Banjul's pioneers, England 1969
Super Eagles
The Super Eagles came together in Bathurst, now Banjul, in the mid-1960s around guitarist Badou Jobe and singer Pa Touray, playing highlife, soul, Latin and Congolese rhythms, and Western pop for Gambian audiences. In 1969 they became, by most accounts, the first Senegambian band to tour and record in England, and they made the album Viva Super Eagles around that trip. Then, near the height of their popularity, Jobe and Touray broke the band up and spent some two years learning from rural griots. They came back in 1973 as Ifang Bondi ("be yourself" in Mandinka), with an Afro-Manding sound built on kora, balafon and sabar that kept them going for decades more.
Bombay Café