Farewell Papa Wemba, farewell 2016: Year that claimed so many musicians

There is never a right time to say goodbye”. That is what the agile-footed American artiste Chris Brown says — or more accurately, sings. I disagree. I think December 31 is the perfect time to say goodbye; particularly when the year has been full of painful farewells.

Lovers of popular music will remember 2016 as the year of bidding goodbye to a legion of world-famous performers. They include Lydia Achieng Abura, Mandoza, Papa Wemba, David Bowie, Maurice White, Phife Dawg, Prince, Kashif Saleem, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones and, gone on Christmas day, George Michael.

The enduring art of each of these artistes is the subject of an entire thesis, so I will not attempt to memorialise every one of them. I am torn between reflecting on the founder of the electrifying 1970s group Earth, Wind and Fire, Maurice White, and musing over the influence of Papa Wemba. 

Each one is remarkable — a "Shining Star" (1975), as White would sing. But this is the last day of December, not White’s "September" (1975). It’s a time for definitive farewells not one for White’s fickle "Reasons"(1975) or his dreamy "Fantasy (1978). As I leaf through the music catalogue of my mind, the song that lingers is "Rail On" (1995). So let me salute Papa Wemba, aka Jules Shungu Wembadio, in the hope that there will be another day to celebrate Maurice White. 

In 1977, the Kinshasa daily, Elima, named Papa Wemba “the revelation of the year”. As sole proprietor of a new group, Viva La Musica, Wemba had broken off from one of the splinter groups that sprung out of the massive Zaiko Langa Langa. Viva’s Mere Supérieure, was declared the best song of the year. Fans were entranced by its ironic laughter. The title invokes the purity of a nun while the lyrics denounce the hypocrisy of women.

A penetrating voice, animated live performances and a passion for savvy dressing had combined to ensure that in 1977, Papa Wemba “was incontestably the one who attracted the most attention from the population”.

SUSPENDED SENTENCE

Wemba will be remembered for many excesses, including his frontier running escapades. On tours to Europe, he would carry a huge entourage of musicians and fans who had no plans of going back to Zaire. This ingenious way of importing Congolese immigrants earned Wemba a three-month jail sentence in France in 2004. He repeated the offence in Belgium and in 2012, he was handed a suspended sentence of 15 months and a fine of €22,000.

Equally curious was Papa Wemba’s long stewardship of La Sape (Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes French for Society of Ambiance-Makers and Persons of Elegance). The anthem of this movement in praise of European labels and fashion houses was Wemba’s 1983 love ballad, "Matebu". To show off their designer labels, Sapeurs developed the La Griffe dance.

Wemba saw his dapper self as a role model. But as Gary Stewart notes in Rumba on the River (2000), he incurred the wrath of the elders who saw this extravagant materialism as a driver of delinquent behaviour. Young men were, reportedly, stealing to fund their sartorial elegance. In a 1985 recording, Proclamation, Wemba admonished Sapeurs to behave themselves.

Can La Sape be understood as a form of social criticism? David van Reybrouck, author of Congo: The Epic History of a People (2015), argues that it “displayed a deep aversion to the misery and repression” of “dirt-poor young people … the extravaganza le sapeur put on kept hope alive”. Was La Sape an act of political protest? President Mobutu had commanded all men to down the Western suit, shirt and tie and don abacost, the national dress. Dressed to the heels in European labels, sapeurs defied this authenticité, Mobutu’s push for an African cultural rebirth.

In 1986, Viva Musica dominated the African scene in Paris and toured the world including, Japan. Their new album, L’Esclave, featured several protest songs. One song hailed Winnie and Nelson Mandela. Wemba broke new artistic ground as lead actor in the film La Vie Est Belle (life is beautiful), which included a bubbly title track. Wemba’s other film soundtracks are "Maria Valencia" and "Le Voyageur", used by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci in Besieged (1998).

Wemba was 21 years old in March 1970 when he first broke into the Zairean music scene as part of the newly formed Orchestre Zaiko. The langa langa part would come later when Wemba coined a catchy dance step for the group’s repertoire. It exploited langa, the Lingala term for “to get drunk”. Fans quickly added this description to the band’s name. The band readily adopted it.

A youthful band, Zaiko, transformed the traditionally slow Congolese rumba. It injected vitality with electric guitars and drum-kits, added choreographed dancing to performances and omitted wind instruments from the long guitar solos known as sebene. Zaiko vocalists called out to patrons to get on the dance floor. These animated shouts mimicked American funk legend, James Brown but also borrowed from the local tradition of libanga or praise singing.

When the ndombolo dance burst onto the scene in the 1990s, these shouts became a “highly commercialised … structural aspect of the music”, as Bob White observes in Rumba Rules (2008). A specialised band member known as atalaku performed them. Invariably, atalaku was a socially adept instrumentalist who knew how to heap praise on prominent patrons and important politicians, earning the band quick cash and valuable socio-political networks.        

Awilo Longomba and Koffi Olomide stand out amongst Wemba’s protégés. Koffi and Wemba clashed often, but they also collaborated for the 1996 album Wake Up. Wemba had seen the value of collaboration in 1979 when he toured Kinshasa, West Berlin, Bonn and Brussels with Tabu Ley and Ochestre Afrisa. Like Tabu Ley, Papa Wemba was a songbird with an impeccable high-pitched falsetto or countertenor. His singing style owed much to his mother, a professional mourner.

The Papa Wemba masterpiece I am most likely to be found listening to is Emotion, the 1995 Western-fused album recorded in England under the tutelage of Peter Gabriel of the Real World music label. “Making this record gave me the shivers”, Wemba explained in the album’s liner notes. He was anxious for cross-over appeal throughout Europe, not just in the niche markets of French-speaking lovers of African music, so he threw in a few lyrics in English, “just to wink at the international market I am aiming at”.

Emotion features a blend of sounds — from synchronised soukous with some heavy basslines to soul. "Show Me The Way" is charged while Wemba’s remake of Otis Redding’s "Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa" (Sad Song) is gentle. Wemba replaces Redding’s captivating call and response between the saxophone and vocals with a call and response between his Lingala crooning and English vocals performed by soul diva, Juliet Roberts. The magic of Redding’s talking saxophone is not lost, it is enhanced by Wemba’s flawless falsetto. 

For all the power of its pulsating, celebratory rhythms, "Yolele" is not the Emotion song that I will be singing today. Today belongs to "Rail On", a Kiswahili ode to heartache, an anthem of acceptance. For adherents of popular music, 2016 has been a year of compounded losses and painful partings. Wemba’s lyrics mirror our despair so aptly: “Machozi yangu yote namalizika ....mie mpaka ni kuwazawaza we unaenda, unaenda, kama ile njia yako enda...rail on think that’s the way” (my tears are all finished ... I am brooding because you are going, you are going. If that be your destiny, then go). 

In the five decades that Papa Wemba was an integral part of African popular music, he recorded close to 60 albums. He was 66 years old when he took his final bow, collapsing on stage in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, on April 24, 2016. What an exit!

My turn now to “rail on”. I need a break from this column, for in the abiding poetry of Robert Frost, “… I have many (other) promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep”. Thank you, dear readers, for keeping me company for three and a half years. You have educated me with deft corrections and encouraged me with generous compliments. May our 2017 be filled with worthy new voices, abundant literary nourishment and personal growth. Happy New Year!

Dr Nyairo is a Cultural Analyst. [email protected]