Manu Dibango: African Voodoo [SOUL MAKOSSA]

Why you'll love it

This Soul Makossa reissue includes a printed inner sleeve carrying a 2008 interview with Dibango by Jacques Denis, in French and English. The album is a sought-after library record by the Cameroonian saxophonist behind "Soul Makossa."

This edition

• Printed inner sleeve with interview
• Lyrics included

About the album

Not every great record was meant for the shops. In the early 1970s French TV and radio needed Afro-urban sounds for their programmes, and Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian saxophonist and vibraphonist, went into the Mondiaphone studio to make some. He called the result a bit spicy mood music. It was never meant for sale, which is exactly why record hunters went looking for it.

It's a lot more than mood music. Twelve short, punchy pieces run from the breezy "Groovy Flute" and the horn summit "Soul Saxes Meeting" to "African Pop Session," "Walking to Waza" and the heavier funk of "Zoom 2000" and "Jungle Riders," with "Coconut" to close. Dibango fused jazz, funk and the music of Cameroon, and you can hear every part of that here, just compressed into tight, cinematic little scenes. It has a twin album, Africadelic, made the same way, and the two make a fine pair on any shelf of 1970s Afro funk.

Dibango's "Soul Makossa" is often called the most sampled African song, and he the most sampled African musician. On this evidence, the background music department got rather more than it asked for.

Also at Kops: more Manu Dibango on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Soul Makossa (cat# SMV06).