Antoine Dougbe – Antoine Dougbe Et L’orchestre Poly-Rythmo De

Who was Antoine Dougb? Even the most dedicated crate-digger might go their whole life without stumbling across any of the three LPs he released in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Yet all the musicians who happened to cross paths with him remember with a mixture of admiration and fear; for Antoine Dougb was not merely one of the most inventive songwriters to emerge from the fertile music scene of Cotonou, but also a powerful Vodn initiate whose close connection to the spirit world allowed him to refer to himself as “the Devil’s prime minister.”In Cotonou, a city that had established itself as one of the centres of the West African music scene, the young man found himself drawn to Cuban son and rumba. But his fascination with the traditional rhythms of Benin-especially those associated with Vodn ceremonies-allowed Dougb to take his music in directions far removed from anything happening in the Congo.Dougb neither sang nor performed any of the main instru