Style recipe for Suno v5

Makossa

Cameroonian makossa from the 1980s: slap bass, brass section, electric guitar, swaggering and warm in feel. A name-free Suno recipe that reproduces the signature sound without tripping the artist-name filter.

History

Makossa comes from Douala, Cameroon, and grew out of a Duala dance called the kossa. The name goes back to Emmanuel Nelle Eyoum, who shouted “kossa kossa” at dancing children to make them dance harder and worked the refrain into songs with his group Los Calvinos. In the 1950s he combined Douala ambasse bey, Bassa assiko and Ghanaian and Nigerian highlife; the first records came a decade later, and Ekambi Brillant set the pattern in the mid-1960s. The sound rides strong electric bass, prominent brass, a guitar switching between solo and rhythm, a lead singer with a backing choir, even a bottle used as percussion, mostly in 4/4 at 130 to 170 BPM and sung in French, Duala or Pidgin English. Later it took horns from funk, strings from disco and the sebene from Congolese rumba. Manu Dibango carried it worldwide with “Soul Makossa” in 1972, the most sampled African song to date: Michael Jackson used its chant in “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'” in 1983, and Rihanna sampled it for “Don't Stop the Music” in 2007. At the 2010 World Cup, Shakira's sample of Golden Sounds' “Zamina mina (Zangalewa)” put makossa on the global stage again.

The recipe

Cameroonian makossa, 1980s, swaggering…

The prompt behind this style packs 38 tags into 675 characters, written in English and paced at 110–128 BPM.

Artists in this style

• Manu Dibango

Similar styles

• Burger-Highlife1980s · 105–125 BPM
• Chimurenga1980s · 100–118 BPM
• Mbalax1980s · 120–140 BPM
• Polynesian Drumming1980s · 120–160 BPM
• Tarqueada1980s · 95–120 BPM
• Qawwali1980s · 90–140 BPM
• Samulnori1980s · 90–170 BPM
• Dabke2010s · 120–150 BPM