CLASSIC DISCO :: Manu Dibango - Soul Makossa

The first disco track to break onto the Billboard top ten, was Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa". Actually, it was more African than disco based, but no matter, it paved the way for the disco revolution on this month in 1973.

"Soul Makossa" was a 1972 recording by the Paris-based Cameroonian artist Emmanual "Manu" Dibango, and it is now best remembered as the source of the rhythmic chant—"Mama-ko, mama-sa, maka-mako-sa"—that appears in Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin''" (1982) and Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music" (2006). Issued on the French label Fiesta, "Soul Makossa" might never have been heard on this side of the Atlantic had disco legend and DJ, David Mancuso not pulled it from a shelf in a Jamaican record shop in Brooklyn one day in the spring of 1973 and, after hearing it, immediately recognized its percussion-heavy, Afro-Latin sound and repetitive chorus as absolutely perfect for the dance floor.

BONUS: Afrika Bambaataa - Soul Makossa


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