A RISING star in the 1960s, when he became the guitar player and leader of the group Ivoiro Star, Ernesto Djedje set out to modernise Ivorian music and popularised the ziglibithy style of music, a pulsating hot mix of makossa and funk.

In 1968 he headed for Paris to record his first singles, arranged and produced by Manu Dibango and influenced by US soul, the music of Cameroon and Zaire as well as traditional Ivorian music.

He fell under the spell of the Afrobeat sounds of Nigerian music legend and left-wing political activist Fela Kuti.

Returning to Ivory Coast in 1974 he recruited likeminded musicians to form Les Ziglibithiens, cutting his first two albums at the EMI studios in 1977 in Lagos, both of which took West Africa by storm, turning Djedje into one of the legends of African music.

In total he cut five albums before he died in mysterious circumstances on June 9 1983 aged just 35. Rumours spread throughout Ivory Coast that he had been poisoned, shocking the whole of the nation.

This vinyl-only album released on the reissue label Analog Africa, owned by crate-digger Samy Ben Redjeb, consists of four rare tracks recorded between 1977 and 1982 sung in the Bete language including Djedje's biggest hit, Ziglibithiens, released in 1977 on the Badmos label. This is floorshaking stuff.

Roi Du Ziglibithy by Ernesto Djedje is released by Analog Africa on 7 October.