ROCK-A-MAMBO & L'AFRICAN JAZZ
SOUVENIRS FROM ESENGO 1957-61 (Planet Ilunga 2XLP)

The legendary Congolese studio band known as Orchestre Rock-a-Mambo (though they played rumbas, cha chas and merengues, I don't know if they ever recorded a mambo) finally gets a reissue. Gary Stewart explains the origin of the name in his book Rumba on the River: it is a pun on the Ki-Kongo word rocamambu, one who looks for trouble. It comes from an African folk tale about a prodigal son who is considered a good-for-nothing, leaves home and works hard to return a success. For his second vinyl reissue, Bart of Planet Ilunga has found some truly rare Rock-a-Mambo and African Jazz sides that were issued on 78 rpm shellac discs in the Congo in the years before Independence (and then reissued, some of them, on Pathé Marconi, like African Memories of 1976 or Columbia EPs, such as Congo Latino, in the 60s and 70s). This music was inspired by early Cuban recordings reintroduced into Africa. When the Africans heard it they recognized the essential truth of it and took it to heart, even adapting simplified or nonsense Spanish lyrics ("Ay yi yi mi nina"). They then took the metronomic clave beat of Cuba and added latitude to it. Over the years I've made my own compilations of this wonderful sound. John Storm Roberts sent me a cassette of some 78s he owned and that got me going on a quest to find more Rock-a-Mambo. You may see my own webpage about them here. Though it's essentially Cuban you'll hear "Lon-dee lon-dee li" from a 50s New Orleans pop song (in "Babalou"), even a quote from "Theme from a Summer Place" (Not on this set but quoted by OK Jazz on "Ah, bolingo pasi" and Les Bantous on "Yaka na Ekala"). [Aside: the famous "lum dee lum dee laa" lyric comes from "Mickey's Monkey" by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles in 1963 -- later than this Rock-a-Mambo version. So who did the original?] There are 14 tracks each from the two featured bands, though the players often broke into smaller groups or brought in a different singer for a session. Nino Malapet and Jean Serge Essous, both horn players, were the mainstays of Rock-a-Mambo, and both left later to form Les Bantous de la Capitale. The clarinet and alto sax entwined with jazz guitar are irresistible. The moody "Baila," the first hit of the group, introduced them with the lyrics, "El nuevo ritmo cha cha cha, la musica bella Mexicana, Santa Maria, ... ritmo Rock-a-mambo, musica Africana, ritmo Mexicano, saca la cabeza"(!) The horns are the lead instrument instead of a singer, there is a chorus, the piano part has been transposed to electric guitars which skitter about. Congas, electric bass and maracas fill out the pulsing beat. This and three other tracks here were included on the rare African Retro vol 5, a great Rock-a-Mambo collection from Pathé in 1977. "Oyé Jacquy," another hit, tells you to to "Oïga Rock-a-mambo, Kalle, oïga cha cha!" "Oye Jacquy" is one of my all-time favorites with its spare pulsing acoustic bass and simple congas and maraca percussion, around which the guitar dances, with the horns punctuating it briefly. Various other persons are enjoined to listen. That's it: "listen to this,"over a throbbing seductive beat. This is the cleanest I've heard these recordings and also the first time I've heard several of them.

"Baila (Dance)," was a cha cha written by Essous and members of African Jazz were brought in on the session. So the first recordings featured the voices of Joseph Kabaselle and Lando Rossignol, later joined by Joseph "Mujos" Mulamba; Nino Malapet played sax alongside Essous' distinctive & unique clarinet, and African Jazz's guitarists Nicolas Kassanda and Tino Baroza played with Roitelet on bass. These members all get name-checked in the songs. The formation of Rock-a-Mambo seems to have been for fun and to indulge a shared passion for Latin music. They wrote Spanish lyrics without much effort ("Yo me muero, ay, yo te quiero" -- yes, really), but every groove exudes joie-de-vivre, or esengo. Eugène Ngoyi ("Gogène") and Papa Noel also played guitar for the band as needed, and the pool of musicians included veteran Honoré Liengo on acoustic bass and "Saturnin" Pandi on congas, as well as Léon Nzambe ("Sathan"), Alphonse Epayo (guitar), Lucie Eyenga (vox), and Maproco (sax). Their first recordings included "Toca mi" (included here), and "Ya Mouele" (which appears to be lost, but may be the origin of the Joe Arroyo song). The young fans thought of them as a continuation of Negro-Jazz, a group that had specialized in popular Cuban dance rhythms. First time reissues here include "Lily Germaine" b/w "Pesa ngai..." (Esengo 4A/B), "Toca mi" (Esengo 11B), "Siempre mi" b/w "Rosignol Cantador" (Esengo 12A/B) and "Mioto ya likolo" (Esengo 131A).

The second disc focuses on African Jazz. I was a little dismissive of Bart's first release of African Jazz on Planet Ilunga since it had all been available on Sonodisc CDs, but for those who prefer vinyl it was a good collection and this time around he has included obscurities that make this worth delving into. Two of the tracks were on Grand Kalle vol 5, which I found on the excellent Worldservice website. While others may be familiar it's great to have a fresh take on this timeless music. I should say they are familiar to me, but may not be as familiar to you! Again we kick off with a namecheck, in the classic "Chauffez African Jazz," and get a nice dose of Docteur Nico's early work on "Leo se Leo" (a real rarity) and "his "Tembe nie" (previously on African Memories). The fourth side includes four cuts by African Rock, yet another formation of some of the same artists on Esengo, including singers Charles Kibongue and Lucie Eyenga.

There are only 500 sets of the vinyl double album. If there's enough demand a digital or CD release may come along. Curiously I looked up Rock-a-mambo on EBay and there's a copy of the Congo Latino EP (which has two songs by Rock-a-Mambo and two by Negro Band) for the same price as Planet Ilunga's double LP. But there's no guarantee that when an EBay seller says record is VG++ that it is anything better than thrashed! So grab this while you can.

African Fiesta National on a record sleeve, courtesy Martin Sinnock
L to R back row: Alphonse Biolo Batilangandi, trumpet - Roger Izeidi, manager - Philo Kola, guitar - Ndombe Opetun, singer - Willy Kuntima (Willy Mbembe), trumpet - Christophe, Sax - Seskain Molenga, drums - Front: Attel Bumba Pierre, solo - Denis Lokassa, guitar accompaniment - Pascal Tabu Rochereau - Karré Muwosso Kasanda, singer - Faugus Izeidi, guitar - Diana Simba, singer - Muena Joseph, bass.

Rochereau in Memoriam

Rochereau left African Jazz with Docteur Nico at the height of their fame in 1963 to establish African Fiesta. Two years later the group splintered again into Rochereau's band, African Fiesta National and Nico's African Fiesta Sukisa. In 1966 he recorded the lovely ballad "Mokolo na kokufa (The Day I Die)" which became one of his standards. Several members of Rochereau's band, including Sam Mangwana, Guvano, Diana Nsimba and guitarists Michelino and Dizzy Mandjeku, formed Festival des Maquisards, a further splinter group led by Ntesa Dalienst quit and formed Les Grands Maquisards. African Fiesta National evolved into L'Afrisa International in 1970 as it branched out to play festivals in other parts of Africa. Flirting with pop, Rochereau made perhaps his worst recording when he covered the Beatles' "Let it Be" as "Lalabi," while "Kaful mayay" and "Aon Aon" were big hits for Afrisa. After Authenticité he became Tabu Ley and dropped his first name Pascal. He fulfilled his ambition of being the first African artist to perform at the Olympia in Paris in 1970 and the concert was released on two LPs (The subsequent single CD release left off two smoking numbers, "Salongo" and "Revolution comparaison," that praised Mobutu; see my review below). Impressed with the power of Western pop and R&B, Rochereau added trap drums to his line-up early on, and grew an afro as well as wearing bell-bottoms and James Brown-style stage costumes. Another blistering live show at FESTAC 77 in Lagos was also issued as a double LP. His band was a springboard for other musicians: the key players quit in Abidjan to form African All Stars and singer Pepe Ndombe left to form Afrizam. (The many threads of his lineage are traced in Gary Stewart's book, Rumba on the River.) His shows became spectacles with sexy women dancers, known as Rocherettes.

Tabu Ley Rochereau looks on as Mbilia Bel sings, London, 1985

Among them was a dancer he poached from Abeti called Mbilia Bel, who proved to be a great singer also and boosted his career as it was flagging at the beginning of the 1980s. He devoted all his resources to Bel, as he had fallen in love with her, but then he discovered she was having an affair with guitarist Rigo Star. He caught them in delicto flagrante at the swanky George V Hotel in Paris and apparently chased her through the streets with a pistol. Bel's career rose while his fell. He had one more success when he collaborated with his arch-rival Franco for a tribute album to Kabasele. Rochereau danced delicately around Mobutu, as it would be dangerous for him to do otherwise. However as the Zairois economy was in shambles, he moved to Paris then to the USA and finally settled in Belgium, not returning until after the fall of the dictator, when he was appointed vice-governor of Kinshasa. He did have a later hit when RealWorld Records made a live recording of him, Babeti Soukous, in 1989, which reprised a number of his hits, but his falsetto voice was straining and he never returned to being number one as the next generation of bands, the Clan Langa Langa, changed the style of the music from the older big bands like Rochereau's to stripped down soukous outfits. Rochereau released over a hundred albums, and thousands of singles. The cream of his output was issued in two double-CD sets by Stern's in 2007 as The Voice of Lightness.

TABU LEY ROCHEREAU
LIVE AT OLYMPIA (Syllart 823419)

I have been trying to mentally rehabilitate Tabu Ley Rochereau since for the last 20 years I have had decreasing interest in his music. Lately I get the impression he has been exploiting his former colleagues (now deceased) by licensing their music without due credit or financial recompense. However, the man has a great set of pipes and produced some landmark albums in his heyday. I dug out the two live albums that were the pinnacle of his solo career: Olympia (December 1970) and FESTAC (1977). The abridged Olympia set has just come out on CD. The Olympia in Paris has long held a spell for the Francophone world. When an artist sold out the 2000-seat venue they had made it. Olympia is to the French what Carnegie Hall is to the Americans or the Royal Albert Hall to the British. Rochereau spent a year trying to persuade the promoters he was capable of giving the Olympia his best shot. When he heard that his old boss Kalle had played there he almost croaked, but then word arrived that it was not Olympia but another venue, so Tabu Ley was still on track to be the breakthrough Congolese artist in Parisian society. I don't know whether the album was actually recorded live or done in a Paris studio with applause grafted on. One or two tracks do sound like live recordings as they are muddier than the rest of the album, and the applause seems unrelated to the music, unless it was for dancers. There is also a lot of girls' screaming that sounds like it was recorded at the beach! The original LIVE AT OLYMPIA set launches right into a laid-back jam with fat horn lines called "Moussa." Rochereau sings "Michelino Moussa," so maybe he's singing to his guitarist "Michelino" who took the name Mavatiku Visi during Authenticité. Paul "Pepe" Ndombe joins him at the mike on chorus. Ndombe's voice is very like Rochereau's so it's a weird sort of stereo. This was a frequent ploy of Rochereau: I heard him in concert in the 90s with another singer who sounded just like him. Perhaps it was a way to take a break and have the audience think he was still singing, but of course the danger is the band could carry on without him and sound exactly the same. This indeed happened when right after Olympia the band split and formed Afrizam. This Afrisa 70 group had some of the cream of Congolese musicians in their ranks: Roger Izeidi's brother Faugus on guitar, along with Attel who stayed loyal to the boss. Alongside Michelino we hear the great Denis Lokassa "Ya Mbongo" Kasia on guitar; Joseph Mwena holds down the bass, and "Deyesse" Empompo Loway plays sax. Trumpeter Willy Kuntima, who had come with Rochereau all the way from African Jazz, stayed with Afrisa but died a month after the Olympia gig, in a car wreck. (All this information is gleaned from Gary Stewart's book RUMBA ON THE RIVER as, of course, there are no liner notes on the Sonodisc LP.) "Assambela" starts in the middle with applause and then goes into an extended outro jam: this does sound live. There are a couple of weak moments on the second side of the first album, "Fetiche" and "Riverra," when Tabu Ley thinks he's Robert Goulet, but we can skip over those, because there are two gems on here: "Nalembi" and "Paulina," the latter with some great sax from Empompo. The second volume begins again in the middle of a jam with a technical glitch as the bass is too loud (making it seem more credibly live). "Salongo" praises Mobutu over a choppy repeated riff on dampened guitar strings. "Revolution comparaison" also sings about Mobutu and, with Stalinist thoroughness, these two songs are now purged from the canon and don't appear on the new CD. "Recencemment" (there is no such word in French: sloppy Sonodisc typesetters at work) has a breakdown between the two guitarists that was later developed into a major sensation by Lokassa with Sam Mangwana's African All Stars. This one too is omitted, presumably to get the two volumes onto one CD, unless they mislaid the original tapes. This is followed by another forgettable song "Bavon," a tribute to the young singer, which is preserved. The final side begins with one of Rochereau's greatest ballads: "Mokolo Nakokufa" (again misspelled on the Sonodisc jacket), which means "The day I die," a very haunting melody with great guitar interplay that sets up a jagged counterpoint. One track, "Riverra," appears on both volumes, presumably a screw-up at Sono. The final song "Tika nameka" mentions Roger, Vicky, Bombenga, Dewayon, Franco & Nico: all his contemporaries, probably Rochereau gloating at his triumph. But it is indeed a triumphant set.

FESTAC 77, recorded in Lagos, Nigeria, has a different sound for Rochereau: a bigger band with a load of back-up singers as well as dancers, the Leyerettes. I believe this was a competition where each country sent their top band, so Afrisa was augmented with singers and musicians from other bands to form a National Orchestra. Manuaku and Nyoka Longo appear: they were members of Zaiko Langa Langa at the time. Bopol had recently quit the band, so the leader was Mekanisi Modero. Dizzy Mandjeku shared lead guitar honours. They open with an Isaac Hayes fanfare & the mix is askew at first, so it does sound live. Despite the prevalent sound of era this is not a funk recording, and soon falls back to the dreamy two-part rumba structure with a kick-up at the seben. Rochereau comes on for "Adeito part II" the absolute jump-out hit off this session, but you have to wait till the second disc to hear part I. Though Dizzy and Mekanisi are great guitarists and animate the whole session, neither reaches the heights of Docteur Nico, former leader of African Fiesta before the split with Rochereau. In "Tosa mpia" we get some band members' namechecked. Two songs are credited to Nyoko Longo so I am assuming he wrote them though it sounds like Rochereau singing. Longo is also alive so perhaps this wont appear on CD anytime soon. Afrisa International was one of the top Congolese bands in the 1970s spurred on to greatness by their rivalry with TPOK Jazz of Franco who always had the edge. Their apotheosis was in the early 80s when Mbilia Bel shared the spotlight but at FESTAC and particularly the Olympia gig, Rochereau gave it his all.

LE GRAND KALLE
HIS LIFE, HIS MUSIC (STCD3058-9)

It's not everyday I will drop everything when the mail comes and abandon the afternoon to reading and listening to music. But the much-anticipated two-disc set of Le Grand Kallé (born Joseph Kabasele) from Stern's is a special case, and since it is more book than box I wanted to put my feet up and dig in while listening to these familiar musicians, Nico, Dechaud, Tino Baroza, Vicky, Rochereau, Essous, Malapet, and Manu Dibango, again. Right away I discovered there were African Jazz songs I did not know! In some ways this is like turning back the clock thirty years, to when I discovered this music and found the early pair of African Jazz albums on Sonodisc called Merveilles du Passé vols 1 & 2 (360 142; 143). Those two discs have been much re-edited and re-anthologized but one thing they lacked was any context, and now we have Ken Braun's eloquent and thorough essay explaining the lineage of Jeef Kallé (as his friends called him, shortening both of his names), his various bands, their political machinations and lots of wonderful extra details (He and Patrice Lumumba used to tool around Leopoldville in his Cadillac convertible, chauffeured by young Tabu Pascal aka Rochereau!). In truth we really knew nothing about Kabasele when he died in 1983 (age 52). At that point African music was just emerging on the world scene and two of the Congolese giants, Franco and Rochereau, set aside their differences to record L'Evénement: Kabasele in Memoriam, a wonderful tribute to the great man. But the Sonodisc reissues were not very useful and it was hard to navigate them.

Typical Sonodisc CD package: No liner notes, unreadable label

There's no point in dwelling on Sonodisc's shortcomings, like the Grand Kallé 66-67 CD which has a picture of Nico on the cover though he was no longer in the band! Or their 1961 1962 compilation which also included music from 1968. Sonodisc had no liner notes and even their titles were hard to read and unreliable. Suffice it to say Stern's has now plugged the gap and we have a lasting monument to Joseph Kabasele. The main thing to remark about this compilation is that the sound is fantastic, these songs never sounded so clear. A dozen of the tracks were taken from scarce 78s and 45s owned by a couple of collectors (Vincent Luttman, Congolese music scholar and broadcaster of Radio Renaissance in London, and Michael Kieffer who did the remastering for John Storm Roberts' Original Music label and is an avid 78 collector) and remastered. The packaging is excellent -- that is to say the cover and the book format with CD sleeves tipped to the inside front and rear boards -- however they let the designer run riot with the text and as a result the typography sucks. To say it is unreadable is an understatement. I don't know why graphic designers are allowed to mess around with text like it's a "design component" but there is a display sans serif that looks like Microgramma, set tightly in a too-short measure. At least it's not dropped out of a colored background, but it is still bloody difficult to read even with glasses in strong light! Now, if you are thinking "I already have the best of these songs," then think again. I looked at the playlist and noticed one of my favorite songs, "Para Fifi" is right at the top of the stack. I have it on at least two other compilations, but not this version. This is the earliest recording of the song, which I had never heard before. It has acoustic guitars, congas and even what sounds like a Solovox keyboard wheezing away in the background. It's thinner than the later recording (having fewer musicians and a more primitive studio set-up) but it is wonderful to hear this first state of the song. The compiler, Ken Braun, has also snuck in a classic track from Rock-a-Mambo (a studio band that included members of African Jazz), Jean-Serge Essous' dynamic clarinet-led biguine "Baila!" A rarity is Nico's "Tujala Tschibembe," in which the youngster rocks out on electric guitar with a home-made amp that is very distorted. "This was more than electricity at the service of music," notes Braun, "it was electricity become music, in of all places, the middle of Africa." By 1958 Nico was experimenting with a pulsating sound and the truly electric "Mokonzi ya mboka (Chief of the village)" has a horn chorus as well as bottle percussion and a breakdown to a mutuashi-like dance with ululation. His singing tone on his Epiphone copy almost sounds as if he is bowing the strings. The sequence is great. I am pleased Braun included "Tembe nye (No doubt)" and other gems that might have been overlooked; they take their place alongside the hits, "Table Ronde," "Indépendence Cha Cha," "Jamais Kolonga" and "African Jazz Mokili Mobimbo." The guitar sound of Nico and his brother defined the sound of African Jazz and though Kallé was credited with forming this school of music, in his later bands he sought to recreate this distinctive guitar sound (listen to Jerry Malekani on "Biwela-Biwela" from 1966).

During the struggle for independence many of the Europeans who owned recording studios in the Congo fled, meaning there were no facilities for bands to record and because of curfews no clubs for them to play in. Fortunately an elite band, comprising some of African Jazz and members of the "rival" OK Jazz went to Brussels to serenade the delegates at the Round Table Conference which would lead to independence. While there they hooked up with the Fonior label and cut a dozen classic sides. A year later they returned to Brussels (with the additional "All Stars" singer Vicky and bassist Armando Brazzos who defected permanently from OK Jazz) and laid down 40 tracks in two weeks, pouring out their repertoire with a Belgian drummer and Manu Dibango also joining in. So there is often a disparity between who recorded the songs and who was actually in the band. Willy Kuntima, the trumpeter, would disappear and then reappear, but when he's there Willy's contributions are notable. He was often doubled by Jeef Mingiedi for a really big sound with the twin saxes and occasional clarinet. The only restriction at this point was the record format, 78 was replaced by 45 which gave more room to expound a theme, and in one instance make two recordings: "African Jazz Mokili Mobimbo" was cut at two minutes thirty seconds on the 78, but at 45 rpm it was not merely stretched out: "it was a narrative extended in both words and music." But in general the band just hit the ground running, like in Nico's "Kamulanga," another mutuashi earth-shaker, quite akin to rock and roll. While Mwamba Dechaud had been the band's original leader he was happy to step back and let Kallé become the natural leader and also allow his younger brother to step into the spotlight on his guitar. "Bana na nwa (Black Kids)" by Dechaud shows off Nico's legendary speed and improvisational skills, and it also appears here on CD for the first time. The closest Kallé gets to a Cuban sound is in tracks like "Tika ndeko na yo te (Don't leave your brother)," (which first re-appeared on John Storm Roberts' Sound of Kinshasa LP, with an erroneous attribution): there is a clave beat, but again it's more rock than mambo: even the intro sounds like the start of "Twist and Shout!" As Braun says, it's a sound your mama never heard in old Havana!

Disc one is the heart and soul of this compilation. As Congo is in the center of Africa it borders nine countries and its music made its way out in all directions to become hugely influential. The second disc details the later career of the man who was at the "creation of modern Congolese music," as the CD's subtitle notes but as it contains several different configurations it is less consistent. On Kabasele's wedding day his band failed to appear -- it was almost like being left at the altar! They were in fact on their way to Europe to record without him. The split led to the formation of African Fiesta and caused Jeef Kallé to have to scramble and assemble a new band with Papa Noel and members of Vox Africa, singer Jeannot Bombenga and guitarist Casino, but again they became disgruntled employees doing all the work while Le Grand Kallé made the money. Looking for ideas Kallé went to Paris, on the heels of the now successful splinter group. There he met up with his old pals Essous (who had gone on from Rock-a-Mambo to form Les Bantous de la Capitale in Brazzaville) and Manu Dibango and they formed African Team. As Braun notes there were no major hits from their recording sessions but clearly they had fun making them. Members of RyCo Jazz also sat in and created the stand-out track "Biwela-Biwela." There were some choice cuts still in the old guy, however, and disc two contains three fantastic songs in a row "Moselebende to bolingo," "Mbombo ya Tshimbalanga," and "BB69" which was a hit in the late 60s. But once again, the composer and singer, Matthieu Kouka, felt he had got a raw deal from Kallé and quit, at which point the band collapsed again. Back in Paris Kallé tried to revive African Team adding veterans from OK Jazz as well as former sidemen. "Ko Ko Ko . . . qui est la?" is the gem from this era. However Kallé is now backed by strings and has, to me, the irritating flautist Don Gonzalo on it. The composition of African Team version two is more of a charanga than an African pop group, but it works well. The tunes are boogaloos and the orchestration by Don Gonzalo is more sophisticated than anything in Kallé's previous career, but it is a codicil to his great work from 1951 to 1962 when he really created his own school of music and established a lasting legacy. This compilation is more than a retrospective of his career, for Braun's booklet explains the rise and fall of Kabasele in tandem with an excellent exposition on the vagaries of the country that so dearly paid for independence with the murder of its first leader, Lumumba, by the CIA in collusion with MI5, the British Secret Service, followed by the decades of Mobutu's dictatorship (during which era Kallé fell from favor as a friend of the deposed Lumumba), and then by the ongoing civil wars that are devouring its precious resources.

SOUVENIRS FROM THE CONGO (Planet Ilunga 2 LPs)

Update, Bart of Planet Ilunga writes:

"The main intention with the compilation was to give some background on Kallé and l'African Jazz in the liner notes - since Sonodisc failed to do on theirs - and release it in a valuable package with remastering and nice label artwork. I chose vinyl as it's my preferred music medium and most of the l'African Jazz music is rather hard to find on vinyl.

"You are right about almost (if not all) the tracks having been released on CD before. I remastered approximately 2/3 of the tracks on this selection from Sonodisc CDs, but I also remastered some tracks from vinyl LPs on Kabasele's own label (Surboum African Jazz) and from LPs on the African label (360.107; 360.142; 360.143). I also tried to include some lesser known songs - merely early songs - on the compilation, but the sound was not on par with the rest and those were never released on Sonodisc labels. So I decided not to include them.

"So, fetishization it is, and a expensive one, because you barely break-even with releasing on vinyl, spot on your review :-) Keep up the good work! Best from Belgium, Bart"

DR NICO
LES MERVEILLES DU PASSE (1967) (Sonodisc 360159)

Occasionally I review reissues of old favorites here, but was anything ever sadder than this? Look at that cover! The new owners of Sonodisc have finally put their entire catalog up on amazon for download (what goes up must come down). It's only $6.99 to download the entire album, in the usual lame low-fidelity measly bit-rate offered by amazon's cloud player. The good news is that here is the entire LP which came out on vinyl and was later broken up and put on different CDs, omitting four of the tracks. So for the first time (for many listeners) there are 4 classic Nico tracks on offer ("Runeme mama," "Yo soy tu dolor," "Para bailar" & "Impercoque.") The bad news is they don't seem to have done anything to enhance the sound. The opener "Bougie ya motema" is a perfect demonstration of Nico's guitar wizardry, if there was ever any doubt that he is indeed the God of the Guitar. "Para bailar," revived here, is another example of his "dry" style with vertiginous spiraling runs. It's a smoking cover of a Cuban pachanga. I never understood why those 4 songs were left high and dry in the early attempts to market Nico's oeuvre on CD. Randomness can be the only answer. The cha-cha "Runeme mama," also reissued for the first time, is another of my favorite Nico tracks. In my book on Docteur Nico I say that the LP is "an orderly compilation of upbeat material, mainly rumbas in Lingala, but a few pachangas, cha-chas and a bolero in Spanish." From one point-of-view it is the most coherent Nico album issued by Sonodisc. It's by no means the best of Nico's Latin tracks but since the sides are Sukisa singles, from 47a to 53b in chronological order, it does give a more coherent view of the band's repertoire than you get from most compilations that chop and change from different eras. "Yaka toyambana" and "Mwa Kasanda" continue the musical theme of Nico's brittle runs bouncing off the chorded arpeggios of his brother's mi-solo, while the singers' excitement is palpable in the latter. Chantal Kazadi and Paul Mizele are the main vocalists; Nico does whip out the Hawaiian guitar for the lonesome unearthly bolero "Pauline," in which Kazadi calls out to him, "Eh, Nico, Dieu de la guitare!" The horns are in full effect; Chantal's wistful vocals are the perfect counterpart to Nico's laconic lead guitar. For my money this 1967-8 band, African Fiesta Sukisa (mark 1), was Nico's best, far better than the earlier Rochereau grouping in which the rumbas were just copies of Cuban originals: here they became full-blown Lingala dances with the Zairois groove before it evolved into soukous in Verckys' studio. Now they had something to prove, not only were African Fiesta Sukisa better than the other Kinois rumba bands, they had to top Rochereau's splinter group, too. Why are there no liner notes? You're kidding: it's a download. Why is there no photo of the band? Beats me: too lazy to find one. The audience for these reissues is undoubtedly mostly white Europeans and they are exactly the people who want to see pictures of the artist and read something meaningful about their oeuvre. Why didn't Sonodisc just use the cover from the LP for this reissue? Ah, therein lies the rub: Sono used the same cover for three different LPs, so you might well look at it and think you have it already. Believe me, if you don't know it, this (along with a few sessions from their arch-rivals OK Jazz) is the finest music made in the Congo in the twentieth century: too bad it's now reduced to this anonymous dirt pile in low fi. OK, Sono, it's now up to you. I have given you a plug: time to reissue those countless 45s on the African label in your vaults. (Yes, those cardboard boxes of 6" reel-to-reel tapes under the desk, that's them.)

THE WORLD IS SHAKING
CUBANISMO FROM THE CONGO 1954-5 (Honest Jons HJRCD40)

As promised, when they started mining the EMI archives, Honest Jons has issued a handsome set of early Congolese adaptations of Cuban tunes. The booklet has wonderful old B&W photos of nightlife and a finely turned essay by Gary Stewart to set the mood. These recordings were made after the Second World War on a direct-to-disc machine by Belgians who released 300 78s in the Olympia African series. I first encountered some of them on the Vogue LP, KASONGO! and from that album we have four tracks reprised here, including "Moni moni non dey" by Adikwa Depala, a sprightly cover of the "Peanut Vendor" of Moises Simon and truly a seminal disc in the reAfricanization of Cuban music. Apart from the Latin sounds, documented on the GV compilation OUT OF CUBA, the mid-50s Leopoldians liked Cab Calloway, Guy Lombardo, Maurice Chevalier and an Italian hit called "Anna." Though guitar, violin and bass joined the native percussion it was common to hear these songs played on likembe, or thumb piano. Plus there's a wild buzzing chorus of kazoo-like gourds. "Klim" by Jean Mpia sounded familiar, then I recognized the song was adapted into "Mais mais oui, mais mais non," also known as "Tozo na Bozo," by Moniania Augustin found on the LP "Stars des Annees 50." The sound is pretty thin, but this new compilation makes a nice bridge to that Stars of the Fifties disc as well as the slightly later material collected on the BANKOLO MIZIKI compilations and the two volume ROOTS OF RUMBA ROCK on Crammed. Honest Jons also has issued AFRICA BOOGALOO, subtitled "The Latinization of West Africa," but as it includes several heavily anthologized cuts, I may forego the package, and just download a couple of MP3s.

The Catholic Church began complaining bitterly about the 'immorality' of the rumba, and with all this furor, gossip soon began to spread. Wendo was proclaimed to be the devil incarnate, with people saying; 'when Marie Louise was played near to Leopoldville's Gombe cemetery, the dead would rise from their graves to dance', 'the song is so seductive it turns schoolboys into drunkards', and the song 'tempts even missionaries toward evil'. So basically, the church saw the popularity of 'Marie Louise' as provoking public disorder, and the gossip particularly, had to be stopped. Enough was enough. The church implored the colonial authorities to do something about this and eventually they did. An order was issued for Wendo's arrest and imprisonment. Fortunately, Wendo discovered this in time, leaving Leopoldville for a few months and exiling himself to the far away city of Kisangani in the east of the country.

Eventually, the outcry died down and Wendo returned to Leopoldville. However to show justice had been done, the colonial authorities still arrested Wendo, forcing him to spend a few weeks in prison. But of course, all this fuss could only enhance his success. Through the song 'Marie Louise', Papa Wendo kick-started the modern popular music of the two Congos into being, and such is the importance of his role in these first formative years, that today the era is known as 'Tango ya ba Wendo' (the time of Wendo), meaning, when Papa Wendo led, and everybody else followed. However, although Papa Wendo had started the ball rolling, within just a few years, the music scene advanced rapidly. Soon a plethora of ensembles and orchestras were playing in ever more sophisticated styles and so, by as early as the mid 1950s, although still holding its own, Wendo's musical style was already considered to be a little 'passé'.

In 1954 the Ngoma record label then decided to team Wendo up with two of the labels other big stars, namely, Leon Bukassa and Manuel Olivera. Thus the trio BOW was born. The trio BOW or Bukassa-Olivera-Wendo enjoyed immense popularity across the Congo especially after undertaking several tours of its provinces. The trio's members also continued to release records under both their own names and as the trio BOW, right up to the close of the decade. However as the 1950s drew to a close, Papa Wendo's career seemed pretty much done, electric guitars had displaced the acoustic and although hailed as a visionary and a pioneer of Congolese pop, it seemed Wendo had been consigned to the dustbin of music history aged only 35.

The 30th June 1960 importantly heralded Congolese independence from Belgium. Unfortunately what followed, was a colonially contrived disaster of monumental proportions. Finally after five years of political turmoil and brutal civil war, in late 1965, a coup d'état was staged, leading to the beginning of a new political era known in Congo as the first republic. An essential part of this new republic was a strategy to reunite Congolese across the vast nation. This included bringing forth the artists who had previously challenged the boundaries of colonialism through their music. Thus Congolese politicians approached the bandleader Rochereau Tabu Ley asking him to assist in resurrecting the career of Wendo Kolosoy. And so Papa Wendo briefly joined Rochereau's orchestra African Fiesta National as a featured singer. Here he rerecorded a number of his old compositions for Rochereau's label 'Editions Flash'. Unfortunately however the collaboration did not last long, since after offending the Congolese President -- Joseph Desiré Mobutu -- Rochereau found himself and his orchestra suspended. Furthermore the orchestra then suffered from a series of defections by key musicians. Poor Wendo found himself to be the least of Rochereau's mounting problems, and sidelined, he quickly slipped back into obscurity.