Burundi Black

June 30th, 2008 by Beneger

This track is one of my all time favorites since I first heard it in 1986. It was nearly weekly turned in the Bakkerij, a pub in .nl, feared for it’s hasjisj but famous for it’s music.

The basis for this track is a recording of the court drummers of Burundi. The structure you hear is circle of drummers, while the drummers are called one after the other to perform a dance and drum solo on the huge ngoma drum in the middle of the group. It’s remarkably similar to Japanese Kodo drumming.

The drumtrack was also used by Joni Mitchell, Bow wow wow, and Manu Chao, to name but a few. Neil Steiphenson played guitar and piano on top of it in 1971, and did an electronic remake in 1981, which you can hear here. I know every sound, every piano note, every drum and syndrum hit in this recording. The video is nothing more then a set of more or less related photos, oddly enough ending with a photo of a young guy in a dark pub, with baggy trousers and hair hanging in front of his face. I must have looked stunningly similar in the late eighties.