Rocafil Jazz

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Rocafil Jazz was the band of Prince Nico Mbarga, a highlife musician who was born in 1950 to a Cameroonian father and a Nigerian mother. As a boy Mbarga learned the xylophone from his father and built one himself. During the Nigerian civil war he fled to Mamfe in Cameroon, where he worked as a band boy for a Congolese group. There he got to know Congolese rumba and taught himself conga, bass and electric guitar.

Music and breakthrough

After the war he founded Rocafil Jazz, which got regular gigs at the Plaza Hotel in Onitsha. After a disappointing single in 1973 came the first success with I No Go Marry My Papa. EMI then dropped the band. It then signed with Rogers All Stars, a Nigerian label in Onitsha, and recorded Sweet Mother. That song from 1976 is sung in Pidgin and became one of the best-selling records in Nigerian music history. Between 1975 and 1981 the band made nine albums for that label.

Influence

The music blends Nigerian and Congolese guitar playing with cheerful highlife rhythms and Mbarga's soft singing. In this way it was important for the development of African pop music. Sweet Mother is sometimes called Africa's anthem and was chosen by BBC listeners as their favourite African song. After quarrels the original band fell apart, and Mbarga died in 1997.

Listening