After a coup d’etat in the Central African Republic, his father turned from diplomat to refugee, and Bibi’s family ended up living in the suburbs of Paris. And it was in France that his musical education began in earnest. As a teenager growing up in Paris in the ’80s, punk rock and new wave were inescapable – from the French bands like Telephone to the British bands like The English Beat, The Specials and The Cure – and they left an indelible impact on his music. As a teenager, Bibi learned guitar, bass and saxophone, and even took up tap dancing. “The first instrument is your body,” he says. “It’s like having drums on your feet”.

 

All those influences came together in 2000, with Bibi’s debut. Bibi Tanga’s first meeting with Professeur Inlassable came in 2003, and the duo found that they shared a passion for much of the same music. Three years later, Bibi Tanga recorded his second album, Yellow Gauze, under the supervision of Le Professeur in his Paris studio. 

 

Professeur Inlassable also brings his superb crate-diving skills to the table. A student of early decades of French popular music, Le Professeur adds a whole new dimension to Bibi Tanga’s sound, recreating lost musical soundscapes that invoke echoes of Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg. 

 

The album Dunya takes its name from the word for “existence” in Sango, the language of the Central African Republic, and it’s both a vivid snapshot of the present moment in global music and a roadmap to the future. Together with Bibi’s band The Selenites – Arthur Simonini on violin and keyboards, Rico Kerridge on guitar and Arnaud Biscay on drums – Bibi and Le Professeur craft an otherworldly sound. Deftly juggling English, French and Sango lyrics, Bibi embeds hyper- literate, socially conscious messages about immigration, malnutrition, AIDS, slavery and more in some of the most danceable grooves this side of Gnarls Barkley. Dunya takes listeners on a wild, eclectic tour through the history and pre-history of funk, layering Afrobeat rhythms over electro-tinged soul and cosmopolitan trans-Atlantic grooves.