Babatunde Olatunji: Master Nigerian Drummer (1927-2003)

I am the drum, you are the drum, and we are the drum. Because the whole world revolves in rhythm, and rhythm is the soul of life, for everything that we do in life is in rhythm. -- Babatunde Olatunji


Michael Babatunde Olatunji was born in 1927 in Ajido, Nigeria among the Yorubu people. He came to the U.S. in 1950 to study at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. After Morehouse he went on the New York University. There he started a drum and dance troupe with some other African Americans to earn money for school.

In 1958 he landed a job with Radio Music City Hall doing a piece called "African Fantasy." The next year he got a recording contract with Columbia Records and released his groundbreaking album Drums of Passion. This album was a rare presentation of African culture and World Music to the American people in the 50's. It sold over 5 million copies. Carlos Santana would later popularize one of Baba's songs from that album---Jin-go-lo-ba. From that point on he was playing on the same bill with well known jazz musicians, like John Coltrane and Art Blakely, and performed at the New York World's Fair in 1964.

Baba opened the Olatuniji Center of African Culture in Harlem. As a teacher of drumming Baba invented a method of teaching drum patterns known as Gun-Dun-Go-Do-Pa-Ta. and popularized the Liberian welcoming rhythm Fanga. He would become a teacher of many students, like Arthur Hull, and spawned a worldwide interest in drumming and the drum circle movement.

In 1985 his career and influence expanded even further when he met Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead, and opened for them at a New Year's Eve concert in Oakland, California. In 1991 Baba collaborated with Hart on the Grammy awarded Planet Drum. Baba played and recorded with countless musicians and had among his fans John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Taj Mahal, John Hammond (who produced his first album) and Pete Seeger, to name but a few.

Baba was politically progressive and known to give impassioned speeches on social justice and lent his drumming to gatherings for peace. Baba performed close to 100 times for the NAACP and 50 times for the Congress of Racial Equality, as well as for the United Jewish Appeal and Malcolm X. He toured the South with Martin Luther King, Jr. and joined his march on Washington in 1963. Peace activist Joan Baez wrote the foreward to his autobiography, The Beat of My Drum.

In his later years Baba taught at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, while he battled diabetes. On April 6, 2003, a day before his 76th birthday, Baba died at the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. His amazing influence lives on in his myriad of students and admirers.

* The above scratchboard drawing is my tribute to the artistry and influence of Babatunde Olatunji. May he rest in peace.

A video of Babatunde Olatunji: