African Head Charge has been making waves as a Psychedelic Dub ensemble since the 1980s and have now passed their 40th year. The combination of percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah working alongside Producer and collaborator Adrian Sherwood has spanned over a dozen albums, but the duo have just released the first album in 12 years, titled A Trip To Bolgatanga. African Head Charge albums usually feature a wide range of contributors from different musical traditions, all informing Bonjo’s Jamaican-born, African-influenced core elements on his tracks. That impulse to bring in a wide range of cultural traditions is something that Bonjo has become known for and is a big part of the uniqueness of the music he releases.
Having relocated to Ghana in the 1990s, Bonjo has now spent many years interacting with different drumming traditions among different tribal people, and that’s part of what finally pushed him to create A Trip To Bolgatanga. As someone who’s very committed to learning new things as a percussionist throughout his life, the now 70-year-old brought tribal traditions together on this new collection that he’s only recently learned about. Even journeying to the town of Bolgatanga to work with local artist King Ayisoba led to many new experiences that informed these tracks, hence the album’s title. African Head Charge are currently touring, with more dates being added, bringing their percussion-driven and multi-cultural music to new audiences. I spoke with Bonjo shortly after the group played Glastonbury Festival about this return to recording and the continuing process of learning that he’s embraced from a young age.
Hannah Means-Shannon: When you’re thinking about making new music, how do you approach that? Do you make recordings by yourself first, or is it all about live interaction in the studio?
Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah: Sometimes it’s like that, making recordings myself. There’s no specific way. Although, the main way that I normally do it is that I have some ideas, some rhythms of different types of drums playing together, and I’ll lay the drums down. Then, later, I’ll put other things on top of that. Sometimes the lyrics will come after the drumming, and sometimes the drumming will come after the lyrics.
HMS: For this album, I can see how percussion is very much the structure and underlying idea for the songs.
Bonjo: I’m a percussionist much more than a chanter, being as I’ve studied percussion for a long time. I’ve been playing percussion since my youth, when I was 7 or 8 years old, so everything I do is somehow influenced by percussion. In fact, for the whole of African Head Charge, the main foundation is the percussion.
HMS: With this collection of songs, are you aware of things that you did that you hadn’t done before?
Bonjo: Yes. When I was in Jamaica, I used to go a spiritual church, a Poco church, where they played a kind of drumming called Kumina. There are other words. That drumming is directly from Africa, undiluted. Because I was used to that kind of drumming, when I went to Africa, I found that I was not different from local drummers and could work with anyone. Even if I don’t speak their language, I can play the drum language. I got close to a lot of the bands and drummers in Ghana. I was there with them. Whatever foundation they’d create, I was able to work with it.
HMS: Did you have certain goals for these new songs overall, or did you just explore song-by-song?
Bonjo: For these songs, I tried to do different types of drumming. That’s what it’s all about, doing different types. It’s still coming from the same Kumina and Poco drumming that our ancestors played. People tried to kill that music because they thought it was the devil’s music, but as a child all I knew is that I liked the drumming, and it was put inside of me, for some reason. What happened to me is that I went to London and I got a job with African players who needed a player, and I was the only one there who wasn’t born in Africa. Some of them would become my masters and I got to jam with fellow musicians.
The most important thing, I learned, was to maintain the pulse. You have to have a pulse, something going, even with ten different types of drumming. Every player is holding onto something and I was able to go to different tribes later and hold onto something so I could become part of the drumming in local tribes in Africa. I was always able to fit in, be part of the group, and record, also. I went through a learning process there as a drummer, since as a percussionist, you never stop learning.
The next album that I do, I plan to go to a different part of Ghana, to a powerful, spiritual tribe in West Africa. I plan to spend some time there learning from them, and fitting in with them, and bringing what I have into that. I want to work it all together, since everyone speaks their own drumming language. When you put all these [drumming] languages together, it’s like cooking food. You blend the taste of it. You put these different types of drums together, these different flavors, and you see what comes out. That’s what I’m into.
HMS: Even in one song, you often have several elements that you’ve put together and combined. Do you know other people who have that goal? It seems like something that makes your music unique.
Bonjo: I don’t know. I don’t know of anyone else who is doing it. I’m not saying there isn’t, but I don’t know of any.
HMS: When you decided you wanted to make a new album after 12 years, at what point did you tell Adrian Sherwood, and what was his reaction?
Bonjo: [Laughs] At first, I didn’t say anything to him, after I was doing it. Later, I phoned him and let him know. Then he suggested to me that I should collaborate with King Ayisoba, who is one of the top kologo players in a place called Bolgatanga. I went and spent some time in Bolgotanga as well, because sometimes you have to spend time among the people, like when you’re going to school. I spent a lot of time there. Meeting King Ayisoba meant that we started to contribute to each other. That’s why he contributed two tracks to the album. When Adrian realized that I was in Bolgatanga, he suggested that we call the album “Trip to Bolgatanga” and I said, “Yeah, man, that’s a good idea.” We all agreed.
HMS: It’s interesting because the title gives the feeling of being open to something new, the idea of a trip somewhere, and the album also introduces audiences to these new combinations.
Bonjo: The most important thing to me, in my life, and I’m a grandfather as well, is that you never stop learning. It doesn’t matter how people feel about their knowledge. It’s exciting. I think it can make you live longer by learning more each day. Don’t just say, “Okay, I’m going to stop there.” To learn things, sometimes you need to go to new places like I did here. I plan to do that again. I want to combine more of what I’ve learned in Jamaica and Africa.
HMS: Do you ever try something and think, “No, I don’t think so. That didn’t really work. I’ll try again.” ?
Bonjo: Not really because the most important thing is, you make it fit! You make it fit even if those things have never fit together before. If you hear it, make it fit, make it work. I’ve never done anything percussion-wise and then said, “No.” It always works. If I put some tambourine on something, it naturally works. If I am playing some sticks, it works. If you have that feeling inside of you, it works.
That’s the reason that I think when I first started to do the African Head Charge thing with Adrian in the 80s, I’d go into the studio, and he’d be in the control room, and I’d be in my work room with all my percussion, and sometimes I’d be sound-checking my congos, but he’d start recording! Because even when I was sound-checking, I was playing something. You keep building on top of that. You just touch the drums, and something creative is coming out of it, even if you’re not thinking about it. Sometimes afterwards, you think, “Wow!” Then you just add on top of it. Sometimes the drumming does come before the lyrics or the chant in that way.
HMS: I’ve heard many stories where a band’s warm-up session or sound-check song has become part of an album. They don’t know it at the time, but the improvisation turns into something new.
Bonjo: Yes! Seriously. Sometimes I’m doing things, and I don’t even know that Adrian is recording it. When something comes out of you naturally, it’s one of the greatest things. That’s something that you didn’t think about or plan.
HMS: You’re not trying to control it in any way, you’re just taking part?
Bonjo: Yes, that’s what’s happening. Everything you do after that just fits with it. Even when I’m playing alone as a percussionist, I can keep tracking, so it becomes like ten people playing. But it’s me doing all of it. Sometimes I’ll get someone else to come in. With Songs of Praise and some of the other albums I did, I wanted a different feel, so I brought in someone like Sunny Akpan, because he is from Nigeria, and so forth. I’m talking about this album, but I’m already thinking about the next album. I have a book where I’m writing things down every day when I get some ideas. When I go and make a certain amount of tracks, some of the things I’m writing down will fit onto them somehow.
HMS: Do you intentionally bring in collaborators who will bring new experiences and sounds to the album?
Bonjo: Yes, that’s it. But I have never left the traditions that I was brought up in. But I have never left the Iyabinghi tradition, the “heartbeat” in everything that I do. Maybe that’s giving away my secret! But I carry the heartbeat in everything that I do. Even as human beings, if we don’t have the heartbeat, we don’t function. A lot of people don’t think about that, but I think about it. Being a Rasta man, we have a drumming that is like a heartbeat. Some speeds up, like the Poco church drumming, the spiritual drumming, which goes faster to put people into a trance.
And I have played that kind of drumming in a hospital and people who are in a coma have come out of it. That’s what that kind of drumming is. It gets through to them. That’s when I knew when the drumming was special. I went with a friend, who’s wife was a nurse, to the hospital, and there was a patient in a coma, and I played on the drum. I played some Poco drumming and the person started to move their fingers and toes. The doctor had been trying to wake this man. I already knew, from seeing the drumming used in the churches in Jamaica, that it could be used to wake people, animals, even the ancestors that surround us. It brings us all together. Drumming is a very spiritual sound.
HMS: I know that you make music for yourself because you need to, but do you feel like the music that you make has a helpful quality for audiences?
Bonjo: Yes, I think so. I used to work with people who had learning and physical difficulties. Some were in a wheelchair or had lost a limb. When I did community workshops, I would play there with two other drummers. These people would forget their problems. Drumming does heal. It heals me, anyway. If it hadn’t been for drumming, I don’t know what kind of person I would have been.
Sometimes when I was playing on stage, they would bring people with problems up close to the stage because they knew that drumming does something helpful for people. I’m not saying that other instruments don’t do it, but I can only speak about the instrument that I play. I can say that drumming is a language, and it is healing.
HMS: I think people feel that to be true all over the world and it’s part of why they want to go to concerts and hear it in person. It changes how they feel.
Bonjo: If you can see and hear it live, that’s another thing, and that’s most of what I do. I’ll always have three or four drummers with me when I go out playing. Sometimes I can’t get all of the drums, because there would be ten pieces. We have to put some in the sampler to go on tour since I can’t bring ten types of drums with me. [Laughs]
HMS: Do you have plans to play this album on tour?
Bonjo: Yes, it was just released, and we’re bringing some of the songs into our program and live shows gradually. We did Glastonbury a few weeks ago, and then we’re going to Bulgaria, to a festival, then we’re going to Japan. We’ll see what happens since there are other plans, but they haven’t been confirmed yet.
