As it was , he was affected by musical grace in the very first years in the protestant temple. Little Manu on the road between Paris and Brussels, thanks to the masters he discovers (Armstrong, Ellington, Young, Parter…) wandering in places where jazz rips the nights apart voluptuously, a musician’s sooul was being formed.
Then the famous singer Kabase “African Jazz” to play Congolese music; Manu takes up the challenge. He features in around forty records, then goes on tour near Kinshasa. This was to be a decisive step. An idea was gradually taking shape during his life as a well-known musician: to invent a patchworkmade up of rich and spirited conversations between Jazz and African styles of music. Being of an eclectic mind, listening to the sounds of his era – in 1972 Soul Makossa was the first “French” hit to conquer the states – Manu takes secret pleasure in breaking the musical chapels, building bridges between continents and throwing passageways between tradition and the sounds of future.
The first in France to clear the land where the African wave was well established; he produced albums and went on tour endlessly with warm, passionate enthusiasm and committed himself to humanitarian causes, giving a hand to young talents along the way. He used his time to create musical scores for African music and ever to write his own autobiography.
Time to call it a day? Definitely not! Manu is more than 70 but he’s not yet ready to put down his saxophone..
Extracted from / more from Manu Dibango official website
Contents
Discography
Tracks
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– [[Soul Makossa ]]