Shaking sounds -and Congo chic
It was not just his music, but also his style. Papa Wemba destroyed a stereotype, writes
SENSE OF STYLE: Severin Mouyengo, left, at his house in Brazzaville; right, a sapeur on a sofa
SPEAKING to an Ivorian TV station, legendary Congolese musician Papa Wemba — “The King of Rumba Rock” — said: “My last concert will be where I go. I will reveal that sometimes at concerts, I feel like I am floating. Perhaps one day I will go like this.”
His words turned out to be tragically prescient. While performing in Abidjan last weekend , Wemba, 66, collapsed on stage and died.
In a career spanning almost half-a-century the flamboyant and outspoken musician took his soukous rhythms from the streets of Mobutu-era Kinshasa to the world. The many obituaries made little mention of what Wemba was wearing when he collapsed, but if you know anything about La Sape (Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People, or sapeurs), of which he was also once crowned king, you’d know that for Wemba clothes definitely madeth the man.
In the 2004 documentary The Importance of Being Elegant, Wemba forks out thousands of euros for designer gear in the Paris boutiques of Roberto Cavalli, Dolce and Gabbana and Issey Miyake while waxing lyrical about their imperial and noble nature. For Wemba, style was as much part of his identity as his music and both reflected his politics when it came to the difficulties facing his beloved motherland.
He was born Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba on June 14 1949 in the Kasai region of the then Belgian Congo. His father was a customs official and his mother was a pleureuse (a professional mourner).
In the 1960s, in the wake of independence, Wemba found fame in Kinshasa as a member of Zaiko Langa Langa, a popular soukous band.
He subsequently became the lead singer of another band, Isifi Lokole, before starting his own outfit, Viva la Musica, which would take him to Paris in the late 1970s. Soukous, a word derived from secouer, the French word for “to shake”, combined elements of traditional music from Africa and the Caribbean with rock and soul.
It was a truly world music long before the term became fashionable and one which does just what it says on the box — listening to Wemba’s music today, the thing you most want to do is shake.
As part of his post-colonial programme, Mobutu Sese Seko instituted a policy in the newly named Zaire, which he dubbed authenticité, which he believed would rid the country of the influence of colonialism and forge a new national identity.
This extended to the clothes that Zaireans were at first encouraged, and then required, to wear.
Inspired by a trip to China in 1973, Mobutu declared that all men should basically dress like he did himself — abandoning Western suits and ties for a Maoist tunic the leader named the “abacost” from the French for “down with the suit”.
Wemba was having none of it and La Sape was a direct response to Mobutu’s attempt to paint his subjects with the same dull, didactic brush. Speaking to National Public Radio soon after Wemba’s death, fellow musician Manu Dibango described Wemba’s attitude to dressing elegantly as “part of the narrative that we Africans have been denied our humanity for so long”.
“People have always had stereotypes about us and he was saying dressing well is not just a matter of money, not just something for Westerners, but that we Africans also have elegance. It was all about defining ourselves and refusing to be stripped of our humanity,” said Dibango.
In the 2004 documentary, you can see Wemba’s influence as the king of the sapeurs on the Congolese diaspora; young men with no jobs and no papers working their hustles on the streets of Paris to afford expensive clothes.
As one of the members of the singer’s entourage, “the Minister of the Budget”, declares while puffing on a large cigar outside a restaurant named after the singer, “Papa Wemba has created a nation in France. He is president of an invisible country but it still exists.”
Another sapeur, “AntiGigolo”, echoes this sentiment and lauds Wemba for giving the post-Mobutu generation “a feeling to be clean. He gave us an ideology to have courage and come to Europe.”
Getting to Europe from the war-torn DRC is not easy and in 2003 Wemba was arrested for people-smuggling after he arrived in France with around 90 new, non-instrument playing, non-singing band members who had allegedly paid him à3 000 each for the privilege. He served threeand-a-half months in prison and the experience had a lasting effect.
The documentary starts with his return home and his recent conversion to Christianity after a visit from God to his prison cell. Judging by the enthusiastic reception he received it was clear that for the Congolese diaspora he was no bandit but a hero and, as he once told the Guardian, “If I ever took money — and I’m not saying I did — it was for humanitarian reasons . . . I took a dozen children out of the country so that they could escape the terrible conditions that exist there.”
Wemba was prolific, recording over 35 albums and collaborations. He also knew
For Wemba style was as much part of his identity as his music and both reflected his politics
how to play the game, realising that his 1980s world music sound, which combined elements of pop and smooth jazz with soukous, while popular with Europeans, wasn’t what his fans in Kinshasa wanted to hear.
His solution was to keep two bands, one in Paris for the world music fans and one in Kinshasa for the rumba heads.
His songs reflected his myriad interests and personal development, from the injustices of the dictatorship to his love of haute couture to his late period dedication to Jesus.
He continued to be dedicated to the future of the DRC and told the website Cultures of Resistance, “I support my country and even if I don’t live to see it, those who live after me will enjoy a brighter future.”
The man prone on the stage in Abidjan was one who lived a full life and influenced generations of Africans. He was full of passion for his art and elegantly turned out to the end.
Although he once admitted that “when we die we won’t be taking our nice house, our nice clothes and our riches to the grave”, you hope that someone will preserve his wardrobe for posteity, because his songs are going to be heard for a long time to come. ELEGANT ENSEMBLE: One of the pictures from photographer Daniele Tamagni’s book ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’, about sapeurs