Mix and dilute to taste

African bands are creating a lingua franca to win over the West

If the pop world has held any message for African artists keen to see the hypothetical "world music" market translated into hard record sales, it is not to be too African. Who are the Africans prospering in European and American showbusiness? The Zairean rumba-love crooner Koffi Olomide, darling of the Kinshasha beer halls, or Nigerian juju bandleaders such as Sir Shina Peters?

Certainly not. The success stories are acts like Dr Alban, a Nigerian dentist resident in Stockholm, whose bouncy little Euro-dance numbers, sung in Jamaican-accented English, sell by the million across northern Europe, or Lebo M, a Tim Rice acolyte whose album of faintly South African soft rock, Rhythm of the Pride Lands (Walt Disney Records), is currently topping the Billboard Top World Music Albums of '95 chart.

In effect, the trend is more than ever towards two separate markets for African music, inside and outside the continent, each served by different artists. Several strategies are adopted by performers wanting to move from the former to the latter. One is to get an "international" producer to tailor the sound closer to Euro-American tastes. Another is to sing in English, or an approximation of it - thus we have Salif Keita "shedding tears for udders" on the track "Mandela" from his most recent album. A third is to team up with a presentable First World pop practitioner, preferably female and pretty, and sneak the African-ness in as an exotic embellishment to a straight bit of international pop. Since Youssou N'Dour's chart breakthrough with "7 Seconds", on which he ditched his band and did a duet instead with Neneh Cherry, this last option has seemed a winner.

It cannot be pure coincidence that the new record by Paris-based Senegalese singer, Wasis Diop, is a duet for the European market, with a young British singer, Lena Fiagbe. "I wanted an international language to attract a wider audience," affirms Diop in a rich, Manu Dibango-esque baritone by telephone from Paris. "I think all African artists have in mind the example of "7 Seconds" now... But I agree that it's a shame Youssou had to change so much to be a success."

Perhaps Diop feels the question of nationality, or ethnicity, is irrelevant? There is, after all, no reason why a Senegalese or Scandinavian or Filipino entertainer should not choose to interpret an international repertoire in a musical lingua franca. "No, no," says Diop, "I'm very happy for my music to be thought of as African - it's important. That's why I always sing in Wolof: the articulation of the language is very important, it's part of the music."

Despite the lyrics, Diop's music is cosmopolitan stuff, and his records are not released in Senegal. "They'd see me as rather marginal, a bit intellectual, like the Talking Heads here."

Diop is of patrician stock, the son of a traditional chief and landowner and brother of the eminent film-maker Djibril Diop. In 1975, Diop, then aged 24, arrived in Paris and created West African Cosmos, whose music veered in the direction of Afro-jazz rock-fusion. For two decades he pursued a picaresque career as a session guitarist and composer, hanging out in Kingston with Lee Perry and working in Paris with producer Martin Meissonier, linchpin of the world music producers.

Diop's new record assembles a dozen session musicians, mainly non-African - a Japanese saxophonist, an American percussionist, French guitarists and keyboard players - around the warm, relaxed texture of his own attractive voice. One of the tracks, "African Dream", entered the Radio 1 B-playlist last week. For African artists, the path to success in 1996 appears more than ever to pass via the translators office and, above all, via the dating agency.

n 'African Dream' is out now on Mercury Records. Wasis Diop and Lena Fiagbe appear on 'The White Room' tomorrow, Channel 4, 11:10pm

PHILIP SWEENEY