There have been many instances where African musicians have sampled popular American songs. The sampling gets done so blatantly that you could call some songs 'Thriller in Swahili', 'Amazing Grace in Zulu' and 'Unleash the dragon in Twi'. One popular remix or sampling is that of Banky W's Ebute metta which was also first known as the Nigerian remix of Rihanna's Umbrella. People may complain about the lack of originality of these African musicians but maybe they will care to know that Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa is part of the backbone for Rihanna's worldwide hit - Please don't stop the music. "Mama-se, mama-sa, mama-ma-ko-ssa" is that line that has kept dance floors going since 1972.

Africa meet China.
African music meet Chinese. :-D

A couple of years ago, a friend showed me a video of a Chinese man singing Makossa songs. Zhen Ping Liu, popularly known as Liu de Karmer to his fans was the first ever and lone Chinese Makossa singer.
The name of the song is Assiko chinois, pretty good :-). Some friends joked that he probably wasn't him singing the song and someone else was doing voice over, but who really does that these days?

Watch the video below

• View all from Fru Atanga
  Artistes Fru Atanga
  Album Bue w'ani
  Writer Fru Atanga
  Language English
  Video URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oONFXrf1NxM