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Known as “The Golden Voice of Togo,” King Mensah is one of the most popular musical acts from Togo, West Africa. Though based in Lomé, he regularly records and promotes his albums in Paris, and has embarked on several world tours since 2005. Singing in Ewe and French, King Mensah’s sound fuses elements of traditional Ewe music (Agbadza and Akpessé), and Kabye dance-drum music, with funk, reggae, and West African Afropop. King Mensah’s lyrical themes are steeped in religion and hopeful encouragement for the orphaned, oppressed, and downtrodden.

Born Ayaovi Papavi Mensah (August 12, 1971) to a father from Togo & mother from Benin. Mensah began performing with a ‘ballet’ of traditional Togolese folkloric music at age 9. In his formative years, he was a member of the band ‘Les Dauphins de la Capitale’. He acted with Ki-Yi M’Bock Theatre in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (early 1990’s), then traveled Europe, Japan, French Guiana, France, and Benin as an actor & singer.

In 2005 Mensah founded a philanthropic organization called “Foundation King Mensah” in Togo dedicated to the protection and education of orphans, including an orphanage in Agbodrafo (25 km East of Lome).

Official Website

Palm-wine music (known as maringa in Sierra Leone) is a West African musical genre. It evolved among the Kru people of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who used Portuguese guitars brought by sailors, combining local melodies and rhythms with Trinidadian calypso. Palm-wine music was named after a drink, palm wine, made from the naturally fermented sap of the oil palm, which was drunk at gatherings where early African guitarists played.

Palm-wine music was first popularized by Ebenezer Calendar & His Maringar Band, who recorded many popular songs in the 1950s and early 1960s. Palm-wine music left an influence on many styles, especiallysoukous and highlife. Though still somewhat popular, the genre is no longer as renowned as it once was. Other renowned Palm-wine musicians include S. E. Rogie, Daniel Amponsah, Abdul Tee-Jay and Super Combo.

http://www.alisdair.com/africanpages/africanpalmwine.html

Mbaqanga is a style of South African music with rural Zulu roots that continues to influence musicians worldwide today. The style originated in the early 1960s.

Historically, laws such as the Land Act of 1913 to the Group Area Act(1950) initially prevented people from integrating from different tribal communities, consequently making it almost impossible for most music artist to gain recognition beyond their tribal boundaries. The music genre mbaganga developed during this time (1960s) and to this day most of the major record labels are white owned companies with very few black artist that have contributed to their own material.

In Zulu, the term mbaqanga means an everyday cornmeal porridge, which is worth noting, considering the history of the music’s popularity. Mbaqanga aficionados were mostly plebeian, metropolitan African jazzenthusiasts. Many of them were not permitted to establish themselves in the city, but they were unable to sustain themselves in the rural country. Mbaqanga gave them a staple form of musical and spiritual sustenance; it was their “musical daily bread.”
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Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré (October 31, 1939 – March 7, 2006) was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of the African continent’s most internationally renowned musicians. His music is widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues. The belief that the latter is historically derived from the former is reflected in Martin Scorsese’s often quoted characterization of Touré’s tradition as constituting “the DNA of the blues”. Touré was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

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Diblo Dibala, often known simply as Diblo, is a Congolese soukous musician, known as “Machine Gun” for his speed and skill on the guitar. He was born in 1954 in Kisangani. He moved to Kinshasa as a child, and aged 15 won a talent competition which led to him playing guitar in Franco’s TPOK band. Dibala remained with the group for only a short period, going on to play with Vox Africa, Orchestra Bella Mambo and Bella Bella, in which band he first played with Kanda Bongo Man.

In 1979, he moved to Brussels, and in 1981 he joined Kanda Bongo Man’s band in Paris. Their first album, Iyole (1981), was a success. Diblo became a sought after session guitarist, working with Pepe Kalle and many other soukous musicians.

In the mid 1980s, he formed his own band, Loketo (meaning ‘hips’), with singer Aurlus Mabele. A few years later, that band broke up, and in 1990 he formed a new group, Matchatcha, which is still active after a number of personnel changes.

Antoine Wendo Kolosoy (April 25, 1925 – July 28, 2008), known by the stage name Papa Wendo, was a Congolese musician considered the “father” of Congolese rumba music.

Wendo was born in 1925 in Mushie territoire, Mai-Ndombe Province (now District of Plateaux in Bandundu Province) of northwestern Congo, then under Belgian colonial rule. His father died when he was seven, and his mother, a singer herself, died shortly thereafter. He was taken to live in an orphanage run by the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, and remained there until he was 12 or 13, expelled when the fathers disapproved of the lyrics of his songs. Wendo began playing guitar and performing at age 11.
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Soukous (also known as Lingala or Congo, and previously as African rumba) is a musical genre that originated in the two neighbouring countries of Belgian Congo and French Congo during the 1930s and early 1940s, and which has gained popularity throughout Africa. “Soukous” (said to be a derivative of the French word secouer, to shake[1]) was originally the name of a dance popular in the Congos in the late 1960s, and danced to an African version of rumba. Although the genre was initially known as rumba (sometimes termed specifically as African rumba), the term “soukous” has come to refer to African rumba and its subsequent developments.
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Nicolas Kasanda wa Mikalay (July 7, 1939 – September 22, 1985), popularly known as Dr. Nico was a guitarist, composer and one of the pioneers of soukous music. He was born in Mikalayi, Kasai province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He graduated in 1957 as a technical teacher, but inspired by his musical family, he took up the guitar and in time became a virtuoso soloist.

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Papa Wemba was born Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Thabani Kikumba in 1949 in Lubefu (Kasai – DR Congo). He is a Congolese Rumba (later known as Soukous) musician, one of Africa’s most popular musicians, and prominent in World music.

Papa Wemba was one of the very first musicians to join the influential Soukous band, Zaiko Langa Langa when it was created on December 24, 1969 in Kinshasa along with such well known Congolese musicians as Nyoka Longo Jossart, Manuaku Pepe Felly, Evoloko Lay Lay, Teddy Sukami, Zamuangana Enock, Mavuela Simeon, and others.

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Hugh Tracey (1903 – 1977) was an important twentieth century ethnomusicologist. He and his wife collected and archived music from Southern and Central Africa. He began making field recordings of music in the early 20’s, through the 70’s.

He developed an instrument called the Kalimba. According to his grandson Devon, the Englishman arrived in South Africa in the 1920’s and immediately became fascinated with the local culture. He was particularly interested in the Mbira, an instrument found nowhere else in the world. In his efforts to spread awareness of the Africa’s vast musical heritage, he created an adaptation of the Mbira known as the Kalimba.

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