“The spirit of the drum is something that you feelbut cannot put your hands on,It does something to you from the inside out . . . It hits people in so many different ways. But the feeling is one that is satisfying and joyful.It is a feeling that makes you say to yourself, I’m glad to be alive today! I’m glad to be part of this world!” -Babatunde Olatunji (1927-2003)
“Rhythm is the soul of life. The whole universe revolves in rhythm. Everything and every human action revolves in rhythm.” -Olatunji
Babatunde Olatunji was a major figure of 20th century global music. From his five-times platinum 1959 “Drums of Passion” release that introduced the mainstream West to African percussion rhythms, to his Grammy Award-winning Planet Drum collaboration with the Mickey Hart in 1991, to setting to score to Spike Lee’s film “She’s Gotta Have it,” master percussionist Olatunji has left an indelible mark on the shape and direction of Western music and its increasing affinity for African music and dance. He has been portrayed as a sort of “musical ambassador” between Africa and the rest of the world, even serving as a teacher of African culture to Malcolm X and John Coltrane.
It was thus with great sadness that Babatunde passed away less than a year ago. Yet when one sees how his music healed people and brought them together for nearly half a century, it’s difficult for the sadness to outweigh the sheer joy and passion that Babatunde brought into the world.
Rather than release the usual posthumous “Best Of” collection or an over-produced Who’s Who tribute album to commemorate Babatunde’s death, Narada instead took the low-key approach and selected a recording of unreleased material to help us celebrate his life. Subtitled “Traditional African Meditation Music,” “Healing Sessions” is, according to Narada, “neither just a music album nor solely a religious work, but rather an extended meditation.”
To Olatunji’s Yoruban culture and many other African cultures, music is so much more than mere entertainment or artwork. It serves as a link between the physical and spiritual and brings us in contact with the greater unity that often hovers invisibly beneath the apparently chaotic and disorienting surface of our day-to-day lives. In this very un-Western worldview, separating music from religion and spiritual practice is both impossible and undesirable; as Babatunde said, musical rhythms are meant to help us “think, speak, walk and act in harmony” with ourselves and with our environment.
For those not acclimated to the differences in musical style and philosophy between Western and African music, “Healing Sessions” will present the undisciplined Western listener with some initial difficulties. This is not because the music is unusually inaccessible or overly complex, but because it is so stripped down from what we are used to and its circular poly-rhythms challenge our ingrained notions of what makes a song. While there are eight separate tracks on the album, it really is just one extended meditation. There’s nothing happening here except drums and vocals for nearly an hour. There are no virtuosic solos or hooks or climaxes in this music; the brilliance lies rather in meditative ambiance created by slowly changing drum patterns and the harmony of otherworldly voices that lend their healing power with every line.
The importance of Nigerian spiritual music on the development Candomble, Santeria, and even Gospel traditions in the Americas is quite apparent on “Healing Sessions,” not only in the musical sense but in the spiritual and ritualistic senses as well. A number of chant-drum combinations on the album almost sound Brazillian to my ears, reminiscent of the peaceful and mysterious beauty of the deep rainforest.
Fortunately, Olatunji’s legacy will live on through the numerous African music institutes and workshops established by him worldwide. But “Baba” himself urges us to forget about the future for the moment, however bleak and uncertain it may seem: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present…”
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