Cuban Music in Africa

Sylophone was a government run record label in Guinea until the 1970s, and its Discotheque series were a sort of greatest hits compilation series. Five out of six songs on Discotheque 76 are by Bembeya Jazz National, Guinea’s national orchestra known for their modern approach to Manding music. The band featured a Latin-flavored horn section, but the Cuban influences on this record are subtle. Instead, it is Sekou “Diamond Fingers” Diabate virtuoso guitar playing that takes the lead on these extended psychedelic pieces, like on the meandering “Petit Sekou”, an instrumental workout punctuated only by maniacal laughter.

This record provides a snapshot of what Africans heard in clubs and on radio when HMV GV series records started arriving on the continent in the 1930s. These are the very songs that influenced musicians all over West Africa and the Congos, and that spawned the birth of rumba and countless other Afro-Cuban styles. The superbly selected compilation opens with the seminal “El Manisero” and includes several other definitive Cuban tracks, but contrary to the album’s title also includes Luiz Gonzaga’s “Juazeiro” from northeastern Brazil and the Puerto Rican “Menéalo que se Empelota - Stir It Up or She’ll Get Annoyed.”

Even though the relationship between Cuban music and the two Congos merits a whole book of its own, no guide to the subject would be complete without a mention of the Grand Maitre Franco, the guitarist who helped develop Afro Cuban music into what is now known as Sokous. Already one of Zaire’s biggest stars, under the Mobutu dictatorship Franco continued to Africanize Afro-Cuban rumba by introducing more traditional Congolese elements, in line with Mobutu’s authenticitè movement. Franco was incredibly prolific, and it is estimated that he released between 80 and 150 with his band OK (and later TPOK) Jazz. Originalite: The First Recordings of This Legendary Band (1956-57) is a fantastic compilation of Franco’s early recordings, replete with Spanish and Lingala lyrics and typically Cuban-son rhythmic guitars.

Released in 1982, Laba Sosseh’s self-titled album includes some of the Gambian musician’s biggest hits, including the son montuno grooves of “Aminata” and “Diamoule Mawo”, which was later turned into a hit by Colombian salsa singer Joe Arroyo. Born in Banjul in 1943, Laba Sosseh started making music just as the craze for Cuban music was at its apex, and began his career by imitating his idol Johnny Pacheco before joining Star Band de Dakar. He later collaborated with Cuban musicians such as Orquesta Aragón, and joined Afro-salsa band Africando on their album Baloba!.

Taximen is a beautifully varied record that brings together Amadou Balakè’s various influences, from the syncopated percussion and Dioula sounds of his native Burkina Faso, to the son and salsa sounds of Cuba. With French lyrics over a soukous-tinged guitar riff, the opening title track tells the amusing story of Balakè’s unfortunate encounter with a Abidjan taxidriver, while tracks like “Mingoussia” and  “Kanan N’Djanfa”, with their Spanish lyrics and La-Bamba style guitars, wouldn’t be out of place in a Havana nightclub. 

In 1964, the new Bamako government selected ten musicians from different regional orchestras to receive conservatory training in Cuba following an invitation by Castro’s government. The students would go on to form Las Maravillas de Mali, who became early pioneers of Afro-Cuban music. On their 1968 self-titled album, the band recorded a mix of charanga, sonmontuno, boogaloo, bolero, chachachá, danzón and guaracha with a melodic string section and twin flutes, with vocals in Spanish, Bambara, and French. This updated edition includes all original tracks, including the  hit song “Rendez-vous Chez Fatimata”, plus several new recordings with guest vocals by Guinean singer Mory Kanté. 

“Super Rail Band of the Buffet Hotel de la Gare, Bamako,” or, for simplicity’s sake, “Rail Band,” formed in 1970 and were sponsored by the Ministry of Information and the Railway Administration. They effectively combined Cuban music, by way of Congolese soukous, with traditional Mande Griot praise singing, mixing soaring Mandinka and Bambara vocals with jangly electric guitars and Latin horns, as well as a traditional Mande instruments such as the kora, balafon, tama drums, and ngoni. You might recognize the distinctive, powerful vocals of Salif Keita, who went on to become one of Africa’s biggest musicians.

Orchestra Baobab were born in 1970 when six musicians left Senegal’s Star Band to form their own outfit. From the outset they set themselves apart by blending griot Wolof vocals and the rolling harmonies and melodic drumming from Casamance, a region in the south of the country, with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Their first two albums, both named Orchestre Du Baobab and produced in 1970 and 1972, feature the sonero-like vocals of Medoune Diallo, the most Cuban sounding of all of Baobab’s lead singers. The 1972 album includes songs sung in Spanish and Wolof (El Vagabondes and Kanoute) and covers of Cuban originals (Baila mi Gente and Mi Nuevo Amor), capturing the verve and vitality that still keeps the band going strong 50 years later.

In 2019 Ostinato Records marked the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution by releasing this compilation of Star Band de Dakar’s most psychedelic Afro-Cuban tracks, “an ode to their finest hour”. Like many West African bands in the 1960s and 70s, Star Band started out by simply covering Cuban tracks, but quickly evolved by mixing local styles, such as sabar rhythms and later mbalax guitars, with  guajira, salsa, and son. The result is a wonderfully bracing listen, in which founder Ibrahim Kassé and legendary musicians such as Youssou N’Dour and Laba Sosseh dial up the psychedelia as far out as it will go. 

The first ever release by Teranga Beat is this compilation of songs recorded between 1969 and  1976 by Idrissa Diop,  his band Sahel,  and his duo with Cheikh Tall. Through their changing musical style, the record also captures the transformative period in Senegalese music that saw mbalax — the fusion of traditional sounds of Senegal’s  Serer people with modern popular music — overtake Afro-Cuban music as the dominant sound in Senegal. The first half of the record is all Cuban rhythms, with the Latin horns and Spanish lyrics of “Cintorita” or the funky Afro-Cuban salsa “Caridad”, while sabar percussion takes over on the second half, with closing track “Gueth” developing over a bed of tama drums.

Veteran Cameroonian sax player Manu Dibango was no stranger to Latin music when he teamed up with Cuban son band El Cuarteto Patria for this album in 1998: playing in Kinshasa’s hottest nightclubs in the 1960s, it would have been impossible to escape the Cuban rhythms that were taking over the city. Yet this is his first real foray into Cuban music, and it works. At times sax and guitar seem to talk to each other, giving the record a lovely, playful improvisational feel to it. The musicians give each other plenty of space, and Dibango’s funky Makossa sound melds perfectly with Eliades Ochoa’s authentic Cuban son.

It was this album that introduced the now legendary afro-Salsa supergroup Africando to the world in 1993. The group formed in New York in 1992 and brought together salsa musicians and West African singers, and over the years their ever-changing lineup has included some of Africa’s biggest names  (such as Tabu Ley Rochereau, Koffi Olomide, Salif Keita). Arranged by Malian flutist Boncana Maiga, and with the voices of Senegalese Star Band members Pap Seck and Medoune Diallo, Trovador offers a fresh, original approach to Afro-Cuban music. 

Cuban music was all the rage when Gnonnas Pedro was growing up in Cotonou, and by the early 1960s the singer and multi instrumentalist was leading the Cuban-inspired band Los Panchos, who later reformed as  Les Dadjés.  He soon began incorporating the Agbadja style from the Mono region into his music, and this unique melange became his trademark sound. His 1981 album Africa Tei Cuba  captures Pedro’s different influences, from the typically Latin horns of the opening title track to Cicibilici’s slow Afro-Cuban rhythms.

One of the lesser known facts about Buena Vista Social Club is that they were originally going to be a Malian and Cuban ensemble. Travel issues got in the way, but 14 years after it was supposed to happen the collaboration finally took place, with stunning results. For this album Cuban guitarist and singer Eliades Ochoa was joined by seven giants of Malian music, including kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, singer Kasse-Mady Diabaté, and ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate. Cuban classic “Guantanamera” is given new life through an elegant improvisation, while guitarist Djelimady Tounkara is able to show off his dexterous playing on “Djelimady Rumba” and “La Culebra”; elsewhere Kouyate’s ngoni weaves expansive West African atmospheres, which are seamlessly interlaced with Ochoa’s Spanish vocals.

Despite Senegal’s first president Léopold Sédar Senghor’s hostile stance towards Cuba, the country’s anti-imperialist ideals resonated, especially in places like the Medina, the “local” part of Dakar that stood in stark contrast to the rich French areas.  It is no coincidence then that Star Band de Dakar were born in the Medina’s iconic Miami club, and were among the first to play Cuban music. While they would later increasingly mix Cuban sounds with local styles,  on their first album, Star Band de Dakar Vol.1, the band re-record Cuban classics from the early 50s, giving them a more open, blissed out feel.  

This wide ranging compilation offers an in-depth look into the  fascinating life and cosmopolitan music of the great Joseph Kabasele, better known as Le Grand Kalle, the Congolese singer and bandleader who was among the first to mix Cuban sounds with traditional African rhythms to create what is now known as soukous. With his band African Jazz he recorded hundreds of singles, so this compilation is an important resource for those trying to delve into his music, starting from his first recordings in 1951. It includes a mix of Congolese rumba, chachachàs, and merengues, boogaloos, and of course the seminal “Independence Cha Cha”, composed to celebrate the independence of the Belgian Congo (the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).