Nana Benz Du Togo - Ago

There are five of them, five, like the fingers of one hand, a hand ready to form a fist, to slam down hard on a table but also to gently caress the planet. They all grew up in Togo, only a few frontiers away from Benin and Nigeria, several decades separating them from the great Fela, the man who turned a Yoruba proverb into a hit: Water No Get Enemy. The members of Nana Benz also grew up with the knowledge that water was so precious it had no price, and that Mother Nature was a figure to be celebrated... In fact, respect of the planet and it's inhabitants lies at the very heart of their catalogue of songs, songs firmly anchored in the richness of voodoo heritage, songs extolling the value of freedom in English, French and Mina. Earth, wind, fire and water - Nature : that's what voodoo is! "We've always been ecologists, without knowing it, because Voodoo is in fact Nature", explains Izeale, one of the three vocalists. "At a given moment in our lives, we all dived headfirst into this heritage we had left behind. And there, we discovered the power of voodoo, but also it's scales, it's incredible rhythms, and it's wonderful melodies. And now we dive back in once more, body and soul, because we need to possess enough strength to carry these songs!".