African Voodoo

When he was fifteen Manu Dibango left Cameroon for France carrying only a bag of clothes and three kilos of coffee. This move, in 1948, would mark the beginning of a life lived across continents, making music with no regard for borders or genres. “Back home, people considered me European, and Europe treated me as an American. For Uncle Sam, I was an African making African music” said Dibango once. But right from the start he eschewed labels and refused to be pigeonholed, and his very first album, recorded in France in 1971, is an early embodiment of his open, universal approach. African Voodoo is packed with grooves that move between Afro and Latin rhythms, jazz, funk, and soul, capturing all the energy of an improvised session. In fact the album was recorded as a sort of library piece for TV and film, and, under Dibango’s direction, the musicians were given the freedom to play around and experiment. The results are excellent, and just a first hint of Dibango’s future brilliance.