{"id":6215,"date":"2015-12-28T18:01:13","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T23:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=6215"},"modified":"2018-08-01T13:35:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T17:35:14","slug":"mbongwana-means-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=6215","title":{"rendered":"Mbongwana Means Change"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"15-12-28<\/a>

Mbong\u00adwana Star<\/p><\/div>\n

I fell in love with African pop music long ago, in Nige\u00adria, dur\u00ading the heady days of Vic\u00adtor Owaifo, Dele Abio\u00addun and King Sun\u00adny Ad\u00e9 (whose hand I got to shake in Toron\u00adto, many years lat\u00ader). I\u2019ve tried to fol\u00adlow it ever since, but there is sim\u00adply too much to keep track of. Africa pro\u00adduces wave after wave of new music, the hotspots shift\u00ading back and forth from region to region. Kin\u00adshasa is a hotspot, lately.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mbong\u00adwana Star is tak\u00ading African pop in a new direc\u00adtion with the release this year of From Kin\u00adshasa<\/em>. Mbong\u00adwana<\/em> actu\u00adal\u00adly means \u201cchange\u201d in Lin\u00adgala, and the change is appar\u00adent. Musi\u00adcians in the Con\u00adgo* have long been in a groove whose out\u00adside influ\u00adences were pri\u00admar\u00adi\u00adly reg\u00adgae, souk\u00adous and clas\u00adsic rhyhm and blues. From Kin\u00adshasa<\/em> is quite dif\u00adfer\u00adent. It has a spa\u00adcy, almost psy\u00adche\u00addel\u00adic sen\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adty that pulls influ\u00adences from punk and elec\u00adtron\u00adi\u00adca, and has an ambi\u00adence some\u00adthing like the sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion-motown exper\u00adi\u00adments that George Clin\u00adton made back in the 1970s. This amount of inno\u00adva\u00adtion is all the more remark\u00adable because the founders of the band, Yakala \u201cCoco\u201d Ngam\u00adbali and Nsi\u00adtu\u00advui\u00addi \u201cTheo\u201d Nzon\u00adza, are men in their six\u00adties, con\u00adfined to wheel\u00adchairs, and vet\u00ader\u00adans of the brief celebri\u00adty of Staff Ben\u00adda Bilili.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"15-12-28<\/a>

Staff Ben\u00adda Bilili<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Staff Ben\u00adda Bilili was a freak suc\u00adcess a few years ago. It emerged from the slums of Kin\u00adshasa, and was com\u00adprised of four elder\u00adly men who had been con\u00adfined to impro\u00advised tri\u00adcy\u00adcle-wheel\u00adchairs by child\u00adhood polio, accom\u00adpa\u00adnied by a teenag\u00ader who played an elec\u00adtric lute that he had hand-made from scraps. They appeared periph\u00ader\u00adal\u00adly in a French doc\u00adu\u00admen\u00adtary on Kinshasa\u2019s slum life and music scene called Jupiter\u2019s Dance<\/em> in 2006. Four years lat\u00ader, the same pro\u00adduc\u00aders and direc\u00adtors made a slick\u00ader doc\u00adu\u00admen\u00adtary focused on them, which was a hit at Cannes and made them overnight stars in Europe. What fol\u00adlowed was the clas\u00adsic tragi\u00adcom\u00ade\u00addy of instant suc\u00adcess. They toured the world, giv\u00ading hun\u00addreds of con\u00adcerts, released two fine albums, Tr\u00e8s tr\u00e8s fort <\/em>(2009) and Bouger le Monde!<\/em> (2012). They made a for\u00adtune on paper, but the mon\u00adey evap\u00ado\u00adrat\u00aded in the unfa\u00admil\u00adiar maze of con\u00adtracts, hang\u00aders-on, per diems, and tour\u00ading costs that plague the glob\u00adal music indus\u00adtry, and which they were unequiped to nav\u00adi\u00adgate. At one point, they found them\u00adselves pen\u00adni\u00adless in Trinidad, with no gig, no place to stay, and no air\u00adfare home. Final\u00adly, the band broke up with the usu\u00adal con\u00adfu\u00adsion and ran\u00adcour. But the two albums they issued are fine exam\u00adples of the Kin\u00adshasa sound, live\u00adly and entertaining.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ngam\u00adbali and Nzon\u00adza did not give up, how\u00adev\u00ader. They returned to Kin\u00adshasa and dug up some young musi\u00adcians back in their old neigh\u00adbour\u00adhood. They found per\u00adcus\u00adsion\u00adist Randy Makana Kam\u00adbal\u00adaya in a shel\u00adter for the dis\u00adabled, a young street urchin known only as \u201cSage\u201d who played vibes, and Jean-Claude Kam\u00adi\u00adna Mulo\u00addi, a bril\u00adliant gui\u00adtarist. Mbong\u00adwana Star was born, and they were open to new musi\u00adcal influ\u00adences, for the Staff Ben\u00adda Bilili vet\u00ader\u00adans had been exposed to a lot of stuff in their world tour, and absorbed it with inter\u00adest. Con\u00adnect\u00ading with an expe\u00adri\u00adenced Irish pro\u00adduc\u00ader, Doc\u00adtor L, famil\u00adiar with the African scene but also savvy in the music busi\u00adness, put them back on track. While the two ear\u00adli\u00ader albums are good stuff, worth repeat\u00aded lis\u00adten\u00ading, From Kin\u00adshasa<\/em> is some\u00adthing entire\u00adly new, and I\u2019ve been play\u00ading it over and over again with pleasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014 * the for\u00admer Bel\u00adgian Colony, pre\u00advi\u00adous\u00adly called Zaire, not the Con\u00adgo Repub\u00adlic, a for\u00admer French colony next door to it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fell in love with African pop music long ago, in Nige\u00adria, dur\u00ading the heady days of Vic\u00adtor Owaifo, Dele Abio\u00addun and King Sun\u00adny Ad\u00e9 (whose hand I got to shake in Toron\u00adto, many years lat\u00ader). I\u2019ve tried to follow \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-cl-listening-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6215"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7434,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions\/7434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}