Manu Dibango’s new album offers a crash course in contemporary African music, writes Steve Gordon
WAKAFRIKA is a Manu Dibango opus — an album of African classics by one of Africa’s classics. Wakafrika? Vuka Afrika! This is a collection of anthems African, Africanised and Africaine. Recorded during 1993, the album was a 60th birthday project for Dibango, a celebration and collaboration with a flock of Africa’s stars.
Wakafrika comes to us in South Africa as a call back to our continent after years in the wilderness. Sure, we’ve rejoined the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations. But Dibango is the African ambassador leading us back to the music, musicians and heart of modern Africa — with a little help from his friends: Ray Phiri, Angelique Kidjo, Salif Keita, Sinead O’Connor, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’dour, and more.
The album offers a crash course in contemporary African music. It’s an anthology of modern African tracks, packaged with Dibango’s rich Franco-Cameroonian treatment. We know many of the songs, if not their names. Pata Pata in a pan- African style? Wimoweh? Homeless? Melodies creep up from behind, like old friends. Familiar sounds are discernible within the layers and textures of Dibango’s teasing arrangements.
Soul Makossa, Dibango’s inescapable classic, is served fresh as always. N’dour’s distinctive staccato phrasing slips tight into the funky guitar of the makossa groove, then soars high as the Senegalese singer makes his stamp on the 1972 classic. The makossa party’s happening: brass swirls and swells, rhythm cycles to a standing wave for a moment, and contortionist N’dour climbs atop the groove.
Minimalist drum and percussion set up Peter Gabriel’s Biko. Horns state the mournful lines of the familiar Biko chorus; a melancholy guitar lick, then enter the choir featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Geoffrey Oryema, Alex Brown, O’Connor and Gabriel. Next, another classic, Jingo, introduces King Sunny Ade, juju master of Nigeria.
Wakafrika’s comprehensive sleeve notes reveal that several of the featured artists are known to South African listeners. Souleymane Doumbia and Lasine Kouyate, for example, were the percussionist and balafonist who accompanied Salif Keita on his recent South African visit.
On Pata Pata, lead vocals are sung by Kaissa Doumbe, who toured South Africa as part of Dibango’s Soul Makossa Gang in 1993. Perhaps inspired by her South African visit, Doumbe sings and improvises the pata pata lines with a nouveau sweetness.
Other highlights include Amio, which features Kidjo and Papa Wemba, and an addition to the South African repertoire in the form of Wimoweh (Mbube), where Joseph Shabalala, Phiri, Dibango and friends rock gently over marimba and guitar.
In Homeless, O’Connor weaves the midnite lake alongside Zaire’s Ray Lema, and South African/Malawian-born Phiri. Known to us courtesy of Hugh Masekela’s early 1980s recordings and frequent on-stage renditions, Lady, a funky and sensual Afrobeat song by Nigerian Fela Kuti, is also fronted by Phiri and O’Connor.
The album concludes with the Soul Makossa Gang’s live rendition of Dibango’s oriental ,a Va Chouia.
Strings and brass build a menacing tension, only to be released when the bass starts running, guitars picking, horns scatting, and we’re into a groove.
The performance breaks down again to the menacing tension of Andre Manga’s bass, and suddenly, high above the clouds, swathed in reverb, the trumpet of David Lewis catches its shaft of light, trading with the wah-wah guitar licks which snap rattlesnake-style with the snare.
Wakafrika is available on local release through Gallo