I am surfing the internet, searching for the original video of “Soul Makossa” and there is none. I am observing social distancing at my apartment complex in Texas, to prevent catching the coronavirus.
I am also following the news online as the death figures skyrocket worldwide, when I learned that the legendary Cameroonian saxophonist, Manu Dibango is also gone. Cause of death: COVID-19. Manu Dibango has become the first superstar musician to die from coronavirus. The reality of the statistics I see online sinks and settles in hard. This is not just a disease of rising numbers. This is a disease that can affect anybody and everybody you know.
The earliest Youtube video of Manu performing “Soul Makossa” at a concert that I find is in 1983, ten years after he released the song. He’s wearing a long, white Agbada and reading glasses. He picks up xylophone sticks and starts playing a xylophone. The crowd claps and cheers. He then abandons the xylophone sticks, picks up his saxophone and introduces a female dancer as the band whips up the beat. As she gyrates around the stage, Manu booms on the microphone in his hoarse voice.
Ma-ma-se. ma-ma-sa, ma-ma-ko-sa.”
The crowd reacts in frenzy at the wildly popular refrain that has now shaped world music. But the adulation is not enough for Manu. He kisses his saxophone and starts soloing beautiful notes on the funk beat with the most powerful of the woodwinds. The crowd rocks to his groovy tune, beautified by backup vocals in the Douala language. It is a song that has now become the stuff of legend.
Manu released “Soul Makossa” a decade earlier and it became the first song by an African artist to make it into the US Billboard Hot 100 chart peaking at number 23 in 1973. At the time, a young Michael Jackson was working on what would become the best-selling album of all time, Thriller.
