Doudou N’Diaye Rose obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/25/doudou-ndiaye-rose

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Doudou N’Diaye Rose, who has died aged 85, was Senegal’s most famous percussionist, known as the “mathematician of rhythm” and praised by Unesco as a “human living treasure” for his role in preserving his country’s culture and passing his skills on to future generations. He was also an innovator who was happy to work with rap and rock musicians, and came to international attention with his album Djabote, released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label in 1994.

Recorded on Gorée island in Senegal, the album featured Rose playing with 50 other drummers and 80 singers, often thunderously, and with complex and ever-changing rhythm patterns as well as changes of mood and pace. His favoured instrument, the sabar drum, is played with one hand and one baton, and was traditionally used to send messages between villages. But when Rose conducted a drum orchestra the instrument was transformed. Gabriel described this energetic, pixie-like musician in Star Wars terms as “a Yoda type of figure whose magic powers extended deep into the rhythmic arts”, adding: “He would appear in various incarnations, in different family groupings, turning wonderful, complex rhythms into beautiful compositions.”

Rose had been obsessed with percussion from an early age. Born Mamadou N’diaye in the capital of Senegal, Dakar, he came from a griot caste of traditional musicians, but his father was an accountant who had different ideas for his son, whom he encouraged to be a plumber. “Even though I trained to be a plumber, I never stopped playing the drums,” said Rose. “There were weddings and baptisms every day in Dakar, and I heard the drums on the way to school. I followed the sounds to find the house where there was a party”.

He was helped by Mada Seck El Hajj, considered the best drummer in the country, and travelled across Senegal to learn different rhythms. In the pre-independence era, when Senegal was French territory, he came to the attention of the dancer and singer Josephine Baker, who told him: “You will be a great drummer.” After that, he said, “I did everything I could to be the best”. He would later visit Baker in her chateau in France.

His big breakthrough came at the Senegalese independence ceremonies in 1960, when he led a 100-strong sabar orchestra, providing the marching beat for 100 majorettes. President Léopold Sédar Senghor, a poet and exponent of negritude and African culture, was delighted, and sent Rose his congratulations. Rose was later appointed to the National Institute of Arts and became drum major at the Senegal National Ballet. He had regular meetings with Senghor at the presidential palace.

Rose founded a percussion school in Dakar, invented a new form of the sabar, and regularly performed with his group, the Drummers of West Africa, which included many of his children and grandchildren. They toured in Europe, the US and Japan, where they collaborated with the celebrated Kodo drummers. Rose even started a female drumming group, the Rosettes, made up of his daughters. He said that they were worried at first – after all, drumming is traditionally a male preserve in Africa – but they became so successful that they toured the world.

His adventurous approach to music included an interest in rap, which he compared to traditional African styles, and he performed alongside Senegalese rappers, including the group Positive Black Soul. Gabriel used his percussion work in Passion, his 1989 soundtrack album for the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation Of Christ, as well as in subsequent recordings, including two songs on the 1992 album Us. Rose’s drumming can also be heard on recordings by Jane Birkin, Alan Stivell and Nine Inch Nails.

In 1989 he took part in the spectacular televised celebrations in Paris to mark the bicentenary of the French revolution, during which he was perched at the top of a pyramid of Senegalese drummers in his dinner jacket as part of Jean-Paul Goude’s Bicentenaire celebration along the Champs Elysées.

Rose was a Muslim, and was praised by the archbishop of Dakar for his “contribution to Christian-Muslim dialogue”, thanks to his collaborations with the Christian choirmaster Julien Jouga, whose choir appeared on the Djabote album.

Rose is survived by four wives and 42 children, many of them percussionists.

• Doudou N’diaye Rose, drummer, born 28 July 1930; died 19 August 2015