Manu Dibango is an international star and Africa’s best-known jazz saxophonist. With the recording and release of his single “Soul Makossa” in 1973, Dibango became the first African artist to make the U.S. Top 40 charts. Perhaps just as significantly, “Soul Makossa” also heralded the beginning of the international disco phenomenon.
Dibango was born Emmanuel Dibango N’Djocke on February 10, 1933, in Douala, Cameroon. In the spring of 1949, when he was just 15, Dibango’s parents sent him to Paris to attend technical school. He took with him a small satchel holding six pounds of coffee for his French sponsors and very little else.
Dibango first studied classical piano and then later took up the saxophone around 1954. A meeting with American sailors initiated his interest in jazz, and he explored the jazz scene in Calais. He started a band before he really even knew how to play properly, picking things up as he went along and achieving remarkably positive results.
Two years later he moved from France to Belgium, playing sax and vibraphone with various jazz bands in Brussels. Later he travelled to Zaire, where he stayed for five years, performing with Kabasele and the African Jazz while also owning a nightclub.
Dibango played on numerous records and recorded his first solo effort “O Boso” in 1972. He followed this with the album Soma Loba, and then with his ground-breaking album, Soul Makossa, in 1973. Soul Makossa rose to number 79 on the U.S. Billboard charts and established Manu Dibango as “The Makossa Man”—international fame followed.
Success allowed Dibango to expand his band and record with top jazz musicians, including the Fania All Stars. He toured Africa, Belgium, France, Jamaica, and many other countries, and recorded numerous albums on local record labels.
Musically, Dibango blends his African heritage with European music, reggae, American jazz, and Arabic influences. His focus has always been his African identity and he uses his music to communicate his feelings about being proud, African, and a member of the world community. His efforts and influence have furthered both the music and the general working conditions of musicians all over the world.
He continued to tour the world throughout the 1980s, always giving a break to up-and-coming artists and exploring new areas in musical expression. Dibango also broadened his scope by writing and performing numerous film scores including L’Herbe Sauvage, Ceddo, and The Price of Freedom.
In 1994, Dibango published Three Kilos of Coffee, a book based on interviews with the journalist Danielle Rouard, which chronicles Dibango’s life from his child-hood in Cameroon to his success as a pop jazz star. The title comes from the three kilos of coffee that he took to Paris from his African homeland.
Manu Dibango has worked with and influenced many artists during his career. These include such artists as Art BLAKEY, Don Cherry, Herbie HANCOCK, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and Johnny Clegg. In Africa, he has helped scores of younger musicians to further their careers, has performed benefit concerts, and has transcribed for the first time the scores and lyrics of African musicians. He has continued to record throughout the 1990s, often appearing as a guest musician on the albums of other world-renowned artists, such as Angélique Kidjo’s Logozo (1991) and Les Têtes Brûlées’ Bikutsi Rock (1992).
James Tuverson
SEE ALSO:
AFRICA; JAZZ; KUTI, FELA; REGGAE.
FURTHER READING
Dibango, Manu, and Danielle Rouard. Three Kilos of Coffee: An Autobiography (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994);
Ewens, Graeme. Africa O-Ye! (London: Guinness Publishing, 1991).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Afrijazzy; Afrovision; Ambassador; Bao Bao; Electric Africa; Gone Clear; Happy Feeling; Makossa Man; Makossa Music; O Boso; Polysonik; Soul Makossa; Sun Explosion; Wakafrika; Wakujuju.