CCMusic.com

The star of Ernesto Djédjé started rising in the late 60s, when he became the guitar player and leader of Ivoiro Star. Annoyed by the "congolisation" of the Ivorian music that was taking place within the band, Ernesto left the group and emigrated to Paris in 1968 to record his first few singles arranged by Manu Dibango and influenced by Soul, Rhythm & Blues and Jerk. Returning to Côte d'Ivoire in 1974 Ernesto began thinking of ways of combining the rhythms and chants of the Bété people and fuse them with Makossa, Funk and Disco and create a musical style that was both Ivorian and International. He called his experiment Ziglibithy and his first two albums, immortalised at the EMI studios in 1977 in Lagos and released on the Badmos label, took West Africa by storm turning Ernesto Djédjé into an icon overnight and one of the legends of African music. The song Zighlibitiens, brought to Colombia by an aeronautical mechanic in the early 1980, would become a huge hit on the Caribbean Coast and reach legendary status in Barranquilla and Cartagena.