters about their African heritage.When I came to New York, I went to the New York University
Graduate School of Public Administration and International Relations.African programs
for Black awareness for NAACP and other groups.African music and dance while at Morehouse.Tarzan or the Hollywood
image.So upon graduation, I planned to continue the same thing.In 1956, I contributed to the first UNICEF recording
for children.The UN Choir was singing at a party for New
Year's Eve, which I went to.Before that, I had been
at schools lecturing and performing African music and dance, talking about
he rich cultural heritage of Africa as related to blues, jazz, gospel singing.It was reviewed by all the daily newspapers there of the day.It was then that Al Han, artists representative of
Columbia Records, came to me and said 'We'll put you in the studio.That
was the recording of Drums of Passion.It was number 13 on the Billboard
charts.It was the first African recording that really demonstrated the
impact of percussion in music.PSF: Do you feel that there are medicinal powers
in your music?We are now experiencing and trying to discover
how it works.We know
that it will always do that.The instruments that we use in Africa are
sources of communication.We know that rhythm is the soul of life.Everything that we do is
in rhythm.You can't say what it is but it is something powerful.You
feel in excess of it.In talking about jazz, you call it a phenomenon that
has been born from so many sources.The jazz musician (like Coltrane) with their hands, do improvisation."Oh happy day, happy day."You
have African rhythms, revisions of African traditions.People who are very, very
eloquent in the sense when you go through times like Ozzy Davis, people
who are natural at things.You have blues singers who
through their songs, tell stories about their lifestyle or the lifestyle
of the people they deal with and what is happening in their immediate environment,
how they feel about life in general.As you move from North America to South America,
the retention of African tradition even becomes more powerful than it is
in North America.The continents were not really separated as they were
with North America.If you go to Trinidad, you can listen to people who are chanting
the same songs to the God of thunder as they do in Nigeria.If you go to
the oriental province in Cuba, where Mongo Santamaria came from, they have
the same way of live and the same way of talking is practically the same
thing as a Guinea tribe.The same thing in Guyana, the South Sea Islands.We put it together to make music.It's like seeing a vision of what's going to happen.President of the Student's Union (at Morehouse).The President
applauded the speech and the next day, he called me and my wife to his
castle.We will be able to help you.So the first drum set I had for
Drums
Of Passion actually came from Ghana.This was four years later!Drums Of Passion was the first album.From there,
it became a necessary way of life with me to pursue and looking for support
from abroad and from here.That led to the establishment of the Olatunji
Center of African Culture.That was before he started his company.We would present
modern jazz groups and they perform with us.We started the Olatunji Center
in Harlem then (1967).Before that, we formed
at the World's Fair, 1964, 1965.We were the first African group in this
country to perform at the World's Fair.The audience at the African pavilion
was the most popular one at the Fair.The money I made there, I used to
open the Center.Then later on, he did not perform for two years
and the last performance he gave was where?They go and borrow
money from their cousins.It was unequal
distribution of wealth.So he (Coltrane) said, 'I want to deal with this
and do some research and see where I am, learn what I can learn about Western
music and jazz.He came to me and said
'you and me and several other people like ourselves should come together.We know how to promote shows.You want to have
a center in every center in America?Your group, my group
and Yusef's (Lateef) group can start with Lincoln Center and we'll raise
enough money.The center was also there for the purpose of bringing
back what I read about Harlem.So I was wondering why it wasn't happening
again?It was done right there at the center.Sunday afternoon, all for two dollars!So most of the most of people
you see teaching African dance were trained there.That's where I met Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead).He
was at one of the schools where they had the African program.He came and did it and
I said "He's good!"It wasn't until November 1985
in San Francisco that I met him again at one of the Bill Graham theatres.He said "You don't remember me but I want to tell
you something...What are you doing tomorrow?"So he says "OK,
you're going to open for the Grateful Dead."I'm a legend but he didn't go for
my kind of music.We would also close out the shows
at 4AM.And where would they go then?It was a fascinating period.Harlem just to (earn money to)
come upstairs and drum.Street to 138th Street and I saw that those kids didn't go
school.They walked around, had nowhere to go.So I took them upstairs
and had them play drums.The
answer is not spending millions of dollars to go on television and tell
people "JUST SAY NO."You got to do what Malcolm
(X) said."Stop it downtown and it won't
come uptown."Now, the black student unions would want to sponsor me but they don't have
no money.It's black backlash that I experienced.The black student union gets very little
money and they want to do so much.The African theatre is a total theatre.You cannot
write a dramatic play without song and without movement.The trial is lost
if you have a presentation that does not address ALL aspects of the music.That's the only
way that they're going to be able to play adequately and professionally.That's how they will be able to communicate with them.Not until recent times have I been noticing in Western
theatre, in Broadway shows, the people who audition must be able to sing,
dance and act.This is no sense in the whole presentation that the
drummer does not know the dance.In the other words, the dancer and the drummer have
become one.The drummer as well as the dancer has the ability to sing along
as they perform.That is normally
taught from the beginning of any particular presentation or production.The drummers between themselves are interacting and
communicating.Irrespective of the number of drummers involved in a presentation,
each drummer is given a part to play for the whole.That's (been) happening for thousands
of years.African dance but
they don't teach the music.They just play for the dance.Every traditional
dance that's been passed on from time immortal is all music, unless it
is a new work.But the interaction among the drummers is very
clear that you don't jump into playing rhythmic patterns unless there is
a reason or the group can help bring you back as a reminder to say 'this
is what you're supposed to be playing.All the musicians know the parts,
including the part of the lead drummer.PSF: I had heard that you performed at a celebration
here for Nelson Mandela.Could you talk about that?They had a special service for Mandela
when he first came here (1990).It was my group that led him into the church,
with the drums and the chants.San Francisco, which was also organized
by Bill Graham.San Francisco to
discuss a project, the Voices of Africa.What I've been doing here...In my estimation, we are in an educational pursuit.In the Western world, we have neglected those traditional values.These times now make them very, very
aware of that.PSF: Do you see your work as carrying on tradition
and bringing a message to people?That's exactly what I'm so grateful about.It will come out very well.Then we cannot let time go by without taking care of that particular aspect
of our development now, especially if we try to patch up the rest of the
world.If we're really going to catch up, as they say, he
who is behind must run faster than he who is in front.That's if you want
to catch up.And we need to catch up with the rest of the world.Africa
needs a very strong leadership, compassionate leadership.Who are we trying to fight?Why didn't they raise that money years
ago to prevent what happened there?The military annulled the election
and go away with it and we were doing business with a tyrant.PSF: How do you think your work has evolved?It was overpowered by other instruments.There's always a message about each CD that
I put out.African music, even Africans themselves, needs to make sure that we
don't lose that touch.That our performances really be a signature of
where the roots of the music come from.No matter who you are or where you are, you
will be effect by an environment.But nevertheless, you cannot afford to
lose yourself.The village was my conservatory."
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