Yé Ké Yé Ké

Mory Kanté was born in 1950 into one of Guinea's best-known families of griots, hereditary musicians, and at seven he was sent to Mali to learn the kora and the vocal traditions a griot needs. In 1971 he joined the Rail Band, where Salif Keita was the singer, and when Keita left two years later Kanté took over the microphone. His biggest song came from the villages. Kanté adapted it from a traditional Mandinka song called "Yekeke". As he explained in a 1997 interview, when young griots approach the age of marriage, they flirt with each other through songs and dances, and the title is the sound young women make while dancing, their way of signalling interest. He first recorded it on his 1984 album Á Paris, then remixed it for Akwaba Beach in 1987 and released it as a single. This time it exploded. It topped the charts in the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Spain, went top five in France, Switzerland and West Germany, and became the first African single ever to sell more than a million copies, while Akwaba Beach became the best-selling African record of its time. The song kept travelling: into Bollywood films, a Cantopop cover, a Japanese car advert, and a 1994 techno remix by Hardfloor that gave it a second life in clubs. Kanté himself summed up his borrowing from tradition in a phrase: all good things have many owners.