‘Afropop’ Sound Making Inroads With Radio Listeners in the U.S.

Since 1964, Georges Collinet has been playing American music for Africans. Each morning, the estimated 80 million Africans who tune in his 90-minute Voice of America radio show are turned on to the latest rhythm-and-blues hits from the United States.

Since 1988, Collinet has also been playing African music for Americans. His weekly “Afropop Worldwide” show, syndicated to more than 170 public-radio stations throughout the country, is a musical excursion through the continent of Africa.

Tune in and you’ll hear everything from Nigerian juju and Zairean soukous to mbalax from Senegal and makossa from Cameroon, where Collinet was born and raised--as well as African-influenced music from South America, the Caribbean and Europe.

“After spending most of my life promoting American music in Africa, I decided it’s time to promote African music in America,” Collinet said. “And it’s more than just promoting African music; it’s promoting Africa.

“Africa has been the underdog long enough, and I want to present Africa to the United States, to the world, for what it is--a beautiful land with beautiful people.

“And music is, of course, the first step.”

Collinet’s efforts to promote African music in the United States aren’t limited to the airwaves. For years, he’s been working with African musicians trying to break into the U.S. recording market. He plans on producing a film--and possibly a cable-television program--on African music. And he is doing a series of promotions like tonight’s “Afropop Dance Party” at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa.

The four-hour record hop, hosted by Collinet and featuring Washington deejay Iibraham Bah, is a benefit for San Diego public-radio station KPBS-FM (89.5), which airs “Afropop Worldwide” every Saturday at 11 p.m.

Collinet’s decision to promote the music of his homeland in his adopted country--he moved to New York in 1960 to make a film; four years later, he was hired by the Voice of America and relocated to Washington--was sparked by his desire to somehow even the score.

After all, in the 1960s, his Voice of America show gave many Africans their very first taste of American music.

“It was the first time they could listen to all these guys who were moving and shaking the states--the James Browns, the Wilson Picketts, the Motown sound--and to them, it was fantastic,” Collinet said.

“Whenever I would go to Africa on promotional tours, people would mob me; it was almost as if the Beatles were walking down the street. And, everywhere I went, there were all these kids imitating the American musicians.

“I remember visiting Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), and there were about five orchestras of kids who decided to have a battle-of-the-bands sort of thing. And all these kids sounded like James Brown.”

There was a potentially damaging side effect, however: by mimicking American musicians, African musicians were in danger of losing their own identity. Collinet said he first realized this in 1972, when he moved his broadcast studio to Paris. The studio soon became a rallying point for expatriate African musicians.

“They were all gifted musicians, but they didn’t have any direction,” Collinet recalled. “They would come to Paris and take American names, because they thought it would sell them better, but they couldn’t play American music.

“So I told them, leave American music to the Americans, be true to yourselves, be true to your roots, and maybe that way you can open up a niche in that big world of music. You can’t beat Americans at their own game; you are African, be African.”

Collinet subsequently began working with African musicians, teaching them to “use whatever they had learned (from American music) and apply it to their own souls, their own feelings,” he said.

“I helped them get a knowledge of studio work, of how to become professionals. And when I came back to America in 1980, I had the idea of wanting to promote African music in America.

“One thing led to another, and then, in 1988, Sean Barlow walked into my life. He was an independent producer who had studied African rhythms; I met him through some mutual friends, and when he told me he was looking for someone to work on an African-music radio show, I said, ‘Wow, you don’t say.’ ”

Collinet made his public-radio debut in October 1988 with “Afropop.” Just this month, the program’s name was changed to ‘Afropop Worldwide’ and its scope broadened to include not just indigenous African music, but African-influenced music from around the world.

Collinet’s immediate plans are to incorporate more live recordings into his show.

“Music is best appreciated when it’s heard live,” he said. “It’s like all those things you see on Africa in a museum, masks and artifacts. They’re beautiful objects, but they’re inanimate when they’re supposed to be alive; they had a function in life and now that function is gone.

“The same is with music. So we’re going to rely less on records and more on recording stuff ourselves. Sean, for instance, is going down to Brazil to record the carnival, another fellow is going down to Cuba to record some music there, and, two weeks ago, when I was doing some work on my film in Africa, I got some new stuff there as well.”