Manu Dibango –
Electric Africa
In 1973, at 40
years of age, Manu Dibango did something almost unheard of for an African
artist – he had a pop hit. Especially on the East Coast, his song “Soul
Makossa” became an enormous hit (even though it only charted at #35 pop) with
its infectious chant, unstoppable rhythm and a sax part that owed more to King
Curtis than King Sunny (who was just starting to play clubs in Nigeria at the
time).
Manu lived a
life that cried out for fusion. Born in
Cameroon, he studied classical piano, flute and guitar. Like so many people in Francophone Africa,
he was sent to Paris in his late teens to finish his education, studying
philosophy and aiming at becoming a teacher. Suddenly a whole new world opened
up.
Manu spent
seven years in Paris, working more on his music than his other studies. He moved to Brussels and became a fixture on
the jazz scene. Here, he took up the
saxophone and by the early 50s, he was doing much live and session work, and
developing a hybrid sound encompassing jazz and the indigenous music of
Cameroon that he grew up on.
The late 50s
and early 60s were a heady time in both Francophone Africa and in the European
countries that had colonized Africa. The Central African Republic, The Congo,
the Ivory Coast, Zaire, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal, Niger,
Rwanda, Tunisia, Chad, Dahomey (Benin), Burkina Faso, and his Native Cameroon
all became independent of France or Belgium at that time.
Manu spent
much of his time traveling between Europe and Africa. He worked with bands from the Congo and Zaire, opened up a
nightclub in Cameroon and ran the house band, played piano for French pop star
Nino Ferrer. By 1968, he was back in
Paris and working in the studios.
In 1971, on a
visit to Cameroon, the President asked Manu to write a song for the Cameroon
team in the African Football championship.
For the singles b-side, he did a toss off song called “Soul
Makossa.” By 1973, the song took hold
of New York radio at the height of the “black consciousness movement” and the
Latino “Newyorican movement.”
He has since
describe the song “as a bridge connecting America with the motherland…during
the ‘place is beautiful’ period.”
In addition to selling hundreds of thousands
of copies of the record, he played such huge venues as Yankee Stadium and
Madison Square Garden. For several
years after, he based himself in New York.
By 1985,
Dibango was back in Paris, one of the most successful African artists in the
world. His fame and reputation as a fine and open-minded musician opened many
interesting opportunities for him. He
had recorded with the Jamaican nonpareil rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and
Robbie Shakespeare, and the primo New York salseros, the Fania All Stars. Electric Africa was yet another
several avenues of exploration.
This album hooked Manu and his band, the Soul
Makossa Gang up with New York avant garde producer Bill Laswell, jazz pianist
Herbie Hancock, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, Pan
African synthesist Wally Badarou, New York guitarist Nicky Scopelitis, African
drummer Aiyb Dieng, and Malian kora virtuoso Mory Kante.
Bob Musso, the
engineer on Electric Africa recalled that, “Some of the Manu Dibango
record, there was already a structure and an idea. He came in and improvised
melodies or phrases around a rhythm track foundation, and we filled in the gaps
later with a Fairlight track or a tape effect.”
This means of
working gave Manu and Laswell license to fuse synthesizers and kora, talking
drums and samples, ngoni and electric guitar.
What it all boils down to is world beat in its truest sense.
Electric
Africa
remains one of Manu’s strongest albums and a precursor to such other great
music as Wakafrika nearly a decade later. His deep growl of a honey and sandpaper voice and the energetic
honk of his saxophone merge with the seamless samples and the myriad hand
percussion and overt funkiness of his band. Herbie Hancock plays on three of
the four tracks, contributing an amazing electric piano solo on the title track
and interacting with Manu’s sax while weaving to the warp of Mory Kante’s kora
during “L’arbre a Palabres.” Similarly
but more subtly, Laswell, Badarou and Worrell play dueling synthesizers in and
around the band throughout ”Pata Piya.”
Albums like Electric
Africa have many critics bemoaning the dilution of non-western music. He has several answers to this. “Do you lose
your African identity because you wear shoes or drive a car? I am a musician of
African origin. One shouldn’t consider
me only an African musician because when we talk of African musicians it can be
an honor, but also a way of being labeled forever. The music that I play is, let’s say, my own personal melting pot
of music. I play what I feel and I
would call that Afro-music. You have to
let your imagination travel.”