Maelé

About Maelé

Singer from Bata who built and named machacando, the dance rhythm that gave Equatorial Guinea a popular style of its own. He started out in 1976, won the Bata music festival the following year and represented the country at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana in 1978, then cut his first LP in France in 1983. His records set a 4/4 dance pulse against female choruses, brass and strummed guitars, and he sang mostly in Fang. He moved to Madrid in 1991, later joined the ruling party and served on the National Council, and died in Madrid in 2017, remembered as the King of Machacando.