Manu Dibango released “Soul Makossa” in 1972. He wrote it as the B-side to “Mouvement Ewondo,” a praise song for the Cameroonian football team on the occasion of the 1972 Tropics Cup. Language Log explains the chant-like lyrics:

The story behind these seemingly nonsensical syllables is a fascinating one, originating in the Cameroonian language Duala.

Duala is spoken in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, which has long been a musical hotbed. Since the 1960s, Cameroonian pop music has been dominated by a rhythmic style of dance music from Douala known as makossa. The Duala word makossa is often glossed as “(I) dance” (as in this article by Cameroonian linguist George Echu). The entry for makossa in the Oxford English Dictionary further explains that makossa is “derivative of kosa ‘to peel or remove the skin of (a fruit or vegetable)’; the name refers to the twisting and shaking movements of the dancer.”

Language Log quotes this excerpt of Dibango’s autobiography, Three Kilos of Coffee:

On one side of the 45 I recorded the hymn [praise song]; on the other I recorded “Soul Makossa,” written using a traditional makossa rhythm with a little soul thrown in. In my Douala neighborhood, at my parents’ house, I rehearsed this second piece. The house had no air-conditioning, and the windows were wide open. All the kids flocked around. Hearing me rehearse, they fell over laughing. Unbelievable — how on earth had I concocted that mishmash? Poor makossa really took a blow. My father was astonished: “Can’t you pronounce ‘makossa’ like everyone else? You stutter: ‘mamako mamasa.’ You think they’re going to accept that in Yaoundé?” The Cup organizing committee reacted the same way. The march on side one they found “impeccable.” But the other side… “Really, Manu has gone nuts. What possesses him to stutter like that?”

The New York DJ and party promoter David Mancuso got his hands on “Soul Makossa” and played it incessantly at his loft parties. The song became an underground hit, especially when it started getting airplay on WBLS. The few copies floating around New York were quickly snapped up by other DJs. Several bands rushed out their own covers to fill the gap, most notably Baba Olatunji and the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band. Their versions are fun, but nowhere near as funky as the original. Finally, Atlantic Records released Manu Dibango’s version on one of their sub-labels, and it went so far as to crack the top 40 in 1973.

Soul Makossa quotes, samples and remixes

Quoting “Soul Makossa” became something of a trope in the early eighties, ranging from subtle references to the beat or bassline or horn line to full-blown quotation. My favorite example is by Nairobi featuring the Awesome Foursome.

This song just screams 1982, especially with those 808 cowbells. This song was itself sampled in many other songs, including Schoolly D’s “Mama Feel Good.”

Kool Moe Dee’s “Pump Your Fist” draws on “Soul Makossa” for percussion, the wah guitar stab and part of the main sax riff.

A more recent example: “Latinhead” by Dirty Beatniks.

Soul Makossa has also been sampled by Jay-Z, Geto Boys, Poor Righteous Teachers and A Tribe Called Quest, among many others. See a full list of samples.

Michael Jackson and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”

By far the most famous musical descendant of “Soul Makossa” is Michael Jackson’s first single from Thriller, the best song on that album and a strong contender for the best song of the eighties, period.

I was at a hippie-ish wedding this past summer. People were having a good time, but not really dancing. Then “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” came up on the iPod and the party suddenly jumped off. Little kids, old folks, everyone in between, people were getting down. Say what you want about Michael Jackson as a human being, but there’s no denying the power of this song. It never fails to get people shaking their butts, across all ages, races, classes and cultural backgrounds.

The copyright-minded among you might well ask: did MJ steal the Makossa chant? Manu Dibango certainly thought so, and sued MJ, eventually reaching an out-of-court settlement. The issue isn’t a cut-and-dried one for me, though. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two chants:

The most obvious difference is in the syllables, but there are musical differences too. Manu Dibango’s chant is a two-bar phrase sung/chanted entirely on the note G, over an unchanging G7 chord. Michael Jackson’s chant is a four-bar phrase with a call and response structure. He adds a two-note melody harmonized in thirds and a chord progression alternating between D/E and E7. MJ also uses a little more syncopation. I’d say that MJ’s chant is more of an adaptation than a direct theft.

“Wanna Be Startin’ Something” quotes, samples and remixes

Pop and hip-hop musicians quote MJ’s version of the Makossa chant incessantly. Some high-profile examples:

• “No Clause 28” by Boy George
• “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” by Will Smith
• “Cowboys” by the Fugees
• “Brooklyn Girls” by Charles Hamilton
• “Lost In The World” by Kanye West

People love to shout out the chant during live performances, too, everyone from Zap Mama to Jamie Foxx. Rihanna goes further than quoting MJ’s chant; she builds an entire dance track around a reharmonized sample of it. MJ’s song is in the key of E, but Rihanna’s producers put it in the key of F# minor. This is hip stuff; the same notes in MJ’s sunny and uplifting coda become melancholy in Rihanna’s track.

People quote other parts of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” too. Big Daddy Kane quotes the “Yeah yeah” part in “Warm It Up Kane,” listen at 1:32.

Other tracks quoting this phrase include “Vibin’ (The New Flava Remix)” by Boyz II Men and Busta Rhymes featuring Treach, Craig Mack and Method Man, and “Feels So Good” by Mase.

Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz adapt big swaths of MJ’s song in “Startin’ Something.”

Björk has to be different, of course, so she (mis)quotes the opening line of MJ’s song in live versions of “I Go Humble.” And by the way, her MJ fandom was apparently reciprocal, if this radio show transcript is to be believed.

Visualizing the Makossa diaspora

Here’s a complete map of the genealogy of the Makossa chant; click to enlarge.

Putting it all together

Here’s a mashup I made combining several of the tracks mentioned above so you can get your makossa on.

Wanna Be Startin’ Something megamix by ethanhein

Any noteworthy sightings of the Makossa meme that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Hat tip to Mike Devlin for coining the phrase “Makossa diaspora.”

I was only vaguely aware of Tribe back in the nineties. I knew them as the preferred hip-hop group for my white friends who were put off by the harder edges of Wu-Tang and the west coast gangsta rappers. I encountered “Scenario” and “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo” at parties, and found them entertaining, but didn’t feel compelled to go any deeper.

More recently, when I got into hip-hop scholarship in earnest, I started listening to Tribe for real. I downloaded “Check The Rhime” and was floored by the production.

The beats hit hard and simple; the samples are mysterious without being inaccessible; and the frenetic chorus contrasts excitingly with the buttery-smooth verses.

As I’ve been digging into more Tribe songs, I’ve been consistently impressed by their level of musicality. The tracks are accessible and fun, but on close scrutiny they’re dense with ambitious ideas. I’m particularly fond of the six-bar loop in “Electric Relaxation.”

Anyone can use an unusual phrase length, but it takes real artistry to make it sound so smooth and natural.

As for the movie itself, I enjoyed it and learned a lot. Some longtime Tribe fans of my acquaintance complain that it focuses too much on the present and doesn’t spend enough time on Tribe’s prime back in the 90s. That’s a fair point, and I certainly wouldn’t mind having more context on hip-hop’s golden age. But I thought the movie did a great job digging into the complicated relationship between the members of Tribe. I agree with Rob Fields’ review:

By far the most moving core of the film is the peek that it offers inside the relationship between Jarobi and Phife. It’s rare to see examples on the screen of two black men who have such unconditional love for each other.

The movie confirms that Q-Tip is central force behind Tribe, both on the production side and in setting the overall tone. But the other guys must have brought something to the table, even if it was just peer pressure. Tip’s post-Tribe music has been, you know, fine, but there hasn’t been anything remotely like “Check The Rhime.” When he calls himself “the Abstract,” Tip isn’t kidding. Phife and the others seem to have kept Tip’s ideas more down to earth, which helped make them stronger. The conflict between Tip and Phife is as much a part of their story as their creative partnership. Here’s an interview with director Michael Rapaport if you want some background.

One of the high points in the movie is Tip talking about his late father. He talks about getting the beat for “Can I Kick It” from a Dr Lonnie Smith record that he associated with his dad.

I’ve heard other hip-hop artists talk about sampling their parents’ music as a way of connecting to the older generation while still forging a new sound with present-day relevance. I know a lot of lame instrument-playing musicians who imitate the music of their parents out of an anxiety that they might deviate too far from what’s musically acceptable. Taking samples and transforming them makes for a healthier relationship to your ancestors.

Speaking of samples, I heard “Bonita Applebaum” for the first time in the movie.

I was delighted to discover the source of the sitar sample in the Fugees’ version of “Killing Me Softly.” And where did Tribe get that sitar from in the first place? A totally ridiculous song by Rotary Connection called “Memory Band.”

The real art of sampling isn’t just finding some great song and repeating the hook; it’s finding a hook in a terrible song and using it to build a new great song. But here’s the crazy thing. The main groove under the verses in “Check The Rhime” comes from “Baby, This Love I Have” by Minnie Riperton. Guess who the female singer in Rotary Connection was?

Q-tip seems like the exact kind of crate-digging sample geek who would know about the Minnie Riperton connection. A man after my own heart.

The film was also my first exposure to the concept of the pause tape, which is how a lot of hip-hop producers got started back in the day. Before digital samplers became so cheap and accessible, pause tapes were the easiest way to create loops. You’d put your tape recorder on pause and cue up the record to just before the part you wanted to sample. When the downbeat of the sample started, you unpaused the tape, and paused it again when the sample ended. Then you cued the record back up to the same spot, and repeated, and repeated, and repeated. Here’s a video of the process.

Tribe’s influence on present-day music can be felt in unexpected ways. Check out this remix of “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo” around the 0:35 mark.

That little phrase, slowed way down, became the basis for “A Milli” by Lil Wayne. Hear the process at work.

I hope this movie inspires more movies about golden-age hip-hop, and I hope they continue to dig into the nuts and bolts of the creative process. People hear so much hip-hop but know so little about where it comes from, what it means, what the connections are. That ignorance extends to many of the musicians I know. Keep the documentaries coming!

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part four:

Part five:

Part six:

Steve Albini says that sampling is cheap and easy. He’s right about that. Anyone with a computer and a few pieces of inexpensive software can do it. Mr Albini also thinks people should be “embarrassed by sampling, like a bad dance move.” It’s a funny analogy, because while I like the albums he’s produced for the most part, they aren’t dance friendly. Pick any song that you’ve danced socially to in the past thirty years and the odds are high that it was produced electronically.

Anyway, in response to the charge that sampling is cheap and easy, why is that a bad thing? George Clinton points out that rock and roll was originally all about cheap and easy: three chords, repetitive beats and structures, singable choruses. Now, rock music is expensive and difficult, and thanks to people like Radiohead, every bit as technically inaccessible as jazz or classical. This is why rock has mostly become every bit as lame as jazz or classical. Making an art form expensive and inaccessible makes it elitist and conservative. The big artistic risks are mostly being taken by the electronic musicians, not the guitar tribe.

The documentary makes the intriguing analogy between DJs and photographers. DJs are to traditional instrumentalists as photographers are to painters. You can’t make blanket statements about the validity of the entire medium; you need to go on a case-by-case basis. DJs and photographers have a lower barrier to entry than cellists or painters but the path to mastery is every bit as long.

We’ve become accustomed to lavish production values in our recorded music, and that comes at a steep price tag if you want live instruments and analog tape. The expensiveness of lavish, dense live recordings forces conservative choices. The effortlessness of sampling leads to more risk taking, more experimentation, more innovation. Also more amateurish nonsense, but that’s the nature of the beast. A low penalty for failure is a necessary precondition for success.

Even if money is no object, there are still some strong artistic arguments in favor of sample-based music. The loop is different from a human playing a phrase over and over. I used to play in an R&B group. The singer and I wrote the songs with samples and loops and then taught them to the band. We had a Miles Davis sample that the trumpet player was supposed to use for his part. He played it pretty accurately, but never with the exact phrasing, tape compression and ambiance of the original loop, and it never quite sounded as good. It was cool that he could riff and improvise, but it gave us a looser, jazzier sound than we were going for. The identical repetition effects you to hypnotic effect. Check out the squealing trumpet sample under Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe The Hype” – even James Brown couldn’t have that disciplined a horn player, not with all that insane noise swirling around. Humans get bored and distracted, they have opinions. Computers don’t. What if James Brown and band had been necessary to appear in person in order to create “Fight The Power”, and they had refused? What a loss.

The entertainment lawyer in the movie equates my sampling your song to me coming into your house, helping myself to the food in your fridge. Sampling might recontextualize old recordings in ways their creators find offensive, but very often sampled works add something of benefit to old recordings’ cultural standing. I’m thinking of all those classic seventies funk and disco songs with incredible beats but outdated lyrics and arrangements. George Clinton is outspokenly grateful to hip-hop producers for putting him back on the map, culturally and then commercially.

Meanwhile, the law is a serious obstacle. Clearing all samples in advance is crushing to the creative process, which depends on immediacy and spontaneity. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to get a license to perform or record a full cover of a song than it is to get the rights to a three second sample. Some copyright holders are laid back or indifferent, but some charge extortionate license fees. Erick Sermon had to pay Marvin Gaye’s estate a hundred thousand dollars for a sample clearance. Unless you’re a major pop star with serious backing, this is prohibitive, and we’re back to the conservatism imposed by high costs that plagues instrumental music.

Clyde Stubblefield’s reaction on first hearing how widely he was sampled: “Cool!” But he’s bitter about not getting credited. He’s not as upset about not getting royalties, maybe because he wasn’t getting those before sampling either – James Brown owns all the copyrights to “The Funky Drummer” and “Cold Sweat” and so on. Public Enemy explains they have to be secretive about their sources to not get sued. A healthier sampling culture would make it easy to use samples and encourage attribution and reasonable payments.

Sampling artists like to use the phrase “fair game” – I’ve used it myself to describe the contents of my iTunes library, and some of the musicians in Copyright Criminals use it too. What’s fair game? Depends. The Beatles are notoriously litigious copyright holders, but they themselves use unauthorized samples in “Revolution 9″, “I Am The Walrus” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I’m hopeful that as sampling moves from the fringe into the mainstream, the law will eventually catch up and the absurdities will iron themselves out.

Update: this post and another of mine are quoted in a Brands Plus Music post about the impact computers are having on music making. It’s a good one, thought-provoking, worth a read.

Cursory googling turned up a freestyle by Lil Mama, she of “Lip Gloss” fame. Also not what I was after but still cool.

Then I was busy with family and travel and am only now getting back to the search. Bangladesh, one of the producers of the “A Milli” beat, lists some of his favorite remixes and freestyles. Nice little sidebar but no solution.

The answer turned out to be Beyonce’s “Diva.” It’s not Beyonce’s best work but the production is happening.

The vocal sample “A Milli” is named for comes from “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo (Vampire Mix),” a Tribe Called Quest remix by Fatboy Slim. Hear the original sample compared to how it appears in “A Milli”:

The Tribe Called Quest song has a bunch of samples in it, of Average White Band and Minnie Riperton and Grover Washington Jr and the Steve Miller Band. That makes “A Milli” a remix of a remix of a remix. Each subsequent remix deepens the layers of recursion.

What do you say, internet? Any more good “A Milli” treatments I should be aware of? Hit me in the comments.

DJ Kool Herc was one of the first DJs to remix tracks on the fly using turntables and a mixer. Rather than playing songs from beginning to end, Herc isolated and repeated the hooks and breaks. The break in a dance song is the section where all of the instruments drop out except the drums, percussion and maybe the bass. In disco and funk songs, the break is the energetic peak moment, when the dancers really get down. Herc discovered that by isolating and looping, say, the break from “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, he could bring the dance floor to ecstatic new heights.

To loop a break, you need two copies of the same record, one on each turntable. While the break plays from the left turntable, you cue up the beginning of it on the right one. At the end of the break, you quickly crossfade to the right turntable. While the break plays from there, you cue up the first copy to the beginning of the break on the left turntable. In theory, you could loop a break like that indefinitely.

Along with Herc, the first generation of hip-hop DJs also included Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, whose dense vinyl collages prefigured the mashup movement. Hear the prehistory of the mashup in “The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel.”

It’s relatively easy to put a collage like this together on the computer, but it takes delicate timing and tons of practice to do it using vinyl.

Turntablism broke into mass consciousness when Grand Mixer DST appeared with Herbie Hancock on “Rockit” in 1983. The first turntablist I had a relationship with was Jam Master Jay, from his work with Run-DMC in tracks like “Peter Piper.” More recently I got hip to DJ Premier, who produced my favorite Nas track, “Nas Is Like.” Hear Primo on Gang Starr’s “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration.”

As jazz gave birth to technical and esoteric styles like bebop, so turntablism has its own highbrow virtuosos. DJ Rob Swift is a leadng member of the artsier school of turntablism. He’s more of an abstract improviser than a sequencer of recognizable hooks and grooves. Hear Rob Swift scratching a series of records, starting with the Funky Drummer bonus beat reprise.

Here, Rob Swift demonstrates a turntablist notation system (thanks Nick Seaver):

See more scratch notation, courtesy of Wayne Marshall.

Speaking of the Funky Drummer, see an amazing freestyle by Mos Def, Black Thought and Eminem over a DJ scratching the Bonus Beat reprise.

DJs have done most of their collaboration with emcees and electronica producers. They’ve been slower to work with traditional instrumentalists — there’s a lot of new musical vocabulary that has to be learned on both sides. It’s beginning to happen, though. In my hippie-ish youth I enjoyed going to see DJ Logic scratching it up with jam bands. And Youtube loves this video of a violinist getting down over a few different records, including the instrumental of “Check The Rhime” by A Tribe Called Quest.

Vinyl and the gear to play it are heavy, bulky and expensive. If I ever start DJing seriously, I’ll probably opt for vinyl emulation software. It doesn’t necessarily have the same touch as vinyl, but it would be pretty awesome to be able to scratch anything in my iTunes library.

Using a turntable, you can simulate unearthly speech sounds by rapidly scratching the record to and fro. The circle becomes complete when beatboxers emulate the sound of DJ scratching with their mouths. Enjoy Rahzel beatboxing a set of Wu-Tang songs.

Any more videos, links or other turntable-related goodness I’m missing? Hit me up in the comments.

Update: great blog post on classical musicians’ experiments with turntablism pre-1950.