Orchestre Poly-Rythmo

Arguably West Africa’s best-kept musical secret, Orchestre Poly Rythmo are from the Republic of Benin in West Africa and are a household name in their home country.

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou (sometimes prefaced with T.P. or Tout Puissant, French for "All Powerful") is a band from Cotonou, Benin, originally active from the 1960s to the 1980s and founded by singer-guitarist Mélomé Clément. Their work has mixed styles such as funk, afrobeat, psychedelia, jazz and local voodoo influences. The Guardian called them "one of West Africa's best dance bands."

According to The Austin Chronicle, the band's "turbulent funk" style drew on "the percussive mysticism of traditional voodoo rituals" while blending Nigerian highlife, Afro-Cuban jazz, and indigenous folk styles with the sounds of James Brown, the Doors, and Funkadelic.

The Quietus described their sound as a "heavy fusion of voodoo infused Afro-beat" indebted to Fela Kuti but "infused with the ancient sacred rhythms that had maintained the Benin people's links to their Dahomey roots" as well as "the youthful sounds emerging from both the Latin and African American diaspora," resulting in an urgent and optimistic psychedelic funk style.

Pitchfork stated that the group "developed its own distinctive style of hard-driving funk but still found time to record in just about every style imaginable, from highlife, Afrobeat, and rumba to rock, jazz, soul, and folk."