Better than: Air conditioning in a heat wave. There’s a shopping list of fine pop bands from throughout the African continent listed on one page of drumming major John Miller Chernoff’s esteemed 1979 ...

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou are one of West Africa’s oldest and most successful bands, masters of Vôdun-inspired afrobeat. Singer and co-founder Vincent Ahehehinnou talks to RFI about their new ...

are a national institution in their native Benin. They formed in the late 60's and provided a groundbreaking fusion of traditional high-life, Afrobeat, soul and funk, but they are barely known outside ...

Séance of the ancient and urban, conjured by a spidery, hypnotic rhythm derived from spirit possession ceremonies, the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou owes its black magic to the Vodoun Effect. That ...

The tenacious intensity of this album, stemming from rich Vodoun rhythms, is not for the faint of heart. Swirling bass lines intertwined with insistent bell patterns on tracks such as "Ou C'est Lui Ou ...

It’s been 20 years since Vincent Ahehehinnou and his bandmates in the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou could afford to spend their days playing music. Back then, the band from Benin — formed in the ...

After a delay of more than 20 years, there's a new album from one of West Africa's great dance bands. Formerly known as TP Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou – TP standing for "tout puissant" or "all ...

Last September Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou played to a packed house at the Barbican Centre in London. There's nothing unusual about a sold-out gig, but what was unusual was that this was ...

It isn’t long since the pop past felt truly remote: old video footage was impossible to access, and you could only dream of having seen the great bands of the Sixties and Seventies. Now everything can ...