Boney M.

Boney M. was one of the biggest hit machines of the disco era.

Four Caribbean artists, dazzling outfits, and between the late seventies and the early eighties they filled the dance floors of half the planet with songs impossible to get out of your head.

"Rasputin", "Daddy Cool", "Rivers of Babylon", "Ma Baker". More than a hundred million records.

Behind them there was a man who did not appear in the photographs.

The voice was in another room

The man was called Frank Farian, and he was a German producer. He invented the group, wrote or co-wrote almost all the songs, produced them, and — here is the thing — sang himself the deep male voice heard on all the hits.

And the order matters. In 1974 Farian recorded "Baby Do You Wanna Bump" on his own, singing both the deep voice and the high one, and released it under a made-up name: Boney M.

When the single started selling in the Netherlands and somebody had to perform it on television, only then did he go out to find faces to play the part.

There was no group with a voice hidden inside it. There was a voice that had to be found a group.

The member the audience saw out front, Bobby Farrell, a charismatic dancer with wild moves, did not sing on any of the hits. He lip-synced Farian's voice.

With a single, late exception: a spoken part in the introduction of the double A-side "We Kill the World (Don't Kill the World)" / "Boonoonoonoos", from 1 November 1981. By then he was already on his way out, after clashing with Farian.

That deep voice saying "Rasputin" was not Farrell's. It was the German producer's, hidden in the studio.

And there is more. Of the four seen on stage, two did not sing on the recordings: neither Farrell nor Maizie Williams. Farian said her voice was not suited to that kind of music. The ones who did record were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett.

Which means that half of the group the world knew was, on record, other people.

It is worth saying that this was not a secret kept for decades: it was known as early as 1978, two years after the take-off. Nobody simply seemed to mind very much.

The same method, a different ending

Years later Farian put together another group with the same formula — a face that dances, a hidden voice. It was called Milli Vanilli.

That time the deception blew up into a worldwide scandal: it was discovered that the two young men out front sang nothing at all, their Grammy was taken away, and their careers sank.

With Boney M. it worked for years. With Milli Vanilli, the world no longer forgave him.

Farian did not invent the practice — the studio voice different from the visible face is older than he is — but he took it to the extreme and turned it into a method.

Frank Farian died on 23 January 2024, at his home in Miami, at the age of eighty-two. The voice that sings on the Boney M. records went quiet with almost nobody ever having attached a face to it.

A party with improbable lyrics

Beyond the trick, one thing has to be granted to Boney M.: their songs were very strange, and that is why they are unforgettable.

"Rasputin" is a danceable disco track about a mystic at the court of the tsars, murder included. "Ma Baker" is about Ma Barker, an American criminal of the thirties.

And "Rivers of Babylon" has a link in the chain that is almost always left out. It is not a direct adaptation of the Bible made by Farian: it is a cover of a song by The Melodians, a Jamaican rocksteady group that in 1970 adapted psalms 137 and 19.

It is worth pointing out precisely in this article, whose subject is exactly hidden authorship.

Who would think of making millions dance to the story of Rasputin or to an Old Testament psalm? Farian thought of it, and it worked.

What to remember

Boney M. is proof that a song can be pure dance-floor happiness and hide more than it seems.

Put on "Rasputin", "Daddy Cool", "Rivers of Babylon" or "Ma Baker", and you will hear the disco era in its most infectious form, the kind of songs that get anyone out of their chair forty years later.

And if you know the story, you will also hear an early lesson about the distance between image and reality in this industry: the smiling face that dances is not always the voice that sings.

Bobby Farrell, the man who lent the group his body and his charisma, died on 30 December 2010 in Saint Petersburg, after performing the night before.

The coincidence is more exact than it is usually told: it was ninety-four years, to the day, after the murder of Rasputin in that same city.

Boney M. was a party, it was a trick and it was a worldwide phenomenon. And their music, made to make people dance, is still carrying out its one great mission.

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Sources

Boney M., eurodisco group created in West Germany by the producer and singer Frank Farian, who recorded "Baby Do You Wanna Bump" in 1974 and released it under that name in early 1975; the definitive line-up took shape around 1976. It was made up of four Caribbean artists: Bobby Farrell (Aruba), Liz Mitchell (Jamaica), Marcia Barrett (Jamaica) and Maizie Williams (Montserrat). Farian wrote or co-wrote and produced the songs and himself sang the deep male voice on the recordings; Bobby Farrell did not sing on the records, but lip-synced in performances. Maizie Williams did not sing on the recordings either; the female vocals were supplied by Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett. The fact became public as early as 1978. Years later Farian applied a similar formula with Milli Vanilli, whose case ended in a worldwide scandal and in the revocation of their Grammy in November 1990. Boney M. sold more than 100 million records, with hits such as "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker" — inspired by the American criminal Ma Barker —, "Rasputin", "Rivers of Babylon" and "Mary's Boy Child". "Rivers of Babylon" is a cover of the song by the Jamaican group The Melodians (1970), which in turn adapted psalms 137 and 19. Bobby Farrell died on 30 December 2010 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the age of 61, of heart failure, after performing the night before; that day marked exactly ninety-four years since the murder of Rasputin in that same city. Frank Farian died on 23 January 2024, aged 82, in Miami. Milli Vanilli has its own profile in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, DW and other coverage.