Dostrece
in the city of barcelona
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, from Nigeria, and Franco 
, from the Congo, would be spoken of in the same breath as icons like James Brown and Michael Jackson. (In fact, Michael Jackson completely ripped off over a minute of a track by the Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango in one song off his Thriller album. Dibango sued him – and won!) (A musical play about Kuti’s life, Fela!, is currently playing to great acclaim off-Broadway.) Africa is the powerhouse of modern popular music. Blues, jazz, reggae, samba, hiphop – they all have African roots, and I try to reflect these in what I play. Even tango has African roots. So does salsa. When Latin music swept the world with the mambo and other styles in the sixties, Africans recognised it as their own. In some countries, particularly Senegal and the Congo, musicians tried to copy their Latin records, often in laughable transcriptions of the Spanish lyrics, as they couldn’t understand the words. Over time, however, they started to make the music their own. In the Congo, they started writing their own lyrics in Lingala, which is a tonal language, and so the tunes started to change to fit the inflections of the words. Rumba Lingala was born! Pioneered by the likes of Franco and Joseph Kabasele 
, it went on to adapt and evolve to changing times via stars such as Papa Wemba
in the eighties and today’s favourites Koffi Olomide 
and Awilo Longomba
. (Papa Wemba named his band Viva La Musica! after the catchphrase used by Johnny Pacheco.) Senegalese musicians also made Latin music their own by using different instruments (no pianos were available, so they gave the piano part to a guitar and also introduced local percussion instruments) and by writing lyrics in their own languages and mixing in local rhythms, as in groups like Orchestre Baobab. These bands were pushed out of fashion by more radically indigenous music but in 1990 the top African producer, Ibrahima Sylla, who had amassed an enormous collection of Cuban records as a young man, put some of the vocalists from these old groups together with top Latin session musicians in New York, and the result was Africando 
, which had huge success all over the world, including the Latin communities in the US. Their success encouraged Orchestre Baobab to reform and in 2001 a group of Senegalese musicians was invited to make a record in Havana. One night I spun a track from this record in DosTrece and a Cuban customer refused to believe it wasn’t played by his countrymen! So, when people ask “Why do you play Latin music?”, the chances are that it is being played by Africans, and when I occasionally play something by a Cuban timba group like Bamboleo 
, I do it because they too have got African blood running through their veins!
, first heard a blues record, by John Lee Hooker, he simply played along with it as if he’d being hearing it all his life – which of course he had! When the reggae star Jimmy Cliff visited Senegal he heard the local star Baaba Maal 
playing what he assumed was reggae, only to find that it was a traditional rhythm called yela. 
[both these two are on the mix]. Senegalese rappers are generally recognised as being at least partly responsible for getting rid of the country’s government in the 2000 elections. The same party had also won the elections since the country’s independence in 1960, often to widespread disbelief. None of the major rappers endorsed any particular candidate but they did promote the slogan Sopi! (Change!) that could be seen graffitied up and down Senegal and, in a country where more than half the population is aged under 25, they encouraged young people to register as voters and use the power of the ballot box. The long-time opposition leader, Abdoulaye Wade, was voted in as president. He’s still there, now aged 84, and the next elections are due in 2012, but he seems to be grooming his extremely unpopular son to take over from him before then – to the fury of Awadi 
, formerly of Positive Black Soul, who warned “The rappers got rid of one president, we can get rid of another!”
, at no. 16, died in that same year, she had been visited in hospital by Nelson and Winnie Mandela, as well as the then president Thabo Mbeki, who later addressed the crowd of over 10,000 people who attended her funeral.
