Influences in Africa: The Sounds of Francis Bebey
The music of Francis Bebey broke boundaries. His drum machines were set to a rolling progression and his instrumental selections and synth patterns looped over one another for upwards of twelve minutes, a technique Nigerian funk musician William Onyeabor would later go on to perfect.
▼
Each track became a laboratory for Bebey to experiment with styles and play with song structure, mostly by himself or with one to two other audio engineers. The songs are original and dynamic, they move almost like bedroom-pop, specifically in tracks “Catching Up” or “The Coffee-Cola Song.” The most interesting thing about Bebey is his motive for making music. When he worked in Paris as a documenter of African traditional music for the UN, he published a book on the subject of African Music in France, African Music: A People’s Art.
“Welding and regeneration will be the pattern for African art. Many of the foreign influences that have penetrated Africa will be incorporated into a new form of black African art. This form of initiation may be deplored by those with deep-seated conservative or racist tendencies, but far from resulting in a bastardised and damaging modernism, we believe this mutation will breathe new life into African art and will demonstrate the triumph of humanism and universality over esoteric sterility.” - Bebey, 1969
When he studied music at the Sorbonne in Paris, and later in New York City, Bebey saw his cultural music, the genre he worked within, scoffed at and held at a distance as if it were a museum piece. It was always different, and people discussed it in the past tense. He eventually returned home to Cameroon and became a national figure almost overnight, writing several widespread novels and pressing upwards of twenty 45s gaining consistent radio play across the continent. Two compilation albums of this material are available on streaming services, African Electronic Music and Psychedelic Sanza, both excellent.
Afrofuturism in music is nothing new now, of course, but in Bebey’s time it was unheard of. Certainly there were groups doing similar things, but Bebey himself worked in a period of artistic explosion in Africa’s music scene as political instability and an influx of western instrumentation and radio hits from overseas flooded in. Bebey represents something unique in his goals and in the music he made.
The craziest part of the whole story is how much you can hear modern electronic music in these releases from the early 1970s, most notably in the usage of drum machines against African drums paired with elaborate polyrhythm synth passages — well worth a listen and a deep dive into similar African artists such as William Onyeabor, or fantastic contemporary Cameroon artists such as Charlotte Dipanda.
Bebey discussing the pygmy flute, giving a demonstration