World Music Legends

With his bald head and dark glasses, Manu Dibango is the epitome of cool. And for over 30 years he’s been one of the giants of world music—long before it had a name—this Cameroonian whose music sounds as powerful and appealing in America as it does in Europe or Africa.

            Born in 1933 in Douala, Cameroon, Dibango grew up with church music, the only kind allowed by his parents. Secretly, he began to learn a couple of instruments, but it wasn’t until he was in his teens that music began to play a big part in his life.

            By then Dibango’s parents had sent him to France to further his education, with the intent of turning him into a professional man. But all began to be lost when he started studying piano. From there a fellow student, Francis Bebey, introduced him to American jazz, especially Duke Ellington.

            Now he had a musical grounding, and also a focus. But the real turning point came in 1953 when he began playing the saxophone. Soon he was playing jazz clubs around the northeast of France, often the only black playing music in the area. In 1957 he quit his studies and moved to Belgium to make his living as a musician, first as a sideman, then a bandleader. The city was good to him, and he found success and money.

            In 1960, while playing at Les Anges Noir Club in Brussels, he met the future leaders of the Congo, there to negotiate his country’s independence from Belgium. Part of the delegation was Joseph Kasabele, the leader of Africa Jazz, one of the leading Congolese rumba bands.

            Dibango was invited to return to the Congo with Kasabele and join African Jazz for a marathon recording session: 40 songs in just two weeks. Before he left, however, he released his first disc, African Soul, which staked out a very personal territory where African music, jazz and the emerging form that would become soul all met.

            He was supposed to stay in the Congo, or Zaire, as it was about to become, for two months of recording; he ended up remaining for two years, even opening his own Tam Tam club. It was in the country that he really began to synthesize his style, and after a short sojourn back in Cameroon Dibango returned to France, playing in a couple of different bands before releasing Saxy Party in 1969, where the soul influence shone stronger than ever.

            There were regular trips to Africa, where Dibango helped set up national bands in Niger, Benin and the Ivory Coast. He was a man respected by musicians in Europe and West Africa. He’d met his musical foil, guitarist Jerry “Bokilo” Malekani, who’d recently left the Congolese band Raco Jazz. All he needed was a stroke of luck to become a global figure.

            That happened in 1972. Dibango managed to get the Cameroon government to pay for a record in praise of the national soccer team, competing in the African Nations Cup, and Dibango duly recorded and released “Mouvement Ewondo.” The flip side, “Soul Makossa,” was almost a throwaway, based on a local version of the traditional makossa dance.

            Cameroon lost in the final, and the single was forgotten by most people, except Dibango, who saw something in “Soul Makossa.” Back in Paris, he recut the song. It was picked up by an American DJ, and suddenly Dibango had U.S. success—the song stayed on the Billboard chart for nine weeks, spawning seven cover versions. He came to America, playing at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem and sitting in with salsa greats the Fania All-Stars when they entertained a crowd of 40,000 at Yankee Stadium.

            Now a truly global name, he returned to Africa, working in the Ivory Coast, before recording Gone Clear in 1978 in the West Indies, mixing Africa and the Diaspora. By the ’80s, after a failed attempt to establish a night club in his hometown, he returned to Paris, which has remained his base ever since, although he remains the globetrotter.

            Since 1985, Dibango has been established as the elder statesman of African music, feted all over the globe, collaborating with any number of artists, and continuing to release his own albums. He’s hosted his own show, Salut Mama, on French television, written his autobiography (Trois Kilos du Café), and been awarded the prestigious Medaille des Arts et des Lettres.

            He still performs, albeit less frequently these days. But now in his 70s, he’s earned the right to slow down. One thing that hasn’t diminished, however, is his influence. Manu Dibango remains the African Colossus.