Afrique - Soul Makossa (1973)

The first articles on "disco music" appeared in 1972, and the invention is credited to a Cameroon-born and Paris-based jazz saxophonist, Manu Dibango, who in that year released Soul Makossa (1972), an exciting mixture of funk-jazz saxophone lines and hypnotic African beats.

After it was issued, David Mancuso found a copy in a Brooklyn West Indian record store and often played it at his Loft parties. The response was so positive that the few copies of "Soul Makossa" in New York City were quickly bought up. The song was subsequently played heavily by Frankie Crocker, who DJed at WBLS, then New York's most popular Black radio station.Since the Dibango failed to register the copyright, 23 or more groups quickly released cover versions to capitalize on the demand for the record.

This album witnesses a band of studio musicians hell bent on creating not only a club and jukebox 45 hit of the Dibango original, but an entire set of groove-driven instrumentals that could be issued as 45s for the juke market. There is plenty of wah-wah excess, saxist angst, and drunken careening rhythm to propel a soul train from one end of the continent to the other.

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1:: Soul Makossa
2:: Kissing My Love
3:: Sleepwalk
4:: Let Me Do My Thing
5:: Slow Motion
6:: Hot Mud
7:: House Of Rising Funk
8:: Dueling Guitars
9:: Hot Doggin’
10:: Get It
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Bass - Chuck Rainey
Drums - Ray Pounds
Guitar - Arthur Wright , David T. Walker
Organ - Charles Kynard
Percussion - Charles Taggart , Chino Valdes , King Errisson , Paul Humphrey , Wallace Snow

Saxophone [Baritone] - Steve Kravitz

Saxophone [Tenor] - Joe Kelso , Paul Jeffrey

vinyl rip@320