Franck Biyong: “I just want to tear down the barrier that separates African music from the mainstream”

Franck Biyong cuts an elegant figure both on- and off-stage. The tall, bespectacled Cameroonian could pass for the academic professor his parents always hoped he would become. Certainly, his aesthetic approach towards production, composition and guitar playing has a pedagogic side, allying explorations of his heritage with a prescient notion of what the musical future holds. Biyong contends that it was a brace of gigs at London’s Jazz Cafe in 2001 with his band Massak that kickstarted his career: “the crowd literally went nuts. Those two gigs really put us on the map.” Since then, Biyong has led us to the fault lines and bridges between the musics of sub-Saharan Africa and the West, giving birth to 20 category-defying albums along the way. Now, with Radio Masoda, the 50-year-old says there is a form of closure to the Afro-music library he’s created, something between Afro-jazz and what he calls ‘Afrolectric Rock.’ It’s a voyage I’ve tracked from a distance, ever since I heard his second album, Haiti Market. At the time, I described it as ‘a sumptuous collage of Afrobeat, soul, funk and jazz by this little-known Franco-Cameroonian combo [destined] for greater things in the near future.’ Seventeen years later, the Nairobi-based artist has scaled several pinnacles before arriving at what he calls a crossroads: “This latest album was born just before the pandemic, not far from here,” he tells me during a long exchange on a rainy day in central Paris. “I was discussing the different directions African music is going with scholars from Cameroon, Nigeria and Benin. The most popular sounds now are the new African electronic music everyone calls Afrobeats or amapiano. We were wondering if African music is doomed to be a permanent novelty because it continues to be linked to the reissues of music from the 1960s-80s. Or is there a modern way of expressing our music while making it more accessible and yet deeper than the enjoyment factor? So, I began composing around this notion, hoping to shake things up.”

Franck Biyong (photo: Osborne Macharia)

Part of this shake-up is Biyong’s critique of how poorly African pioneers have been honoured for their works. “Since Fela disappeared, we haven’t managed to create what reggae music created in terms of permanence. I wanted to pay homage to these giants before they fall off the radar.” The result is eight tracks that take listeners on what Biyong describes as “a musical safari.” It begins with a stop in ‘Kabasele Kingdom’ where he pays homage to Congolese rumba legend Le Grand Kallé: “We failed to revere this founding father of African music in the way Cubans revere Machito or the Arab world worships Oum Kalthoum,” he admits drily. Then there is Tony Allen. Appropriately, the first notes Biyong recorded for Radio Masoda were by Afrobeat’s consummate drummer. A shadow crosses his brow: “There was this major Felabration here in Paris in 2019 and all these former Africa 70 musicians were there. I will always remember how Tony seemed to act like it was a bit of a farewell. He was gracious and satisfied that there was a new generation willing to carry that Afrobeat sound further. Right after the concert, I asked Tony to record a drum solo in our studio, not really knowing what I would do with it. And then, five months later, he died.” Silence. “Tony was the complete innovator, and he has yet to be recognised for his pioneering work. He innovated by pouring his apala Yoruba and Ghanaian Fanti roots into this new genre Fela Kuti was forging. Fela’s former percussionist Chief Udoh Essiet and I basically built the song ‘Oladipo’ around that solo. It was important to pay homage to someone who had made such a giant contribution to African music, or modern music, full stop.” In this album, Biyong also pays tribute to another giant who fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, Manu Dibango. “His early work has been all too easily forgotten. Manu recorded some fantastic records, like 1982’s Waka Juju and Countdown at Kusini in 1975, which was one of the standout Blaxploitation records. Yet, young people have a hard time identifying with him because his music is complex, with a lot of changes in harmonies and little room for improvisation. It was a bit further away from African elements which float around here and there.”

Like Dibango’s early works, musical genres in Radio Masoda cascade from one song to the next, sometimes in the same song: from rumba to Afrobeat, from jùjú to highlife and soukous. And always with the undertow of Biyong’s trademark Afrolectric groove. “I’m hoping listeners’ ears are inspired to keep on listening as rhythms, harmonies and moods change.” Biyong is faithful, too, to the experimental nature which characterises his long career. Take ‘Lipanda’, led by the Lingala singing of French vocalist Mary May alongside Biyong’s Nigerian Pidgin vocals and a soukous guitar solo played in an unusual minor mode. This fuses with jazz-rock bass and a funky horn section, giving the song an Afrobeat feel that’s both danceable and destabilising. “I just want to tear down the barrier that separates African music from the mainstream,” affirms the soft-spoken artist. “I think that the best way African music can progress is by working in a musical context where you don’t really expect an African musician.” Biyong evokes Keziah Jones, an old-time friend who crashed genres with his 1992 song ‘Rhythm is Love’: “No one expected this groove feel, a vibe quite different from pop, funk, soul and rock – and a bit of all of those, but unique in so many ways.”

Keziah might just be part of Biyong’s future now that Radio Masoda is closing a chapter. They’re even toying with the idea of setting up a ‘supergroup’ around their electric guitars. But, for the moment, the multi-instrumentalist prefers to focus on the new possibilities offered by his eight-piece band Afrobrainz. They have been setting the Nairobi scene alight with their brand of Afro-electric funk-rock, drawing from a metropolis which has seen an exponential rise in musical talents recently: “There’s something very special happening in East Africa just now,” says Biyong, with conviction. “Nairobi is seeing a new fusion of genres, with a major input from exiled Congolese musicians. We’re trying to grow an alternative to the African Nigerian sound led by Burna Boy. We’ve been pushing this new style partly thanks to Afro-soul singing in Kiswahili. This is an incredible language, very melodic, with a musical flow that can be understood from Rwanda and Tanzania to Kenya and right down to the Comoros.” For the first time, Biyong will be bringing Afrobrainz to Europe as the headliner for the Tropical Pressure festival in July: “It’ll be great to test our electronic repertoire there. If all goes well, Tangential Records and I hope to bring out a live album, and follow it up with a studio production.”

Franck Biyong’s thirst to produce and share remains unquenched despite a punishing output these past two decades. Behind the calm demeanour and soothingly deep voice, he retains the restless desire to leave a mark: “I think people like myself – who were lucky to have a musical education that forged complex technical abilities and unbelievable space to innovate – have something of a responsibility to the younger generations to guide them to the next phase of African music. For a time, I want to share that centre stage with them. I want to create a unit which takes us away from music based on individual brilliance and towards the more collective approach we used to have in the 1970s. Then, perhaps, I can take a step back and enjoy the new threshold from the sidelines.”

This article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today