Friday, July 3, 2009

BRING BACK MAKOSSA CAMPAIGN...WEEK 1

Our bring back Makossa campaign officially kick starts today the first friday of July and each friday thereafter throughout these cool summer months!
We aim to create an atmosphere worthy for you to sit down and reminisce about the good old days when music touched you deep down your soul and made you either wanna cry for joy or leap or sway in happiness.

Before the video, here is a little history about the Makossa genre.

Makossa is a type of music that is most popular in urban areas in Cameroon. It is similar to soukous, except that it includes strong bass rhythm and a prominent horn section.

Makossa originated from a type of Duala dance called kossa, with significant influences from jazz, ambasse bey, Latin music, highlife and rumba.

While the makossa style began in the 1950s, the first recordings were not seen until a decade later. Artists such as Eboa Lotin, Misse Ngoh and especially Manu Dibango popularised the style outside of Cameroon in the late 1960s. Makassi is a lighter style of makossa. Sam Fan Thomas developed and popularised this variation in the mid-1980s and made makossa potentially more marketable.

The two musicians largely credited with modernising makossa are Manu Dibango and Emmanuel Nelle Eyoum. Eyoum start using the term 'kossa, kossa' in his songs with his group Los Calvinos. But it was Emmanuel 'Manu' Dibango who popularised it to the world with his song "Soul Makossa", which came out in the early 1970s.

The chant from the song, 'mamako, mamasa, maka makossa', was later used by performers such as Michael Jackson, in “Wanna Be Startin' Something”; Eminem, in "Doe Rae Me"; Back To Basics, in "Mamakossa"; the Bloodhound Gang, in "Mama Say"; Rihanna, in "Don't Stop the Music"; Chico Science, in "Samba Makossa"; and El Chojin, in "Algo más que música" ("Something More than Music").

Ok… so the first artist to launch this campaign has to be none other than the godfather of Makossa and jazz, Mr Manu Dibango with the one and the only most sampled song...Mamako…Mamasa…. Makossa....

Here is Soul Makossa...enjoy!



References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makossa
Picture from:http://www.theloveunlimited.com/

Don’t forget to check Dulce Camer every Friday cos we are bringing back Makossa onto the streets and into your hearts!
Stay sweet
Dulce
xxx

3 comments:

Menoosha said...

Yes oh! bring am back!
I miss the real stuff with the great voices, instrumentation (who can forget how important trumpets are in makossa???) I'm staying tuned!

Anonymous said...

so am i SBC! DC, also add j-lo to that list. she don 'tiff' from papa manu too lol. can't wait for the next.

hoxton said...

This is the most worth while call to arms so far. Lets make this a reality rather than a crusade. If at some point this call to "Bring back Makossa" reach critical mass, I am down for organising a periodical jam for all you Makossa heads out there. Who wants it?