Tabu Ley finally speaks: I’m on the path to recovery

Music lovers the world over will be elated to hear this: Veteran Congolese artiste Tabu Ley, or Pascal Rochereau, who has been hospitalised in Europe for the greater part of this year, is recovering and in high spirits. Speaking exclusively to REVIEW on three separate days in the past one week from his daughter’s Paris home, he said he was gradually getting better.

When REVIEW first spoke to him last Saturday evening, though sounding frail, he expressed delight at his fans’ concern for his health. “I now feel a lot better than I was six months since I was flown back to Paris from Kinshasa,” he told me. The veteran musician, who is being treated as an outpatient while staying with Inna and her mother, Mama Melanie, in Creteil on the outskirts of Paris, hopes he will soon be back on his feet and doing what he likes best — singing and dancing to his slow rhumba tunes.

After the first interview, Tabu Ley asked that I call him again around 10am (noon) the following day for more information. He also encouraged me to call him again on Monday and finally on Tuesday morning. As we spoke during the telephone interviews, the veteran crooner also confirmed regular visits and check-ups by his personal French physician. “He regularly comes home to check on me, and it has been his suggestion that I remain in a bed rest and go through some physiotherapy,” he said.

On a rather jovial note, the man who, alongside compatriot Franco Luambo Luanzo Makiadi, was the pillar of Lingala music, added that he was dying to be fit again so that he could visit Kenya and other parts of East Africa to perhaps even perform. “I really miss Nairobi, which I have always considered my second music home in Africa,” he pointed out. This, he explained, brought back to him fond memories of the early 1980s hit song, Nakei Nairobi, which was sung by one of his protégée's, Mbilia Bel, who later became a great collaborator, with whom he had a daughter, Melodie.

Nakei Nairobi, which was done in two versions (Swahili and Lingala), remains one of his most favourite with his Kenyan fans. “I’m eager to know how Kenya is like at the moment, as all along I have always had business interests in the country,” he said. Tabu Ley now prefers a quite life.

His personal physician

Early this year, his personal physician and family requested for more privacy in the wake of alleged media misreporting at home and outside DR Congo on the exact state of his health. “Let my fans internationally know that I’m able to speak well still and even look forward to returning to my normal state gradually,” he said.

Before reaching Tabu Ley, I had earlier spoken to Dino Vangu, one of the long-serving solo guitarists in his Afrisa International band, who also lives in Paris. It is Dino, Tabu Ley’s right-hand man, who organised the interviews. As Dino said, his former boss’s recovery was encouraging to them. “He is a lot better now than he was when he was first returned from Kinshasa, though he still requires quite some time to fully recover,” he said.

It was Dino who played the solo guitar in most of the earlier Afrisa International’s hit songs such as Fololo, Tanga Tanga, Zuwa Te and Sorozo. He says he is working on another solo album in which he is backed by, among others, Lady Lobenelle. One of Tabu Ley’s daughters, Collete, studied and lived in Nairobi in the late 1980s until the early 1990s.

Tabu Ley would arrange to pay her college fees and rent. He has also encouraged some of his children to develop careers in arts and culture. His son, Youssoupha, is now an up-and-coming rapper in France, and Melodie is a singer. Another son, Mark, is a journalist in France and Belgium.

A setback for a man

The illness has been an anti-climax in a life well-lived and a career that has been the envy of many in not only his native DRC, but also in central, western, eastern and southern Africa. The ill-health that has put him down and literally silenced him for now. One of the best Lingala music practitioners ever, the illness has put a blot on the twilight years of a consummate professional.

It’s a setback for a man who, throughout his career, has been known for not only his clear tenor voice, but also for his nimble feet. For among the great musicians on the continent, Tabu Ley would have taken hands down the accolade for greatest dancer hands down.

A man, who in his heyday was agile and stylish and a fantastic choreographer of the rhumba dance, with troupes of young female dancers, has been bedridden for several months. However, he hopes to return home by March or April, next year, ahead of the DRC elections. “I would like to be back home to join others during the voting time, depending on my health condition”, he said.

Ever since being taken ill, Tabu Ley has had to suspend his role as Kinshasa provincial minister for Culture and Arts, Sports, Youth and Leisure and Tourism. Shaba Kahamba, a former Orch Bella-Bella and all-time best Afrisa band bass player, who lives in Amsterdam, is also in regular contact with Tabu Ley.