If you ask me to name my favourite band in the world at the moment, it would be a tie, between Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, from Mali, and the 17 Hippies, from Berlin.
It was only as they finished their set, playing five songs instead of just the three they had prepared, that I realised another reason why I have liked 17 Hippies so much for the past ten years. There is no drummer in the line-up. I have nothing against drummers, some of my best friends are drummers. But they do tend to impose a more rigid structure to the rhythms and arrangements of songs. No such anchors weigh down the songs of 17 Hippies, which ebb and flow as the players of double bass and banjo lock into each other’s pulses.
The name of the band has probably been a hindrance, implying a casual, dilettante approach that does not do justice to their disciplined commitment. Their annual touring itinerary is so congested, the wonder is that they ever find time to write and record enough new songs for another album. But those albums keep on coming, and their last two have been their best so far, Heimlich being probably slightly stronger than the new one, El Dorado, if only because it includes their masterly ‘Son Mystère’.
17 Hippies on Radio 3 Stage
[photo by Martin Smith]
The members of the band were so friendly, there was no sign that any of them have any reservations about the particular focus of my enthusiasm, which is so clearly biased towards the songs that are written and sung by their female vocalist, Kiki Sauer. She sings with equal conviction in French and German, while the men sing mostly in German but can cope with English too.
Their music defies classification, and steers clear of any obvious categories, hinting at jazz one moment, and flitting across Cajun, Klezmer and folk while suggesting night club ballads every now and then. The perfect group for a music festival, you might think, but it has taken WOMAD an awfully long time to invite them. The consolation for me was that they were featured on Sunday and therefore available to play during my allocated set that evening. What a pity it was raining. The band were impressed at the audience’s fortitude – “in any other country, everybody would have gone inside, and we’d have had no audienceâ€