More Songs about Trains and Buildings: A World Music Fable

Prelude: Nine years ago when I was editing travel guides, it was a matter of pride for the musically-inclined editors to blast the office with guidebook-appropriate (or hilariously-innappropriate) music. For me, of course, that was arranged with a perpetual connection to a Bollywood-themed internet radio station. Over in the "domestic" room, the editors played Frank Zappa, Jonathan Richman, and, when a great laugh was needed, the following song, by French pop master Serge Gainsbourg:

[N.B. This embed, and for that matter the others, doesn't seem to work ... you can get the same effect by going to www.deezer.com and searching for "Serge New York". I'll work on the odeo players soon, I hope]

OK, forget all that for now. What I really want to write about is a story I heard whilst listening to one of the many excellent W.E.B. Du Bois Institute lectures they got online somewheres, specifically a series by (then) NYU prof Robin D.G. Kelley on Jazz and Modern Africa:

Robin D.G. Kelley: Drum Wars [1hr lecture]

In this particular lecture he was talking about the specific mid-twentieth-century debate over who was and wasn't an "authentic" African drummer during the early cross pollinations between American jazz and music from contemporary Africa (the music itself, of course, having elements traditional and contemporary). Kelley's lecture is a lot about Guy Warren, who came from Ghana to the states in the early(?) 1950s with the goal of introducing the talking drum to American jazz. His first records wound up coming out around the same time, more or less, that a few African-American jazz drummers (Art Blakey, and later I think Max Roach) were starting to use explicitly African titles and themes in their records. Basically Warren thought Blakey et al's music wasn't African at all, and was for that matter completely uninteresting.

Side note no. 1: Guy Warren's first album, "Africa Speaks, America Answers" was recorded with the Chicago band he'd been playing with -- a band, which was, with the exception of Warren and an African-American drummer, composed entirely of Jews and Italians (who nonetheless did all right with the call and response stuff). Prof. Kelley also noted, as something of an aside, that although several influential African-American jazz musicians were drawn particularly to what they saw as the authentic African spirituality of Warren's music, Warren himself was neither Muslim nor Christian nor Animist but in fact a practicing Buddhist. Anyway, Kelley says his music was, perhaps not so surprisingly, ambitious and drew on a ton of different traditions: African, Jazz, classical, etc. This probably made him less than an ideal candidate for the role of "authentic African drummer".

Enter Babatunde Olatunji ... who came to the U.S. from Nigeria on a Rotary scholarship and attended Morehouse College and then NYU grad school, studying political science. To make extra money, he started playing music with an ensemble he'd put together — traditional West African stuff and original compositions, though Kelley notes that a lot of his training as a percussionist had apparently come from African American musicians he'd known since coming to the States.

Anyway, Olatunji was playing at Radio City and got "discovered" by a Columbia record exec who signed him and, a year or two later, got him into CBS studios in New York to record "Drums of Passion" — which not only went on to vastly outsell anything by Guy Warren or, I think, any of the other Africanist projects by American jazz musicians, and in fact has never gone out of print, and now gets cited, on various promo-type sites, as being possibly first real (successful) "world music" album, the first real studio-recorded album of real African music, etc. etc. etc.

Whether or not Olatunji was better qualified than Guy Warren to be known as the introducer, at least he turned his popularity into a long and very legitimate career both in the African American, jazz, and world music communities. A few years before he died in the 1990s he did some sort of collaboration with one of the Grateful Dead, though which one I cannot say.


Fascinating story, I thought (and hopefully you think). So I hopped on over to iTunes to see just what the original authentic drummer sounded like. I clicked on the first track of "Drums of Passion" and ... well, something seemed awfully familiar.



Just what was going on here? Who copying who? A few searches turned up lyrics and the story of the song in question—

Akiwowo (Chant to the Trainman)

This is the song about the legendary conductor when railroud trains were first introduced in Nigeria over five decades ago. Millions still remember Akiwowo, who always made sure that his passengers, mostly men and woman returning from their farms with their products balanced on their heads,never missed the train, as well as his warm welcom, broad smile and humor. Akiwowo, now in his eighties,lives happily in the village of Pa-Pa Lanto full of sweet unforgettable memories of his service to his people and country.

Akiwowo Oloko lle
lowo Gbe Mi Dele
Ile Baba Mi

Akiwowo conductor of the train
Please take me home
To my fathers house

As for how exactly "Akiwowo" became "New York USA" let us turn to the following computranslation from Serge Gainsbourg's French record company:

Serge enters in studio from the 5 to October 16, 1964, with
Goraguer, for a second 30 cm, "Gainsbourg Percussions". Via Guy
Béart, it impregnates disc "Drums of Passion" of the Native of Niger
Babatunde Olatunji.

For "New York the USA", Serge is inspired — rate/rhythm, arrangements,
melody, technical question and answer between the singer and choruses
— by "Akiwoko (Song To The Trainman)". For "Over there it is natural",
of a counterpoint of Myriam Makeba.

Many years later, when to the USA a disc leaves Serge containing "New
York the USA", Olatunji brought in Gainsbourg a lawsuit for
plagiarism.

[French original]

It seems worth noting that whereas "New York USA" was presumably adapted/recorded in France, "Akiwowo" was recorded (and quite likely written) in New York. So without too much difficulty we might imagine Olatunji listening to the clatter of subway or el trains and thinking wistfully back to the famed Nigerian railway conductor. (Incidentally, the click-click-clack percussion makes perfect sense with the original song's rail theme).

But of course we are left to ponder what exactly led Serge to impregnate disc "Drums of Passion", and why concerning New York, and for that matter what became of that lawsuit for plagiarism brought in him by the first original real and authentic African drummer in USA.


Postlude: More media!
Here's a much-older Babamayo Olatunji performing a Liberian rhythm:


... and here's, from France's Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, a prehistoric music video of Serge Gainsbourg's "New York USA" — the song begins after a 1min. introduction by the French chanteuse Barbara:


... and — because I could —here's a map of all the buildings Gainsbourg sings about (scroll down for the Bank of Manhattan at the island's tip):


View Larger Map