How Michael Jackson’s famous catchphrase sparked lawsuits

The music catchphrase “Mama se mama sa mama coosa” is one of the most influential couplets in music in the past half-century and is famously associated with the late king of pop, Michael Jackson. However, Michael Jackson was slammed with a lawsuit for using the catchphrase.

Michael Jackson before his death in 2009 was regarded as one of the most powerful figures in the music industry. Though he faced civil lawsuits at the peak of his career, Jackson was also sued for copyright infringements for the use of the now-famous music couplets by Manu Dibango.

Emmanuel N’Djoké Dibango was born in 1933 in Douala, French Cameroon. In 1949, his father, a high-ranking civil servant, sent Manu, as he was known, to boarding school in France. Here, Manu quickly familiarised himself with Paris’s thriving jazz clubs, learnt piano and saxophone, and became a working musician.

While working in a Brussels jazz club in 1962, Dibango encountered a leading Congolese band, African Jazz, who mixed jazz with African rhythms. Dibango subsequently joined African Jazz, basing himself in the Congolese capital where he made his recording debut “Twist à
Léo” (“Léo” referring to the city’s name, Léopoldville, before it became Kinshasa post-independence). He then returned to Paris, where he continued to fuse African and Western music.

In 1972 Dibango released ‘Soul Makossa’ a mixed Cameroonian makossa dance rhythm with a tough funk pulse, with a handful of English words alongside his native Douala tongue, purposely stuttering the word “makossa” to create a chant.

‘Soul Makossa’, is the source of the well-known phrase with the original line “Mama ko mama sa maka makossa,” which was originally released as the B-side of his album celebrating the Cameroon football team’s participation in the 1972 Africa Cup of Nations.

The song’s breakthrough came when a New York DJ, David Mancuso, who found a copy in a Jamaican record store in Brooklyn played it at his invitation-only club, The Loft.

According to reports, Loft dancers fell in love with ‘Soul Makossa’, as they danced to it and insisting Mancuso play the song over and over again. Frankie Crocker, a then top presenter on New York’s ‘Black music radio station’, added the song to his playlist.

Read also:Michael Jackson: Iconic life, mysterious death

The audience’s reaction to “Soul Makossa” was overwhelming. However, the lack of US distribution for Dibango’s record led to local bands capitalising on the song’s popularity by releasing their covers. Recognising the demand, Atlantic Records secured the rights to Dibango’s original single and released it in the US, emphasising its authenticity with the label ‘The Original Version’.

The song’s popularity, particularly in New York, propelled it onto the US R&B and pop charts in 1973. It even outsold a cover by the LA band Afrique, proving the enduring appeal of Dibango’s original composition.

While many artists, including Babatunde Olatunji and Byron Lee, offered creative interpretations of Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’, it was Michael Jackson’s use of the chant in his 1982 hit ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ that significantly boosted the song’s popularity. Jackson’s inclusion of the “Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah” chant in the coda of his song introduced it to a global audience and further cemented its place in music history.

Dibango was unaware that Michael Jackson had used his chant until a friend mentioned the “collaboration.” This led Dibango to take legal action against Jackson. However, Jackson acknowledged his liability and settled the lawsuit by paying Dibango 1 million French francs.

In 2007 Rihanna’s producers sampled Jackson’s chant on her hit, ‘Don’t Stop the Music’. Dibango again sued but a judge threw his case out, noting that he had accepted a publishing credit on the Rihanna song.

‘Soul Makossa’ is the most sampled African record ever. The list of tracks that have used it includes Slick Rick’s ‘Let’s Get Crazy’ (1988), A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Rhythm’ (1990), Geto Boys’ ‘Trophy’ (1991), Will Smith’s ‘Gettin’ Jiggy With It’ (1997), Jay-Z’s ‘Face Off’ (1997), Missy Elliot’s ‘Go to the Floor’ (2002), Eminem’s ‘Doe Ray Me’ (2003), Kanye West’s ‘Lost in the World’ (2010) and Beyoncé’s ‘Déjà Vu’ (2019).

Dibango continued to revisit and reimagine his iconic song, ‘Soul Makossa’, throughout his career, even collaborating with renowned Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour on a version in 1994.

Although Dibango passed away in 2020 at the age of 86 due to Covid-19, his musical legacy, particularly ‘Soul Makossa’, continues to thrive. The song’s enduring influence is evident in its imaginative reworking by London-based electro-jazz group Kaidi & NK-OK on their 2021 album, ‘The Sounds of Afrotronica’.