[net.music.gdead] Olatunji and his Nigerian Drummers

pete@valid.UUCP (Pete Zakel) (01/08/86)

[slurp!]

Last night (5 Jan 1986) I saw Olatunji at Wolfgang's in San Francisco.
Olatunji heads a group of 18 drummers and dancers, and is absolutely
FANTASTIC!  He was one of the opening groups for the Grateful Dead's
New Year's Eve show, and at Wolfgang's he did a TWO HOUR set that had
everyone on their feet and dancing.  As I was leaving the show, one
of the Wolfgang's people was saying that he had worked there for five
months and it was the BEST SHOW that he had seen there.  Olatunji
has two albums out from a long time ago - "Drums of Passion" and
"More Drums of Passion" - and he is currently recording at Fantasy
Studios along with Mickey Hart, Airto (sp?) and Santana.

At the Wolfgang's shows, on stage with Olatunji and his Drums of Passion
were: Mickey Hart, what looked like most of Santana (minus Carlos, although
Olatunji said he was in the audience) and maybe others that I didn't recognize.
(Possibly Airto?).

Please, if anyone really knows who was on stage with Olatunji would they
send me mail or post it?

One of the (many) highlights of the show was a POWERFUL Jingobala (sp?),
which Santana recorded as Jingo (I think) and featured Santana's drummer
and a guitar player that I assume is also in Santana (tall black man,
played a wicked lead).  If the forthcoming album is one-fourth as good
as the show, it will still be worth buying. (Correction, it really only
needs to be one-tenth as good to be worth it).

P.S. The opening band, The Rhyth-O-Matics, were quite good also, if you
happen to like ska (or afro-ska, as they called it.  I personally could
dance to it, but I wouldn't buy their albums to listen to).

-Pete Zakel (..!pesnta!valid!pete)