Remember Super Mama Djombo? A framed, original record jacket for their first release album, Na Cambança, hangs on the wall in my living room beside some Ernesto Djedje 45s and an Orchestra Veve LP.

Easily the best band to come out of Guinea-Bissau, Super Mama Djombo are one of my favourite contemporary African music innovators. Their kriol music rocked their young nation during the mid 1970s. Apparently you can still get the chilled-out, pipe-smoking residents of Bissau to dance-up a frenzy if you play Super Mama Djombo’s Pamparida in public.

Zé Manel was only seven years old when he started playing drums and acoustic guitar for Super Mama Djombo. The group split-up during the political firestorm in Guinea Bissau in the early 80s, however Manel went on to record and release his first solo album, Tustumunhos di Aonti, in 1982. (Do any of you have it?) The album’s politically controversial lyrics made his friends and family nervous. They were afraid he would be made to “disappear” by the government, so he went to study at a music conservatory in Portugal. A scholarship to study abroad was the easiest way out of trouble those days.

His 2001 solo album, Maron di Mar, marked the first time he returned to his country since he left in 1983. Manel is still actively recording. Though I haven’t grabbed it yet, he just relased a new album on August 1st, Povo Dormecido. Today’s track comes off his solid 2004 relase, African Citizen.

Zé Manel – Regulos na Democracia