Sibèba

Hijas del Sol are an aunt and her niece. Piruchi Apo Botupá and Paloma Loribo Apo both come from the island of Bioko, and they write and sing in both Bubi and Spanish. Their first public appearance came in 1992, at a competition at the Centro Cultural Hispano Guineano, where they won the prizes for best original song and best choreography. The same year they travelled to Spain for the first time to perform at the Seville Expo and at the OTI Festival. The duo later moved to Madrid, where they got involved in the city's cultural scene and met Manu Chao, who became a mentor. Their debut album, released in 1995 by the independent label Nubenegra, mixed more traditional Bubi music with their own songs. Its title, Sibèba, means something like the thing one wants to achieve, and has been rendered as a place of salvation reserved for the best. The songs move between Bubi traditions and Catholic ones, and also take on the problems Equatoguinean immigrants face in Spain. The British magazine Folk Roots placed Sibèba at number one in its annual list for 1995, and the album was released across Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan, giving Bubi-language song an audience far from Bioko. Six years later Hijas del Sol reached number one on Spain's Los 40 Principales with ¡Ay! Corazón. Both women have since gone on to solo careers, but Sibèba remains the record that carried their island's voice abroad.