Based on exclusive interviews, "Breakout" tells the often riveting personal stories of fourteen popular musicians some well known, others not from Zaire, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The first book on African pop music to look closely at the lives of the musicians themselves, "Breakout" deals with four African musical genres: "soukous, highlife, afro-beat, " and "palm wine."
Amid Africa's deepening economic and political crises of the last two decades, African musicians who developed these genres faced the need to cross cultural boundaries, or "break out," and achieve a hit in the...

There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa would never be the same. A sultry rumba washed in relentless waves across new nations springing up below the Sahara. The Western press would dub the sound soukous or rumba rock; most of Africa called in Congo music.
Born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville at the end of World War II, Congon music matured as Africans fought to consolidate their...