Keeping the rhythm alive

By Jasminee Sahoye

A band known as Rhythm Plus (Rhythm+) has created a new genre of music called Afrolypso, a word coined by its leader, Tony “Ansou” John, who wanted to produce a mix of African drumming and Calypso.

And he wants to share his new music to Torontonians. On Saturday, February 20, he and his band will be presenting “Carnival Spirit Rides Rhythm+” at the Trane Studio dedicated to Daniel Pearl World Music Day.

As part of the tribute, the band will be raising funds for the village of Kiffinda in the Republic of Guinea, where John spent five months studying the rhythms of the drum.

“I do believe that this music has value and it has a place even in today’s high tech world where everything is fast. No, stop take a listen and reevaluate where we are going, there is valuable lessons in this music and I would like to share that lesson with the younger ones…”

John said the idea to create the new form of music came while he was attending a drum and dance conference in Chicago in the Fall 2005.

“Taking a class one Sunday morning with Mohamed Da Costa, he was teaching a rhythm called makrou and I started to realize that it sounded very similar to the rhythms that I heard growing up in Trinidad and I started to think that if I put this with my Trinidad music, I will have a basis for something. It then developed even more by traveling to Guinea and spending five months there learning the rhythms. My goal was to learn the five most common rhythms…I learnt makrou, yankadi, soli, kassau and djole,” John told the Camera.

He explained that Guinea, Senegal and Mali are considered ‘the mecca’ for the types of drumming he was interested in. “It’s very rich in drumming culture and is influence by all the various different tribes… Guinea in particular is the home of Les Ballets Africains, which I saw as a child in Trinidad.”

Since the history of the Caribbean has deep roots in slavery and indentureship, John said while studying the different drumming rhythms, he realized that there similar to music from the Caribbean. “When I hear makrou, kassau and even yankadi, I hear the music of Trinidad and Tobago or the Caribbean… as much as we have the music of Ghana, Nigeria and Congo as well, we also have people from the Congo. After slavery was abolished, the plantation owners went to the Congo and brought people from the Congo, they came as indentured labourers mainly to Jamaica and that’s where we got the Congo drums from.”

John strongly believes that the rhythms of the drums were already in Caribbean music. “To go back to the source and bring, for want of a better word, the original drum patterns back is something I feel is a way to renew what we are already doing.”

Most of his renditions come from music that already exists, but he recreates them with a new blend of music.

“I get my inspiration from the old time Calypso bands…I see this rich historical heritage that we have has been superseded by soca, dance hall and all these types of modern types of music and I want to bring this back to the youth and inspire them to create even better soca music, so that we can play better music, we can sing better lyrics because we have this background, this history and if I can have any influence on that at all, my work would be done.”

The band has performed at several events including Ontario Place Vista Courtyard, Afrofest at Queen’s Park, the Burlington Sound of Music Festival, the Toronto Pride Blockorama Stage, the Toronto International Drum Festival, the Barrie Caribfest Music Festival and the Scotiabank Caribana Island Lime.