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Le Tout-Puissant Orchestre Poly-Rythmo is a difficult ensemble to follow. For one thing, they have functioned under the names Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, TP Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and L'International ...

‘Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou’. An orchestra, trading in densely layered rhythms, from the Benin costal town of Cotonou. Lacking a little something in the way of pizzazz, non? Call-and-response ...

Overnight success can take years. For the members of Benin's Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, it has taken more than 40 of them. Just as Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club found before them, even the ...

Last September Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou played to a packed house at the Barbican Centre in London. There's nothing unusual about a sold-out gig, but what was unusual was that this was ...

It’s almost a miracle that, tomorrow night, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou will play the London Scala, and that just weeks ago they released their first album proper in decades, Cotonou Club. And, ...

It’s been 20 years since Vincent Ahehehinnou and his bandmates in the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou could afford to spend their days playing music. Back then, the band from Benin — formed in the ...

For all that we’re living through desperate times, it can be sobering to consider the challenges facing creative people in eras and places by no means unimaginably distant from our own. Take, for ...

The tenacious intensity of this album, stemming from rich Vodoun rhythms, is not for the faint of heart. Swirling bass lines intertwined with insistent bell patterns on tracks such as "Ou C'est Lui Ou ...

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, from Benin, belongs on the very short list of the world’s greatest funk bands. More than four decades into its career, most of them spent touring Benin and nearby ...