"I was about 7 years old when I built my first instrument, a sort of marimba made of bamboo and part of a tree trunk. I didn't know what kind of scales I was playing but it was a very cool thing."

  Composer, arranger, and virtuoso bassist Andre Manga believes he was chosen for music even before he knew his own talent.  "As long as I can remember, I wanted to create sound," he says.

  Manga's parents, both doctors in Yaoundré, capital of Cameroon in West Africa,  certainly enjoyed music - Andre's father owned a music club in Yaoundré and even played violin and Hawaiian guitar - but they expected nothing less than academic excellence from their obviously bright young son; so, music was put aside when it came time for studies.

  Still, the lure of music persisted - as did destiny, foreshadowed in an encounter with world music celebrity Manu Dibango ("Soul Makossa") when Andre was 11.

  "I had built a guitar for myself," Andre recalls. "The strings were from bicycle brake cables. I could even tune it a little - it didn't t matter, it was just a way to make sound. Manu, who happened to be visiting the building I lived in, saw me with this instrument and asked, ‘Are you a musician?'  ‘Oh yes,'  I said, so he asked me to play something.  I tried to play one of his songs. I guess he recognized the rhythm - there would have been no other way to tell what I was playing - and he said, ‘That's good, kid.  You will tour with me someday.'   He laughed and went on his way.  I was very impressed - Manu was, still is, a great celebrity in Cameroon."        (Hear More from Dumazz)

  Concerned that music was interfering with his studies, his parents sent Andre away to boarding school - which had the desired affect until the principal of the school started an orchestra that served to encouraged Andre's musical growth.  He began to lead a secret life, seeking the company of other musicians while telling his parents he was at school.

  Andre remembers the day of reckoning when the ruse was revealed.  "My mother loved me very much - and I love her to death - but was she angry!"  Andre stood firm -- he would not give up music. "I took it as a challenge in my life," he says, "not to prove her wrong but to prove that, even though I was young, my thoughts made sense.  I know she expected more or better from me - but if you are smart you can use that gift to achieve whatever you want."      (More from Dumazz)

  The newly-resolute artist progressed rapidly, playing bass with the Cameroon National Orchestra when he was 17. Circumventing orchestra policy, he convinced the building manager to allow him in the rehearsal hall after-hours to get more practice time. "One day the door suddenly opened and the supervisor walked in," Andre recalls. "I thought, 'Oh, I'm caught!' but I kept playing. I looked again, and standing behind the supervisor was Manu Dibango."

  The supervisor told Andre that Dibango wanted him to join his band. Andre stunned them by refusing. "I told them I wasn't ready, that I wasn't good enough," Andre says. Then Manu said, "Can't you see, I don't want you because you are a good bass player. I want you because I see what you can become!  In other words, he wasn't hiring - me on the spot.  He just wanted me to consider it.  He knew I was breaking the rules to play, that I had the ambition."   (Yet more Dumazz)

  As the two musicians regarded each other, Dibango's expression changed. "Say, are you from Yaoundré?" he asked, and then, recalled that moment years before when he had foretold the future of a young boy with a toy guitar.

  Yet Andre remained in Cameroon. "I thought if I left I would miss a big part of my culture," Andre says, "and that was wise. I didn't stay because I was lazy or afraid to leave, but to look deeper into my culture, the traditions and rhythms. And when I left Cameroon it wasn't to go to Europe or somewhere else in the world, but to Gabon, West Africa, to study its music."    (Dumazz)

  Gabon is where Andre's career took flight. He recorded a dozen albums with African artists such as Hilarion Ngeuma, Tou Kone Daouda, Angele Asele, and with Jean Claude Naimro of the internationally renowned group Kassav .

  In 1988 Andre moved to Paris and toured internationally with Pierre Akendengue before - inevitably - taking a job as keyboardist for Manu Dibango, whose fame had now spread to Europe.              ( ...And More from Dumazz)

  "I have to salute Manu.." Andre says. "His band was the best school I ever attended. I learned how to manage a band, how to write music, how to make decisions out of nothing. At an early stage he introduced me to a lot of great artists who provided me with musical guidance."

  While in France Andre worked on other projects as well, such as assembling a team of Cameroonian musicians to record for the Paul Simon album RHYTHM OF THE SAINTS and conducting the Benin National Orchestra for a performance on Radio France International.  Andre's contributions to Dibango's band also increased. In 1994 he performed, arranged, and co-produced several tracks on Dibango's star-studded album WAKAFRIKA , which featured King Sunny Ade, Peter Gabriel, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Sinead O'Connor, and several other world-music luminaries.

  Having reached an artistic plateau in Paris, Andre scanned the horizon for new adventures. He found them in a jazz epiphany while on tour in Germany. He recalls, "I was sleeping lightly while the bus rolled along, and a Miles Davis tape was playing.  In my sleep I could hear this delicate trumpet. It was so close to my spirit, on a subconscious level, and I woke up, startled.  I looked around and nothing was out of place, but I felt something had happened to me."  (...Still More Dumazz)

  With a growing affinity for jazz, Andre moved to Los Angeles in 1995 to fulfill his vision. The music he had in mind would enjoy the melodic and harmonic freedom of jazz yet preserve the complex African rhythms he had mastered.

  That goal is manifest in the band Dumazz . The name combines the Cameroonian word for the baobab tree, a symbol of wisdom and traditionally a meeting place for village elders, and the word jazz. Dumazz saxophonist Bobby English explains, "When you put the two together you have a very wise, very spiritual group rooted in jazz music."  (You guessed it...)

  Dumazz rehearsed for a year to perfect its musical balance. Andre says, "I wanted to create a bridge from African music to jazz. I would not change the African rhythms. I would tell the musicians, "Just be yourself. Don't worry about playing the African thing. That which you do best will be the best of you."

  "The Musicians enjoy improvising to different rhythms, exploring their musicality and changing the way music is perceived. The mission of Dumazz is to break down the boundaries, all those labels - jazz, pop, Afro, funk - to make the music speak for itself."   (Next to your last chance to listen...)

  Their debut album on Narada, MOTHER RHYTHM, is a festive package of energetic, jazz-driven instrumental and vocal compositions. In assembling a band as diverse as his own experiences, Andre has brought about a joyful synergy of unity and individuality. From Boston to Bombay, the band members - Cameroonian bassist, a guitarist from India, Czech drummer, Brazilian percussionist, Afro-American saxophonist and singers, and a Caucasian-American keyboardist - all retain their artistic identities within the vibrant, worldly style of Dumazz.

MOTHER RHYTHM
The World Debut of
DUMAZZ
Click the CD cover to hear and/or buy Dumazz