Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa is an important record not just because it has a most dancable african jazz groove but because it is the first record that club DJs truly made into a hit record.

Originally from Cameroon, Manu Dibango was interested in music at an early age and eventually moved to France to study at Jules Ferry College in St. Calais and ended up in Paris later on. It is in Paris that he frequented Jazz clubs and built a reputation as an excellent musician. Manu traveled back to Africa in 1960 and visited many French and English speaking nations.

A multi instrumentalist, Dibango began to record tracks in 1969. By 1972 he was asked to write a song for the 8th African Football Cup and "soul Makossa" was the B-Side. The track was released again on his first album which was released by French label Fiesta and arrived in America via an African import company in Brooklyn. David Mancuso picked up the record in a Jamaican "Mom and Pop" record shop and gave a copy to David Rodriguez and Michael Cappello. "Soul Makossa" soon became a sought after import after Mancuso and other New York DJs began spinning the record regularly in their sets.

Soon after the record became a worldwide hit launching the career of Dibango. This turn of events at the time was unprescendented. Never before had it been so obvious that a track became a hit after only club DJs had been playing it. No radio DJs were playing "soul Makossa" until after it was a hit in the New York night clubs.