WOMAD

Coco Mbassi

From Cameroon

Coco Mbassi is a singer and songwriter from Cameroon in West Africa who made her name as a backing vocalist with leading African and French pop artists based in Paris, including Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Touré Kunda, Manu Dibango and Ray Lema. She was nominated for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards in 2002 and was the winner of the German Record Critics’ prize in 2001 and the Radio France Internationale Discoveries contest in 1996. This year at WOMAD, she will be performing with her husband Serge Ngando Mpondo, co-producer of her two albums ‘Sepia’ (2001) and ‘Sisea’ (2003), and giving some stirring acoustic renditions of her famously soulful songs.