KURATED NO. 275
VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL 49
Positive Vodoun by BIM – Benin International Musical
CONTENTS
- ALBUM PLAYLIST: Positive Vodoun
featuring 9 Songs on YouTube and Spotify - VIDEO PLAYLIST: One song: Positive Vodoun feat.Yewhe Yeton (3:33 mins)
LIVE AT WOMAX 24: (15:00 mins) live performance) - PLAYLIST: FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL 49: a 35-song artist sampler
curated by Artistic Director Fiona Black - THE FESTIVAL ON INSTAGRAM
- VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL: buy weekend passes, check out the artist biographies
Benin International Musical will close this year’s Vancouver Folk Musical Festival from the main stage on Sunday, July 19.
POSITIVE VODOUN VIBES
Reclaiming and unifying spirituality
The magic of West African Vodoun music will hit North American stages this summer when hard-driving musical force BIM – Benin International Musical – channels the divine with their powerful, spiritually driven sound.
While that sound owes much to traditional Afrobeat and its variants, it goes well beyond into searing and raucous guitar play, accentuated raps, electronic styles, trip hop grooves, hip hop and more. Launched in 2016 by Hervé Riesen and Jérôme Ettinger as a musical and radio project, BIM has become more of a band than originally conceived.
Vodoun – better known here as VooDoo – is an ancient, nature-based religion and cultural worldview native to West Africa. At its core it assigns spirit to everything emphasizing harmony with nature, deep respect for ancestors and a supreme Creator. The religion has millions of adherents across Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria.
BIM’s album title, Positive Vodoun, means white magic – the healing practices used by priests and priestesses to bring on good fortune, protection, and health. As a band of six (more or less) musicians-vocalists, they share the history and everyday story of Bénin – a country of 13 million people in West Africa – while foregrounding the Vodoun culture advocating a positive attitude, turned towards the earth and humans.
As Festival artistic director Fiona Black writes: “Their performances are more than concerts — they are immersive ceremonies, charged with energy and emotional intensity. The best of African music has the unique ability to be both poignant and joyful simultaneously; the feeling when you smile through your tears. It’s uplifting, universal and needs no translation.”
Band member Brigitte KITI also known as Amessiamey (vocals, castanets)
What some of the song titles mean
• Louange Vodoun: Translates directly from French/Fon to Vodun Praise. It serves as a modern ceremonial hymn to honor the spirits.
• Gbali: Translates to Sweep Away, often used in a spiritual or metaphorical sense of clearing out bad energy or paving the way for the ancestors.
• Biôwa: A specific, celebratory phrase used in ritual dance contexts to channel rhythm and call upon the community to engage in worship.
• Nougnonlon: Derives from Fon and Mina dialects; often points to “the arrival of the spirit” or signifies communal unity within Vodun practice.
Abobo: A common, rhythmic exclamation/refrain in Vodun ceremonies that affirms joy, praise, or spiritual connection.
23 May 2026
