Manu Dibango - Ray Lema

Two legendary names in a duo

Paris 

21/03/2003 - 

It’s the first time these two leaders of modern African music have joined up. Thirty years after Soul Makossa, Manu from the Cameroon, older, ironic and effusive, and Ray from the Congo, younger, shy and slightly rebellious, are playing together. As a duo, they revisit a few essential African rhythms with obvious enjoyment.

Their musical dialogue takes everybody on board, musicians, vocalists, and the audience, in a series of rhythmic journeys, which are daringly acrobatic. In turn, they each invite the other one to follow a steep path, an unexpected safari. How do they manage to fall on their feet? Rhythmic tightrope-walkers, these two graceful creatures deftly come back to earth each time. The audience applauds wholeheartedly, spellbound by the suspense, glad to have been trembling in their seats.

The man who invented Soul Makossa in 1973 (pinched and then paid for by Michael Jackson after he was taken to court), which was the second worldwide African hit after Pata Pata by the South-African Miriam Makeba in 1967, was Manu, who remains the godfather of contemporary African music. 70 years old, having spent half a century in France, Dibango has returned from all those musical adventures which led him to most of the countries in this world. People say he has nothing more new to say and should rest sensibly on his laurels. But no chance of that, like a restless child, he wants to try out a new dare, yet another challenge.

As for Ray, he has been labelled "the intellectual of African music", someone who reflects on a would-be universal African rhythm, which would be recognised worldwide like the staccato reggae or the two-beat rock. Pupil at a baptist Seminary, Ray Lema began by learning classical music and playing… rock music in rumba-dominated Kinshasa. Shortly after settling in Paris in 1983, after a spell in the United States, Ray Lema explores all kinds of music. At 57, Ray is seen as the star of Africa on Seine, who is passionately interested in musical experiences, from Bulgarian voices, Swedish symphonies to Marrocan gnawi. For him, it is a new pleasure to play with Manu.

They both rehearse, along with their group at the Groovy studio in Fontenay-sous-bois, a suburb to the east of Paris. Manu returned from the Cameroon yesterday. Smoke-tinted glasses, his head as polished as ever, he talks about the coup in Cental Africa which occurred the weekend he arrives back in France. Ray, with a cap on his head, and a white goatee on his chin, asks questions. He didn’t know about it, he was possibly too taken up by the preparation for their show and the recording of their two-headed CD which will be released next September.

RFI : Where and when did you meet for the first time?
Manu Dibango-We first met way back in 1974 in Kinshasa, during the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Geroge Foreman. I had to give a concert there when somebody spoke to me about a talented young pianist from the Zaire. I was interested, because at that time in Central Africa there were virtually no pianists. I was introduced to him to try him out. He accompanied me on stage. It was Ray.
Ray Lema-I was really intimidated. I knew who he was, and he was a star in Africa. I had all his records. Manu had also played in African Jazz with Joseph Kabassélé, which was the leading group of the Congo scene in the 50’s until it disbanded in 63.

RFI : And did you play together after that?
M. D.-In studios, several times. I often invited Ray to play on my albums. I pursued him constantly, asked him to appear on the TV programme I had on TF1.
R. L.-Ten years ao, we wanted to do go on stage together, but each of us continued on our own separate way.
M. D.-Both of us had our own career to pursue. Ray went off in search of experiences, often unusual ones.

RFI : You who are actors and observers of African music, how do you account for its current retreat from the international scene?
R. L.-All kinds of music like ours go through times like this. It’s like fashion, there’s a cycle. You’ve only got to look at the development internationally of Cuban music for example.
M. D.-We won’t fit into the big business mould where an artist is first and foremost a product. Magic System’s success with Premier Gaou, or Youssou N’Dour with 7 Seconds or Mory Kanté with Yéké Yéké, they all happened by chance.
R. L.-Nowadays, the directors of the record labels come from business and marketing schools, unlike before, where producers and artistic directors accompanied the artist for years.
M. D.-We play out of love for the music. We play what goes through our minds and if it is a success, all the better, there is no planned strategy. We live and survive. We are always there.

RFI : How is it that you came to play together on stage today?
M. D.-For my concerts at the Café de la Danse in Paris in February last year, one of my daughters suggested inviting Ray on stage. We played together and there was magic. The audience loved it.
R. L.-The director of the Music Festival on the Isle of Nantes, Bernard Delaporte, was there. He was enthusiastic and promised to produce us for his festival in July 2002. It all grew from there.
M. D.-Nantes was the starting point for our new music. We are calling it the bantou beat.

Bouziane Daoudi

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SOUL MAKOSSA THIRTY YEARS AGO (1973)

Young people today are really lucky. In those far-off times when only three TV channels and just as many FM radio stations existed in France to communicate the sounds of the world, musical exotism went about as far as Piccadilly or Detroit. The Stones pumped out some Maroccan gnaouas, and Santana shyly admitted to being Mexican… but nobody cared. The West only had ears for the triumphant chords of rock and pop which, globally speaking, could only come from London or New York.

It was in this context, definitely a rich one, if somewhat monolithic, that he suddenly appeared.I remember, it was on TF1 – which exisisted already. He was tall, bald, and dressed in a long boubou (we were to learn later on that it’s called a «gandoura»). He was black. Well, we won’t go as far as to say that that was revolutionary for French TV; we had already seen from time to time, some very tanned skins such as Brown, Belafonte, Franklin, or the lamented Redding and Hendrix. But this black man wasn’t born in the Mississipi cotton fields. The TF1 presenter told us ingratiatingly that he came from the banana plantations in the Cameroon.

In fact, that wasn’t completely true. If the man called Manu Dibango was indeed born in Douala (French Equatorial Africa) in 1933, the hit which propelled him suddenly on to the air-waves, had appeared in the North-American charts. And previously, «Soul Makossa» had been recorded in the recording studios of a very Parisian label, Sofrason, whose particularity was that they never released their singles on the French market, but sent them directly to be sold in Kinshasa, Yaoundé, Abidjan, or Dakar.

For Dibango was one of those Africans in Paris, who, during the day, accompanied French artists on the saxophone (Nino Ferrer) and at night recorded these little numbers for the people back home.

Normally nothing predestined «Soul Makossa» to become a world-wide hit. It was only the B side of a single which had the hymn of the African Cup football Nations on the other side. What happened?- A bunch of black New-yorkers, running a little record shop in Harlem - soon to be renamed Makossa Records- stumbled (no-one knows how) on to the record in question, and slipped it to a DJ friend at the radio. And the track blazed across America, from coast to coast.

«Soul Makossa» (which was neither soul, nor makossa!) was in this way the first «African» record to enter the Top 10. It marked the arrival of these blacks in to the closed circle of the anglo-saxon music industry, which enabled many more to consider «Soul Makossa» and the year 1973 as the true starting point for «world music». Afer that, it’s all a matter of taste…

Jean-Jacques  Dufayet

Translation : Caroline  Preller