Rockia

"Rockia" is the title track of the only album Bella Bellow ever made. In 1968 her former drawing teacher Paul Ahyi introduced her to the Togolese singer Gérard Akueson, who became her producer and brought in the Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango. A secretarial job was arranged for her in Paris, and she spent long hours at Dibango's home working through her songs with him at the piano. He described it as more an exchange than a lesson, and said she was like a daughter to him and his wife. Released in 1969 on Akueson's Akue label and arranged by Dibango, Rockia was the first pop album in Ewe. Bellow sang in Mina, drawing on folk tales and biblical texts, with touches of blues, gospel and bossa nova; Dibango noted it was not purely African, and that this set her voice apart. Like "Zelie", the title track was well received. That year she sang at the Olympia in a tribute to Martin Luther King, met her idol Miriam Makeba in Algiers, and won over a famously unforgiving crowd at the Maracanã in Rio, where Pelé came backstage to congratulate her. In December 1973, the day after returning to Togo to spend Christmas with her family, she died in a car accident at 28, while preparing to tour the United States with Dibango. Angélique Kidjo has covered her songs, her face appeared on a 10,000 CFA franc banknote, and Togo still marks the anniversary of her death every year. One album was enough to make her the voice her country measures itself against.