Anatomy of a Song: From “Sweet Mother” to “Lagos Night”
Cuba is 100 miles from Key West. Bruce Springsteen certainly knows that great music comes out of Cuba. But does anyone think he might decide to record a medley of Compay Segundo tracks like “Guajira Guantanamera,” “Chan Chan,” plus some of his other classics, and in Spanish? Seems unlikely.
But this is precisely what happened when the Soukous Stars recorded “Lagos Night,” an epic 1994 medley of songs by Prince Nico Mbarga, a highlife musician from Nigeria, sung in the original pidgin English.
The first Mbarga song in the medley is “Sweet Mother,” which is one of the top 20 best-selling African songs in history.