Bibi Tanga and the Selenites

Don’t rely on his comicbook-character-like name. Bibi Tanga is a full-fledged artist, a lover of the musical creature. Just to complicate things a bit more, the guy resembles a Sepia colored portrait of Emperor Haylè-Sélassié – with his wise, determined and coherent look.

Born in Bangui, Bibi grew up torn between two different continents, between different musical cultures. Attracted to groove in all its shapes, from Curtis Mayfield’s corduroy falsetto to James Brown’s funk epics or Sly Stone’s lysergic experimentations, he naturally came to learn how to play different musical instruments, the guitar, the bass and the saxophone.

To crown it all, Bibi soon mastered tap dancing, and started to practice his singing without respite. Then his parents introduced him to the universality of Bob Marley, as well as Brassens’ and Léo Ferré’s verve. A teenager growing up in France in the 80’s, Bibi also naturally came to the shores of punk rock and new wave.

But Bibi’s quest for Groove also came down the road of African roots and of the great orchestras that had written the continent’s musical history in the 70’s : Fela’s Afrobeat, Franco’s TPOK Jazz in Kinshasa, or else Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz National.

All those influences bodied into Bibi Tanga’s first album that was released in 2000 on the underground Hipi Music label. Deriving its name from one of his short stories, Le vent qui souffle is an album of collective fervidness, marked by his encounter with the French funk legendary band Malka Family, and an album definitely under the unfluence of Afro Funk music.

In 2003, his path came across that of Professeur Inlassable, another music junkie and studio sorcerer. The two stooges immediately tangled up questioning and quibbling about deep grooves, sound collages and other music tidbits. The idea of collaboration sprang up naturally.

Three years later, and just as naturally, Bibi Tanga began recording in studio under the supervision of a turmoiling Professeur. Leader of his sound laboratory, Le Professeur Inlassable started devoting himself to « a fundamental research », one that could be no other than one in music. He released Leçon Numéro Un (Lesson Number One) on Ici d’Ailleurs in 2004, a record that displays an obvious signature in terms of musical genre blending and organic ambiences.

Yellow Gauze , the duo’s album released in France in fall 2007, marks the encounter of two talents, which are as peculiar as they are iconoclastic. There are no rules in Bibi Tanga and le Professeur Inlassable album, and that’s where its charm lies. It first and foremost marks the birth of a singer comfortable with many idioms, and who has found a partner/producer on the same wave line as he is. Influenced by hip-hop (Crazy Funny) as much as Gospel music (In The Water), funk (Ayo, That Groove, That Moves…) or jazz (Lady Bird), Yellow Gauze evokes a musical kaleidoscopic vision, warm and resolutely urban.

After a year of touring and the mediatic and public success of this album in France in 2008, Bibi went back in studio, this time with a powerful live band consolidated on the road, the Selenites, to record their new album Dunya to be released on National Geographic later this year. Le Professeur Inlassable still drops his magic samples and produces the album but compositions and arrangements are also done with the help of Arthur Simonini a highly talented violin virtuoso and keyboad player, the afro funk guitarist Rico Kerridge and the young drums ‘prodigy’ Arnaud Biscay.

Dunya (existence in Sango) still offers this fresh iconoclastic Parisian ‘take’ on groove that made the previous album so different from the rest of the world’s funk production. Afro-rhythms in Sango alternate with laidback folk tunes in English and electro tinged soulful songs to form a coherent piece of work that is a great sum-up of this band’s cosmopolitan Parisian experience from the arty South Bank of the Seine to the rough sides of the suburbs.