Pili Pili is the group Angélique performed with in the 80s.

     The joyous fusion of funky African rhythms and vocals with the unpredictable spontaneity of jazz characterizes the sound of PILI PILI, not only the most exotic but also the most popular result of JASPER VAN'T HOF's continuing quest for fresh and entertaining forms of music expression.
     One of the most versatile keyboard artists on the contemporary jazz scene, VAN'T HOF is no stranger to international audiences. A native of Holland, he is a leading member of the generation of improvisers and composers which emerged in Europe during the past two decades. Yet even though he is equally comfortable performing in a solo, mainstream or avant garde music, PILI PILI presented a new creative challenge for VAN'T HOF when he conceived the group two years ago.
     "I didn't just suddenly gain a special interest in African music," VAN'T HOF explains. "When I was 13 or 14 I started listening to musicians like Cannonball Adderley, Elvin Jones and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Blakey's feeling for triplets has something amazingly African to it, for example. And my attraction to African music was always there if only for the reason that jazz, rock, soul, blues ... even the whole pop scene would be unthinkable without the African influence."
     Nevertheless, the genesis of PILI PILI can be traced back to a tour through Central Africa which VAN'T HOF made with the guitarist Philip Catherine in 1982 and 1983. "When Philip and I were in Africa we played with percussionists there enthusiastically and often. In Zaire, however, we were totally blown away by the group Nono - 12 people with drums - and when I heard them I knew that my next album would have to be made with African drummers."
     Although the cost of importing the drummers he'd played with in Africa for a project in Europe was prohibitive, by a stroke of luck VAN'T HOF was able to engage the Isaac Tagul group from Nigeria when he recorded the album Pili Pili (Zairean for "hot pepper") in 1984. This was followed by Hoomba Hoomba (a traditional African shaman chant to summon pride and power) in 1985.
     Both albums were full of spicy, cross-cultural musical fireworks that not only made them European best-sellers, but also favorites in international discos. The third decade of the band started in January '87 with the most successful concerts PILI PILI ever did. PILI PILI's contagious rhythms and infectious melodies made people dance all over Germany.
Mitchell Feldman
     Taken from the liner notes of PILI PILI's CD Jakko.

Here are the songs on Hotel Babo. Here are the stories behind what's being sung even if you have never heard the songs.

Pili Pili Discography

These are limited to the ones I have, the ones Angélique performed on from 84-89.
 

This Jasper van't Hof interview was taken from the liner notes on the Live 88 CD by Pili Pili.

It doesn't seem as if much has really changed: "I don't think the humor in music should be forgotten. There is, of course, laughter in my music." This is what Jasper van't Hof says when Jazz Podium dedicates a cover story to him and his band Pork Pie in 1974. The laughter has remained; It has found its place on the face of the Dutch keyboarder. The past 14 years haven't gone by without leaving their mark, however. Dozens of LP recordings in which he either played the leading role or participated as a guest musician, countless sessions, tours through Europe, Asia, Africa.

He became a professional musician when he played with Association P.C. "I wanted to give myself a year to see if it was possible to live from music." This one year has now become a good 20, the last few particularly influenced by the work with Pili Pili, his European-African band. After four studio albums a live LP is now being released, long awaited especially by those who appreciate Pili Pili as a top-rate concert event. For Jasper van't Hof the chance to strip off the shackles of studio work: "When a musician goes into the studio, he is going to a factory that makes a product for sale, a piece of plastic which the consumer in the record shop is supposed to fall for, to put it drastically. In the studio you always think about the final result, there you are actually already ensnared and entrapped. That is something completely different from the electric atmosphere that prevails between stage and audience."

The live album provides 52 minutes of electrified high points: A band that jointly dedicates itself to the fiery groove while giving the soloist room to move at the decisive moment. Whatever they do, they do it all the way; the goose-pimple ballads have the same level of intensity as the songs spurred on by African rhythms. One can feel it: The audience gets hot from what is happening on stage. The live album by Pili Pili possesses a quality of its own, it is neither - as so often - a gap-filler between studio productions, nor a trimmed collection of greatest hits. Thus one looks to no avail for the piece that gave the band its name four years ago. asks Jasper van't Hof in return, "why should we record 'Pili Pili' again? I don't think that it's a particularly good song. Well, we do play it as an encore, but that's enough."

Commercial calculation is not his thing. This becomes much clearer in connection with another topic: Ethnic Beat. The whole world pats him on the shoulder because he supposedly anticipated the trend and is now celebrating the much-deserved success with black-white music. If you would like to experience how a jovial person can lose his humor, all right... "It's a scandal. 'Mixture of culture,' whenever I hear that, what a cheap way to talk. It doesn't refer to musical quality, but just to something exotic. That's nothing else than the exploitation of foreign cultures by the Western music industry. Genuine African music cannot be sold because it's too strange. Then one takes a rhythm machine then murders this music with the simplest beat that one can think of. Just so that we idiots here can dance to it."

He pauses for a moment and already anticipates the next question: "Of course: What is the difference with Pili Pili? Isn't it exactly the same thing? On the contrary. It's just the opposite. I don't use African music to make a cheap Western imitation of it, I first compose my pieces the way I always do. Not until the second work phase do I expose myself to the influence of African rhythms - with all the respect that I as a jazz musician have of a foreign culture. If we want to use this term ethno-music at all, then primarily in jazz. For me the American jazz musicians of the 50's and 60's have much more in common with African music than all pop musicians today put together. Just listen to people like Art Blakey and Elvin Jones!"

Jasper Van't Hof is a jazz musician with heart and soul, he never leaves a doubt about that, even though his name - due to Pili Pili - also has a good sound in pop circles today. "I have never been an orthodox jazz musician, a purist. For me jazz is the most beautiful music there is - unfortunately burdened with a lead weight: intellect. What pretentious nonsense I have read about myself, certainly positive, but a load of rubbish. Do you know what an intellectual is? A piece of flesh with a dictionary in his head!" Sometimes his humor turns into cynicism; especially when the subject is the relationship between business and music. "Money and art - they don't go together. It's like fire and water. Money has power. You cannot make money with art, but it's certainly possible to make art with money. Being a millionaire, that's the real art of money!" He, who used to work in a bank himself(!), decided for the other side a long time ago.

Jasper Van't Hof is Dutch and Holland is for us the country where reggae fans play soccer better and tolerance prevails on all bike baths. Jasper Van't Hof has mixed feelings about his own country. "Jazz on the radio is just what the blacks play, and classical music ends with a little nochturnal music - this is the culture we live in here." He says that he has long lost his illusions, except perhaps in his own four walls. He is not bitter, has just become realistic after several great disappointments on the long path to success. The fact that the bands Pork Pie and Eyeball failed in the end still bothers him years later: "Great bands, so much creative potential. Critics and audience were behind us, but the record industry never really gave us a chance."

Even Pili Pili is threatened by the end of the road after a dispute with the first producer. "Against all reason I still decided to go on." Fortunately, for now stability has returned - three LP's with JARO, essentially a fixed group, optimistic prospects for the future, licensed releases abroad and success in West Africa! Stability yes, but not at the sacrifice of spontaneity: "When you work with Africans, everything is different. The feeling at the moment is what counts. Food, drink, weather, music, life - always: Where are we now? What is the feeling now? It's fantastic, everything is expressed in movement. You immediately sense when an African is happy, it's different from us Europeans. We almost had an accident on the autobahn once because ten people put the bus into a skid with their dancing and drumming. And this goes on 24 hours a day. Everything is totally direct."

During his many years of contact with black musicians Jasper Van't Hof has had to throw a number of prejudices overboard: "Above all I learned that Africa is not Africa, that there are huge cultural differences. If you don't grasp that, you learn it, unfortunately, very tangibly on tour at European borders: 'You are from Senegal? Yes, you can enter. From Ghana? Sorry ... And you come from Guinea? All right, but just a one-day visa.' Then I ask myself whether it might not be us who live in the Stone Age."

The PILI PILI/JASPER VAN'T HOF biography was written by Andreas Hub (8/88).