Mike Thorne: When
did you start playing congas? How did you learn?
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Johnny
Folarin: I
started playing congas when I was about eleven. A friend of mine
was playing bongos, and I used to go and watch him.
After the
practise,
I’d go home to where there was a long table where my aunt was
selling food. When they finish, and I haven’t anything to do,
I’m banging what I’ve heard from my friend on the table.
I wanted to play bongos, so then my friend was teaching me. Practically.
My family wanted me to do something else, but it was music I wanted
to do, bongos I wanted to play. So I ran away from home to go and stay
with my friend and play. I was lucky to meet a man who said, ‘Oh,
very good, come and join us.’ I was playing with a very different
band. I would play with Bobby Basin, who was very popular in Nigeria
then, popular everywhere then, a very good guitar player. He put me
through everything, said, ‘Come and join my band,’ and
that’s how I start.
When I was 18, I was playing with
different bands. One with a friend of mine, a good trumpeter,
We were playing
high life, playing jazz.
A very good trumpeter, he would sing like Satchmo. Then I left
him to join another band, called Roy Chicago, one of the popular
bands
in Nigeria back then. That was the last band I played in before
I came over here.
 What
brought you to England?
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While
I ws playing, I was working in Government House. I worked for
the colonial Governer General. One is called James Slobos
the one
I worked for last. The uncle said to me, ‘See what is happening
in London.’ Then, you could easily come here, there’s no
way of saying ‘You got to have a visa, you got to have this and
that.’ And I come, I like it. And I stay. And, going out, I met
some of my friends, a trumpeter, a drummer, who I’d known in
Nigeria before. Now they’re all over here. They’re very,
very good and have formed a band called the African Jazz Messengers.
They were looking for a conga player. I haven’t even got a conga……!
So I telephone my friend in Nigeria to send mine for me. Send
me conga this and bongo here.
We
played in the Flamingo [seminal London blues club of the early
and mid sixties, host to early Rolling Stones, Long
John Baldry, Georgie Flame and most of the prominentt contemporary
English blues followers]. I play with some American band first,
then James Brown, Elvin Jones…….the last band was in ’69,
the blind one, what is his name….the blind singer……..?
Stevie Wonder. He
came, playing the Flamingo too, and we support. It was the
first time I see a blind man playing conga and singing! Then,
there was another Nigerian boy that played congas for them.
He is called Jimmy Scott. I think he is passed away now. I
say, ‘Oh can I
play?’ He was playing conga and I was playing bongo. Right away,
Stevie Wonder knows something is wrong, something is different. So
he played till he finished he asks Jimmy Scott, ‘Did you play
conga and bongo?’ He say, ‘No, my friend plays.’ He
says, ‘What’s your name?’ I say, “Johnny.’ He
says, ‘No, you have to have an African name.’ I say, ‘My
name is Ayinde Folarin.’
And that’s it.
We
begin to practise and form a group called Asagai, with Dudu Pukwana.
Then we were doing fine, doing well,
'69, seventies.
In ’70 we play at Ronnie Scott’s, upstairs, when
it was just opened. [The club founded by tenor saxophonist
Ronnie Scott continues
with jazz-oriented artists to this day, despite his suicide
in 1996 at age 69. A second room Upstairs At Ronnie’s,
featured African-oriented music through the seventies.] Elvin
Jones was
there, too. Everybody
can dance, all this jungle dance, our native music. Elvin
Jones was downstairs, they haven’t started playing
yet, heard what is going on upstairs, says, ‘This is
very nice native music.’ Then
he just says to the drummer, George, says ‘Can I do
something?’ Then
he was just on the timbale. Wonderful.
That’s how I start,
carry on like that. Then around ’72
an American boy came from Italy, liked what we were doing, and
wanted us to be his backing group. We travel to Italy, playing
his music,
our music, Asagai music. Then came back, traveling round France
and Spain, playing Afro-rock (as we called it then). Then as
this is going
on, we’re not together. When things are going on……we
break up.
The
sixties was such a fruitful period for African music in London,
the two cultures meeting……
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
It
was very good, sixties to seventies. African music was going like
that, but we didn’t promote our music like the
reggae people. I remember Rolling Stones, they were called
although they were not
known then. I knew Mick Jagger because he would always come
to our house in Archway, Tottenham Park area [north London]
with a Nigerian drummer who he liked. He always played very
good drums. I’ve
got a room about this big [small]. He asked what I would
like to do, but I don’t drink, I don’t smoke.
So there’s another
tenor player from Nigeria who came. The first big gig he
had in Hyde Park [London], on a big truck……everything
was going together sixties, seventies for African music.
Then, all of a sudden, reggae…….Mick
Jagger is one of the first to say, ‘Reggae will never
get anywhere.’ He
said that in front of me. The others say, ‘Regga begins
to go up.’ ’70 or ’71, we reform Asagai.
Jimmy Gaff, Elton John’s manager (with who they’re
having the problem now), he was one of our managers. Elton
John, Rod Stewart, they could play
anywhere, to do what they wanted to do. We go along to Birmingham,
Nottingham, to back Rod Steward. Now they are big……..we
are nobody.
African music has returned
to fashion, but the African scene in London is quieter than it
was……
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yeah,
it is quiet. I remember the time, seventies to eighties with Fela
[Ransom-Kuti]. I played with Fela a little bit, because when
I used to play he was coming up and asking me to join
him. But he was
playing a different kind of music, playing piano, jazz,
Afro-rock, just in a small club. But the band I was working
with played
a bigger, disco-like place. The money you’re going to make on stage is
more than your wages, because you’ve got a talking
drum man. When he call him, this man, he call the talking
drum man, put the
money on his head, this and that. We all share it.
 But
then you wound up playing with three people from Manchester…….
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Yeah.
I was watching telly one day, and I saw a lady with a friend of
mine called Isaak playing with this band. I say,
this band is good, this girl has got a good voice. The next day,
he rang
me,
says there’s
a band needs a bongo player, and they’re doing
something in Dulwich [south London]. A popular, free
concert, are you interested. I say yes. And I was working
in the [Trafalgar Square] post office then. I take
some days off, come and practise, and we do it. And
they ask me to join their band. I do, and I play for
Carmel from ’82 to ’87,
I think. I liked the band. Everybody there was friendly……drummer,
bass player, Carmel….they were the band, but
they hired us to back them up. It was nice. They were
nice people.
And
that was another good overlap of African and European music…..
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Then we play African and European
music. Then I met Mike Thorne, introduced me to Bronski Beat. I
like what they are
doing too, but I am with
Carmel,
I don’t want to lose Carmel. If I want to go with Bronski Beat,
they are happy to take me. But I like what Carmel is doing. I stick
with Carmel. Then Carmel break up. And I haven’t
played since then.
But then with Bronski
Beat you were playing with machine drums. But there’s a
lot in common between West African music and techno, not least
of which is the four-on-the-floor [a kick
drum on each of
the four beats of a bar].
There
is. Bronski Beat was doing something African too. But Carmel is
more. We start with Carmel, we play our own
music, like African music. We start with jazz, too. Then some
of
Carmel’s songs
used African rhythms. It was very nice.
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
You
know, I don’t like the music they are playing now. The music
going on now, they’re making people up. Machine
doing everything, no-one practising to do anything
now. All the practise now is to
dance. Without dancing, without video, nothing goes nowadays.
 So
you don’t go much on sampled congas?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
No.
Because sampled conga sounds good….one….but all the
phrases that come into my head if I’m playing with a band can’t
be done with a sample machine. Unless I play it, when they can sample
it and the engineer can do anything he wants with it. I like live conga
because the slap, with the drummer playing….we may be playing
some funk, Afro-rock with drummer, bass player….a drummer gives
me a kick, guitar gives me a kick, bass player gives me a kick. When
they play something I like, maybe playing for eight bars, 16 bars,
I can do whatever I like, even this of yours from New York that I play
to…..very good drum patterns which give me little bits of kick.
What other music do you feel drawn towards?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
I listen to what they are doing
now, but I still prefer old music. Although what you [MT] are
doing now, it’s nice music, it’s
dance music. But all these boys….they
make them, all these people who know nothing
about music. Or they say to them, ‘You’re
no good, you’re not this, you’re
not that.’ They
bring some people who don’t know anything,
not even how to sing. Practise, practise, make
a band, make a group…..you hear them
two minutes and then they break up. Look at
Mick Jagger…..he’s
still going on. Elton John…..still going
on……some Beatles
still going on. Because they work hard on their
music. Nobody makes them. The bands nowadays,
they are ready-made computer music. Some
of them can bring them to work with a guitar,
but it takes a lot of time to get everything
right, because they don’t know anything
about chords. If you bring a guitar to some
of the singers I’m
hearing today, there will be a lot of problems.
How do you think that
the commercial music scene here is different from Nigeria’s?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
No,
it’s different. Here, if you’re not a ‘commercial’ band…..that’s
what brought us back [down] around the seventies. We would go and play
somewhere in concert…..when we finish, they don’t want
the main band, but we never get anywhere, because the record company,
the producer, the television, they say that the music is ‘not
commercial’. We never get anywhere. Now, anybody can make music….all
these boys that I’m seeing now. Good luck to them, but I don’t
want to be part of that.
So what might be next?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
I
don’t know. With this thing [points to lap-top computer which
is recording the interview], you can’t
tell. Anybody can do anything they like.
What
do you think are good interactions between the computer and ‘natural’ instruments?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
I think the reason that people are
using drum machines and computers is that they
can have a very powerful sound.
Say if you would go to a recording studio, you use 24,
36 [tracks]…..on the computer
everything is quickly done. But in the olden days it was very hard
to get that kind of sound with a lot of bands. You can use a computer
to set up a very big band. You can get the sound of a very big group
more quickly than when you are doing sound checking…trouble all
the time. You want to play for about 45 minutes, you do sound checking
for about an hour and a half, because the engineer can’t get
right away what he wants. You have to be there playing…blap blap
blap…..test that, test this. But I don’t mind that, once
I’m playing with somebody……
It’s hard work dealing with natural materials, isn’t
it?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
It
is hard. That’s why I don’t go too much against the
computer……the computer helps a recording company to make
some things quickly, so they don’t have to pay much money….they
got to make that money for themselves.
With congas, it’s so delicate how you make the drum and arrange
the drum to get a special or particular sound………
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yes,
it is, it takes time. A friend of mine made African talking drums.
He was playing in the group that I was, so any time he was making
them I would go and watch. Then one day
I said I want a conga drum, he says OK. He says if you get
the body,
I
will do
the rim,
everything for
you. So I learned from him. When
I came
over here, that’s how
I met Natal [innovative manufacturing pioneer of African drums based
in London[. I was working in Shang-Kidd, a factory making wallpaper.
I was just walking past and I saw his shop, what’s he doing there,
can I go and have a look…..then I went in, met Natal, saw conga
he’d just finished, just did my hand like that [plays figure
with nails, hand inverted]. He says how do you do that, I say you play
very good, it’s nothing, you are from our side, but he says I
can’t do that. I explain you just put your fingers together like
that, one-two-three. That’s how we become friends. So he has
to do some rim, he has to put on the skin, so I say, ‘I’ll
do that for you.’ And I did it. So the first conga drum I bought
from Natal has the fibreglass sound. It’s very good. And he gives
me it almost free. And around then in the seventies, he was selling
it around £90 ($200) a pair. So he gives me for £40 because
I help him. When I bought my congas next it was about £900 ($1800)
with the bongos. Still it was £500….he
was a very good man to me then.
 Conga
drums look very simple, but they’re some of the most expensive
to buy…..
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yes,
especially this [gestures to Natal pair in studio]. They’re
making one now, what is it called……a lot of conga are coming
from Cuba, this and that, you can get them for four or five hundred
pounds, but it’s not the
same quality as this Natal conga.
It’s a shock to see the best congas made of very non-ethnic fibreglass…..
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yeah.
It is a shock to me, because my conga, they sent me from Nigeria,
it’s just an ordinary one. There’s no rim. This one you
peg, not like this….you peg them [the skins] down until you get
the sound you want. I was playing them one time in Ronnie Scott’s,
and a tenor player from America heard me. I said that I liked that
kind of conga because it was original. He said, did I want to sell
it, I said no. Then he offered me £250 ($500), I say no, then
he offers me £300 (#600). This is 1971. That’s a lot money
for me then. So one of my friends, Humphrey (he’s a tenor player
too) says I’m stupid not to take it, you can buy for that money
the one you like. So I buy Edmundo Ros bongo, and another kind of conga,
and then I change to Natal. It’s not very hard to make. The only
thing for me that is hard is the fibreglass….I don’t know
anything…..but the wood,
the rim, I know how to do that.
The traditional conga
takes skilled carpentry to put the wood
together……….
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
When my friend did this for me,
it only took him, maybe, half a day,
because he’s a carpenter who knows all about these things. He
just takes them out and puts them together like that……and
that’s it. The only thing I know how to do……the Nigerian
conga then, you don’t put a rim on it. Take rope like that, I
don’t know how you do it, you hammer the pegs until you get the
sound you want. When you’re finished, then you’re pegging
back. With this one, I tune it with the spanner. We don’t use
spanner, we use hammer. But everything is changed now, and in Nigeria
they don’t use that. They come over here to buy conga drum……..
Nigerians come to London to buy congas now?!
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Like my boss Isay who taught
me everything (he’s dead now), he
would always come here when he had a drum shop in Nigeria (and he has
a club too). He always came here to buy from the drum store in Denmark
Street [London’s Tin Pan Alley, base of instrument shops and
music publishers], Rose Morris. And he has a very big drum shop, and
many people have got drums from him now. They don’t use much
native conga unless they’re
native drummers, people who
play really native music.
How do you describe the difference between conga playing, say, Cuban
style and congas African style?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Cuban
style is still African style, but they modernise it a little bit.
What I’m doing is maybe a simpler way. When I go do-do,
they maybe go [more complex]. If I want to play like a Cuban, I can
because I can play a conga drum, I can put on a record and I can learn
and practise it. But I have to be better than them if I do it. But
for me I would rather play my style than Cuban style. There are places
in Cuba where they don’t play the salsa sound….all this
so-called salsa we call Latin music many years, 40 years ago. Then,
Congolese are playing it. In the Congo, that was the kind of salsa
they’re playing here now. People have heard this music for many
years. It’s not news to me. But some of them are very, very good.
Because these boys, they don’t just play badabada, they play
some funk…..I have some videos which I watch every day at home.
But for me, I just like my…….jungle
music.
 When
salsa becomes simpler, it heads back to Africa, doesn’t
it?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yeah, but everything comes from
Africa. Everything. Jazz comes from Africa. Only the
Englishman brings it and polishes it. That’s
after. I wasn’t taught how to dance jazz, I wasn’t taught
how to dance salsa…….it’s a rhythm that comes within
me. One day, Carmel was here, we were playing salsa. My sister brought
her daughter, only seven years old. They were struggling to dance,
then she saw me playing, said oh uncle that is salsa….then she
was dancing. Did she learn how to dance? I said no. You pull into it.
You see mam and dad dancing…….if you dance the way Africans
move, you can dance to Cuban music too. Everything comes from Africa.
No problem for me. I like salsa. I’d prefer it to all this ‘young
people’ music now. There’s nothing there for me…..jabalajab
lajabala….doesn’t do anything for me. But yours, you’re
doing now, the last music you played…..it sent me back home properly,
because it’s simple, like native African music. I like it very
much. Play this in Nigeria, oh mama mia, see all the African women
moving their backsides like this to it…..it’s
easy!
We could look at acid jazz. Before that arrived, musicians would be
complaining. Now we find an electronic base with jazz performance over
the top of it.
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yes
but I don’t think a computer can do anything with jazz because
it’s very complicated. When you’ve played jazz….the
jazz players are playing different patterns….the drummer is going
[complex]. The producer of modern music doesn’t want too much
style [detail]. They just want dum dum dum and that’s it. Jazz
is not like that. I have a few friends…..one came from Nigeria
and came into where we were playing. He never practised with us. He
just said, Humphrey, man, what key are you. You don’t need to
ask, a good tenor player, a good trumpet player just, ‘What key.’ That’s
how we are in Nigeria. But youy can’t do that here. When you
see a musician, playing not so well, you’re finishing and saying, ‘We
don’t want him here.’ We don’t do that in Nigeria.
Once you’ve asked, and you played something that gave somebody
a good feeling, you don’t……..the English boys, I
don’t know, maybe it’s jealousy, too arrogant, or they
think someone’s trying to play them out. I remember a friend
from Mali (he’s a drummer). He can play bongo too, and I was
playing conga drums, he was on the bongo, playing something that I
liked. One of the English boys playing the bass he says oh no, he’s
pushing me, taking me off the beat. That was after we finished, he
said I don’t want someone to jump into something we don’t
practise, I said that makes you not a good musician, because this man
is not throwing anybody anywhere. He’s
following what you are doing.
That
wasn’t very tactful……..
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
I
didn’t say it on the stage! I said it in the dressing
room. I said: this is where we are,
this is how we play.
And as far as I am
concerned, and I
asked everybody, ‘Did he throw you off the
beat?’ No, everybody was clapping. He must be jealous of everybody
clapping after he was taking a solo and doing everything. We talk straight
in Nigeria. When you practise, there are still many mistakes. Someone
goes [ba-bbom], which means, you’ve maded a mistake, you’ve
cocked it up. But you do it in a nice way. We stop and start again.
We donn’t fight. We always come, straightforward.
There was a track we
did with Carmel, All
In The Game, which
started off with
a very simple conga
pattern against
which you played.
That worked very
well…..
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
It
worked well, but it was because Carmel wanted a real conga. Otherwise
I wouldn’t
be there.
[But it worked
really well. I
had understood
that you
played the
original conga
machine pattern
so we started
with you
playing it.
That didn’t
work. But once you played live against the machine pattern…..]
Yeah, yeah, I’m not going against it totally, the only reason
I don’t like it is some just don’t
care whether the
conga drum fit
in it or not. They
just want their
own pattern from
the
machine, and done with it.
In playing electronic drums, do you get the best of both worlds, the
performance and the sound?
hear Johnny in streaming mp3
Yeah, you’re right. I’m not totally against it because
sometimes….when I had finished playing with Carmel, people would
say, come and play with me. We sit on the stage somebody playing the
sample. They say you play and follow it. Then they say because you
are not doing too much, we can’t afford to pay you, we can’t
afford to do that. For me, it’s not the money that’s important.
If I see a band today who want to form a group, say, ‘Let’s
practise’…….I would give it a chance. But there’s
nothing like that any more, everybody wants quick money.
Johnny
Folarin at the Stereo Society:
To
Johnny Folarin's home at the Stereo Society
To
Johnny Folarin's interview
Carmel at
the Stereo Society:
To
Carmel's home at the Stereo Society
To
Carmel McCourt in interview
To
audio excerpts from Carmel's interview
To
the making of Bad Day
To
the making of The Drum Is Everything
To
the making of It's All In The Game
Carmel
collaborators at
the Stereo Society:
To
the Uptown Horns' home at the Stereo Society
To
Johnny Folarin's home at the Stereo Society
Download
printable cover art of four Carmel record covers from our Downloads page
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