Koko Ateba – 1986

🇨🇲🎤🎸🚕✊ Before Frou-frou, before exile, there was this debut album, released in France in 1986. Cameroonian singer Koko Ateba started out as a teenager at the Philanthrope, a club in Yaoundé, before playing at Soir au Village, Manu Dibango’s club, alongside Ottou Marcellin and Claude Ndam. In 1982, she lent her voice to a Michel Soutter film, with music by Patrick Juvet. Four years later, during a stay in France, MST Production gave her this album, a particularly successful piece of Afro-pop, played by the troupe of Afro-Caribbean musicians from the Paris studios: Michel Alibo on bass, Jojo Kuoh on drums, Sydney Thiam on percussion, Toto Guillaume on guitar, and Charlotte Mbango on backing vocals. The very 1980s feel of the production – and all the better for it! – dresses traditional rhythms in an appealing, modern pop, like the bikutsi of Yemeyel’ Ayop. Ateba’s deep voice carries Talk Talk, which opens the record and gives it its nickname. Taxi would be a hit, as would her tribute to Nelson Mandela, and A Ndol’Am, a cover of Aïcha Koné’s Adouma. Two years later, Atemengue would break her career in Cameroon: prison, then exile, and the success of Frou-frou in France. That song led to a second album in 1993, this time recorded in France, but sadly her discography stops there. Koko Ateba passed away in December 2024.