Ferry Djimmy

Beninese Funk Rock Pioneer

Born in 1939, Ferry had 43 siblings. By the late 1950s, he started a career as a schoolteacher. As a tall and imposing young man, Ferry also started a parallel career as a boxer. When he wasn’t teaching or fighting, he also caught up with the emerging night scene in the city of Cotonou, where local folklore, Congolese rumba, highlife and Cuban adaptations were favoured by local audiences as well as some blues, jazz and rhythm’n’blues. By the late 1960s, Ferry had relocated to Paris where he became a policeman, often asked to assist Jacques Chirac on various missions before the future President of France became mayor of Paris in 1977. It was here in the early ‘70s he recorded his first two singles, ‘A Were Were We Coco’ and ‘Aluma Loranmi Nichai’. These songs met little interest and by 1974 Ferry was back in Cotonou. His return to Benin coincided with 1972s revolution’s journey toward Marxist-Leninism. The country’s leader Mathieu Kerekou was impressed by Ferry’s charisma and striking look and became fast friends with him. He saw in him a personality that could seduce the younger generation in a funkier way than straight Socialist speeches. He allowed Ferry a certain budget to start his own record company called Revolution Records. Inspired by Afrobeat, Nigeria’s Fela Kuti and his musical journey over the past decade, Ferry recorded Rhythm Revolution in Cotonou at the Satel studio. Wanting his musical vision to stay as intact and raw as possible, Ferry played most of the instruments himself – guitar, saxophone, drums/percussion and keyboards. By 1977, on the advice of Fela Kuti, Ferry had relocated to neighbouring Lagos with his family. He often visited his friends Fela, Orlando Julius and Geraldo Pino and hung around with Juju music master King Sunny Ade. In early 1980, he got to meet up with his long-time idol, Mohammed Ali, who was on an official visit to Lagos in order to convince Nigeria to boycott the 1980’s Moscow Olympics. Keeping his artistic vision intact, Ferry continued touring and recording music with his family band, the Sunshine Sisters, but these songs were never released. A heavy smoker, Ferry died of a heart failure on 29th May 1996 in Lagos.