Cococun Gba Gounke. Colomach. Soundway. 1974.

 Our physical responses to polyrhythms function at a level so deeply ingrained within the prefrontal cortex that they’re beyond the reach of streamlined western capitalism. The polyrhythmic drumming of Nigerian rock is a cerebral event; it awakens and holds the attention of our brain with all the sensual insistency of an alarm. In western pop music, we’re accustomed to hearing guitar, piano, or voice mixed up front so that the melody will cushion the abrasion of rhythmic aggression. Nigerian pop by contrast transfixes us with the mollifying stimulant of percussive energy. Melody invites the comfort of consumer driven fantasy, while rhythm beats back against the demonic advancement of our worst impulses. From 1974, Colomach’s Cococun Gba Gounke finds the altitude at which human excitement is pitched, and transmits from those heights of ecstasy what is essentially a passionately modulated vision of a balance of both worlds. Polyrhythmic drums overlaid with an electric, psychedelic guitar solo not only delineate with note by note rigor the intensity of the existential drama, but also serve as metaphors of our struggle to self-express. We do so not with the curated elegance of online personae but with the dynamism of raw emotion; from happiness to despair, we’re agents of reality, either confusing or elucidating the truth, depending upon our mental stamina. Rock and roll once charted that struggle, amplifying the voice of the dispossessed until it became so recognizably ubiquitous that it became easy to take for granted, and, ergo, third-millennium marketable, leading to its untimely demise. Of the many artfully enhanced forms of twentieth century communication rock and roll remained the closest to its roots in the working class, providing listeners with a radiant perspective rocked by the instability of modern vicissitudes. We invented rhythm because our dance moves were the only part of us we could ever fully control.

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