Konono No.1: Live At Couleur Cafe

Pauline Harris reviews "Konono No.1"'s Live At Couleur Cafe.

The musical group Konono No.1 released their "Live At Couleur Cafe" cd a Crammed Discs production in 2007. The music is from the DRC
(Democratic Republic of the Congo) where the group originates from and is a mix of traditional rhythms and melodies using modern instruments or adaptations.

Combining the electric "Likembe" (thumb piano) with various percussive instruments and adding vocal chants and songs produces their unique yet familiar sound of music that can be described as trance like or hypnotic. With instruments created from discarded parts and salvaged machinery these musicians were able to transfer traditional genres into the urban scene proving necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

These celebrated musicians, recently of world renown, have a firmly grounded audience with the Bazongo aficionados in the DRC and have also gained acceptance internationally with their brand of music.

That being said this recent release is a disappointment. It could be that their performance doesn't transfer well in the "live" format seeing that theirs' is not a studio sound per se. The dancing and crowd participation are a magic missing in the "Live" version.

The CD has 8 tracks. Intro is inviting and prepares the listener for a promised smorgasbord of rhythms and sounds. Thereafter the other songs are almost indistinguishable. The tracks all sound alike; "Kule Kule" offers a slight change and if you did not check your monitor you may think it is the second song.

For those who do not speak the language there maybe a loss in translation which would otherwise keep you from making distinctions. But that has never stopped people from around the world from enjoying music from another culture or language. Taken as one long set the album is a success. One cannot be in doubt of where much of the modern sounds from Congo/Zaire got their inspiration.

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Papa Wemba

A biographical article on Papa Wemba.

Papa Wemba, often called the King of Rhumba Rock, was born in Kasai, Zaire. Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba first made his mark in 1970 in Kinshasa, where he was a singer, composer, and co-founder of the great youth group Zaiko Langa Langa. In 1974 he left to form his own band, Isife Lokole, and then in '76 began Viva La Musica.

Hoping to reach a wider audience he ended up in Paris in the early '80s, bringing with him the entire line-up of Viva La Musica. Wemba's musical vision went beyond the capabilities of his seasoned Zairen rhumba rockers as he began to experiment with a wide range of eclectic sounds.

Wemba's quite a stylish fellow, a sapeur, an aficionado of fashionable, well-designed clothing. His trendy suits with big jacket, and baggy, though tailored pants, are a strange mix of Africa, Paris, and the American zoot suit. A Soukous show is always a fashion event, and Wemba is a man of great style and taste.

While the celebrated musical form known as "Congolese rumba" first took the Black Continent by storm in the fifties, this music uncannily retains its youthful visage today, as if face-lifted by some timelessly hip plastic surgeons of African popular dance music. Among the "surgeons" (ought we say sorcerers ?) who have helped the rumba protect its see- mingly eternal youth, Papa Wemba is surely one of the most inspired and influential. This man is everything we love in the Congolese man, with that typical wry combination of wit, humor, and sheer talent! What a proud son of Kinshasa, a temple of intelligence - and home to the most colorful and vivid French in the entire French-speaking world! The Origins of a Vocation to Sing Papa Wemba (né Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba) was born in the southern Congo region of the Kasaï River, as the eldest child in his family, which settled in Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo, shortly after his birth. Wemba's father had fought in the Belgian army during the Second World War, and later become a hunter. Wemba's mother was a professional mourner in traditional Congolese funerals, where Wemba had his initiation in public singing. Though the passion for music born of those encounters never abated in Wemba, his father wanted to bar him from a musi-
cal career, having planned for his son a different career as a lawyer or journalist. When Wemba's father died in 1966 the only real obstacle between Wemba and his musical ambitions disappeared. Wemba began to sing in his parish church, where he experimented with the singular shrill voice which still characterizes his style.

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