You can't talk about saxophonist, vibraphonist and singer Manu Dibango without spotlighting his 1972 megahit "Soul Makossa”. The song, with its percussive, indelible, funky sax line, wasn’t just a revelation in African jazz—it arguably helped sow the seeds from which disco would sprout. By the time Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones sampled and tweaked the track for “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” a decade later, Dibango (born Emmanuel N'Djoké Dibango in 1933) had already taken on legendary status in his native Cameroon (and his adopted home of France). While “Soul Makossa” was his calling card, interpolated and sampled countless times by artists ranging from A Tribe Called Quest to Rihanna to Kanye West, Dibango went on to explore all manner of musical styles—electro-pop in the '80s, Afro-Cuban crossovers in the '90s, jazz classics in the 2000s—before his death from issues related to COVID-19 on 24 March 2020.