Manu Dibango fires back
By BLESSED IDEMUDIAN, South Africa
Saturday
May 6, 2006
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•Manu
Dibango
Photo By : Sun News Publishing |
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By the time he landed South Africa for the last Cape Town
International Jazz Festival, his Soul Makossa Gang was celebrating
20 years of its existence. But rather than winding down, the
Manu Dibango gang is still accelerating.
Although there was the octogenerian Andy Hamilton and Mama
Africa Miriam Makeba, Manu Dibango was undeniably one of the
oldest stars on parade at the 7th edition of the annual jazz
showcase.
But with Manu Dibango, as the crowd at the Kippies Stage at
the International Conference Centre venue would attest to,
age was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Like good
wine Manu has got better with age. He was the other major
act from whom the audience unanimously demanded for an encore.
And like Makeba would do the following day, he rewarded them
with an extra track.
Yours sincerely had finished jumping and screaming and thoroughly
exhausted myself before I realised that what I consider my
favourite Manu Dibango number was not even played.
But I had thoroughly enjoyed myself. That is what this young-looking
old man still does to you each time he mounts the stage.He
puts everything behind him to take you on an exciting escursion
into jazz with the danceable Makossa flavour.
Gay story
Though reverred all over the world, Manu Dibango has always
had a problem with the media in his home country Cameroun.
Not too long ago, a story was making the rounds in the local
media there that the legendary musician was a homosexual.
But dismisses it with a wave of the hand, saying he has since
stopped reading stories in the Camerounian media despite being
originally from that country.
Dibango who was listed among top100 gays in a magazine article
insists that the article must have been engineered by his
multiple enemies to smear his image.
Speaking to Saturday Sun during his recent visit here, he
says he is 100% straight man and he is still at a loss as
to where they got the story from. “The people made me
laugh when they said I’m gay… Maybe it is the
imagination of my enemies. I stay with my partner here. I
have children who say I should not mind what the papers are
saying in Cameroun”, he said.
Now 73 and still looking radiant in his clean-shaven head,
Manu Dibango was born Emmanuel Dibango N'Djocke in 1933 in
Douala, Cameroon. Though his parents were both Protestants,
Manu was considered to be the child of a mixed marriage (his
father is Yabassi while his mother is from Douala), Manu always
felt that he was a divided man.
“Born of two antagonistic ethnic groups in Cameroon,
where custom is dictated by the father's origin, I have never
been able to identify completely with either of my parents.
Thus I have felt pushed toward others as I made my own path”,
the master saxophonist confessed to Saturday Sun
Sea trip to France
In the spring of 1949, when Manu was just 15, his parents
sent him to Paris to prepare for a professional career. After
twenty-one seasick days he reached Marseilles. He waited for
hours until his sponsor showed up and they boarded a crowded
train for Paris where he was enrolled in a technical school
at Saint-Calais. It was at Saint-Calais that he finshed his
second and third years of high school. Before he came to Saint-Calais,
the locals there had never seen a black person, thus he became
an object of curiosity.
Journey into jazz
Soon Manu met Francis Bebey, another African expatriate, and
together the two began to explore the jazz scene in Calais.
They started a band before they really knew how to play the
instruments and learned as they went along. Bebey explained
twelve bar blues to Manu and finally he began to understand
the music of a favorite artist, Duke Ellington.
Manu studied classical piano before taking up the saxophone
around 1954. Two years later he moved to Brussels and played
sax and vibes with various jazz bands. Once in Brussels Manu
began to take off as a musician. He met Coco and within a
year they decided to stay together, Manu still regards her
as his "eternal guardian angel."
As for when the 73-year-old Jazz and Makossa exponent would
wind up, Manu Dibango says not any time soon. He told Saturday
Sun he always does all he can to keep fit and promised to
keep singing till he cannot move again.
Memories of Fela
Manu who spoke to Saturday Sun the day after the show said
he came to South Africa with an 18-man strong band. When reminded
that that was a fairly large size, he immediately referred
us to the Afrika 70 and Egypt 80 band of the late Nigerian
Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
He said he still has fond memories of Fela, with whom he played
a couple of times. He, however concedes one thing to Fela:
unlike the rest of us who write our songs down and draw all
the notes and cords and all, Fela did not write anything down.
He just jammed straight from his head. And when ever he finished,
it was always a masterpiece
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