Bleep

Analog Africa, the German imprint responsible for the Afrobeat Airways compilations, strikes gold again with a compilation focussing on Cameroon’s versatile Makossa scene of the 1970s and 80s. Makossa may have stepped out in the West via Michael Jackson jacking Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ for 1982’s ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’, but the sound had been in swing for a few years in the bars of Douala and Yaounde before that affair. Pop Makossa collects the best of this fruitful scene in one place, and the record pops with rubbery basslines and muscular hi-life-disco grooves. Indeed, the AA lot have done their research so thoroughly that the eponymous cut had never even seen light in Cameroon prior to this release.