Crowd sourcing the list of the 15 most influential African singers/song writers of all time // Les 15 chanteurs/compositeurs africains les plus influents de tous les temps

If you are currently in the US, you might have come across the VH1 show the 100 greatest artists of all time.
It’s a pretty mediocre list, in my opinion (No offense to Timberlake but he has no business being ahead of Otis Redding or REM). It is also mediocre because it has no artists from continents outside of Europe or North America.
It is symptomatic of the limited exposure that great artists from lesser known places are going trough.
There is a list from 2006 on the Independent of the 50 greatest African artists, emcopassing all type of arts chosen by a selected panel that also left a lot to be desired as far as representation of the whole continent (this might be a byproduct of deep cultural and lingual boundaries between regions).
Making a list for such a large, heterogonous continent is bound to be flawed. But the purpose here is to celebrate and discover artists that do not get to receive the exposure that their western counterparts receive.
Of course, there are shows such as the Eurovision or the VMAs where artists across continent compete to be recognized at the top of the list.

So a few friends on twitter thought that we could try to “crowdsource” a reasonable list of the 15 most influential african artists of all time. The purpose is to recognize the work and impact of great artists from the continent but also discover some that may have been under the radar.
Here is the methodology for crowdsourcing the list:
1) In the comment section, submit a ranking of your top 7 african singers/ song writers. #1 gets 7 points, #2 gets 6 points etc.
2) Criteria to be considered when justifying the selection: national impact, creativity, transregional appeal, timelessness. Providing link to songs highly recommended.
3) One country can only appear once in the selection.
4) The ranking would be dependent on #number of points received. When there is a draw, the artists whose country has received the most points get through.
5) Ranking criteria can be modified for two weeks after 1st submission.
For instance, my list:

1) Cesaria Evoria: Cape Verde
2) Vusi Mahlasela: South-Africa
3) Angelique Kidjo: Bénin
4) Khaled: Algérie
5) Labi Siffre: Nigeria
6) Youssou N’Dour: Sénégal
7) Mahaleo: Madagascar

As you can tell from my list, I am no expert in African music but those artists have shaped my understanding of African music and to some extend African social conscience.

UPDATE: With the nominations that were submitted so far, we have 31 artists ranked from first to last here:
Fela Kuti and Manu Dibango are top 2.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlN54olNeR0zdHRPZkNmWnpqSzA1Tk1YcGd4WUhrMUE&hl=en
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(Français)

La liste des 100 plus grand artistes de tout le temps de VH1 est assez médiocre. De plus, la liste est essentiellement composée d’artistes venant d’amérique du Nord ou d’Europe.
Avec des amis sur twitter, on s’était dit qu’il serait sans doute intéressant
Le but de faire une telle liste serait donc de célébrer les grand artistes du continent africain mais aussi de découvrir des artistes qui gagneraient être plus connus.
Voici la méthodologie pour créer cette liste :
1) Soumettre une liste de 5 artistes en les classant du plus important au moins important
2) Les critères à considérer : impact national, créativité, charisme transrégional et imtemporalité
3) Un seul pays par liste
4) Le nombre total de points décidera du classement final
5) Les critères pour le classement peuvent être modifiés 2 semaines après la 1ére soumission.