15 July 1950, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Reggae superstar Gregory Isaacs has seldom looked back during a career that has gone from strength to strength, and while many rock stars like to toy with an ‘outlaw’ image, Isaacs is the real thing - the ultimate rude boy reggae star - who shows no signs of slowing down. Like so many other others before him, Isaacs began his career doing the rounds of Kingston’s producers and entering various talent competitions, before recording with Rupie Edwards’ Success Records in the early 70s. He set up his own African Museum shop and label in 1973 with Errol Dunkley, in order to gain artistic and financial control of his own work. He continued to record for many other producers during the rest of the decade to finance his own label, notably Winston ‘Niney’ Holness, Gussie Clarke, Lloyd F. Campbell, Glen Brown, Alvin ‘GG’ Ranglin and Phil Pratt. His early recordings were romantic ballads crooned in the inimitable Isaacs style, cool, leisurely, and al...
Jean de Dieu Makiese (May 28, 1952 – August 11, 2007), popularily known as Madilu System, was a Soukous singer and songwriter born in Léopoldville, Belgian Congo. He was once a member of T.P.O.K Jazz which dominated African popular music in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Madilu was 19 when he started his career in Kinshasa’s thriving music scene in 1969. Over the next fifteen years he sang with Orchestre Symba , Papa Noel ’s Orchestre Bambula , Sam Mangwana ’s Festival des Maquisards and his own Orchestre Bakuba Mayopi , but his career thus far neither revealed nor promised anything out of the ordinary (in an extraordinary milieu). It was Franco who made a star of Madilu System (as the big man had dubbed him). "Mamou (Tu Vois)," the record that introduced the new T.P.O.K. Jazz singer, was a hit in 1984. Madilu followed that up with his own composition for the band, "Pesa Position." Then cam...
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