Papa Wemba’s double gamble

CD comeback

Paris 

15/07/2010 - 

The dandy, dance hall king and village wise man, Papa Wemba, is attempting to rejuvenate his name and make his voice heard. After several years of dormant creativity, the rumba daddy, renamed “notre père” (our father) in Kinshasa, has bought out two different albums in the space of six months aimed at Congolese and international markets.

Comfortably seated on a sofa in the Marcadet studio outside Paris, the whole of Papa Wemba’s team was religiously listening to the tracks of his new album Notre Père Rumba, aimed at the Congolese market and for sale in shops in Paris’s cosmopolitan 18^th arrondissement. Papa Wemba smiled, nodded in agreement, slapped hands with a musician and was generally pleased with the mixing. It was his first listen to the final version of the album that marks his renaissance. After a forty-year career and eight years of self-questioning, Papa Wemba is singing again. At last.

Double comeback

To celebrate his comeback with dignity and definitively turn the page on the dark years, Papa has redoubled his efforts. Since Molokaï in 1998, the “Nightingale” had learned the lesson that different continents expected him to play in different registers. To make sure luck was on his side, he prepared two distinct versions of himself: Notre Père Rumba for Africa and Notre Père World for the rest of the world.

The tracks, whether they are over-excited, more intimate or trad-modern Kasai tunes, flow one after the other and sound completely different. What doesn’t change is the voice, which remains powerful, lively and moving. It is one of the most beautiful in Africa. “What I would like more than anything now is for my art to get back in there, for people to listen to my voice again and forget what the newspapers said about me.”

Papa Wemba was referring to his alleged role in a case of clandestine immigration between the Democratic Republic of Congo, France and Belgium – an episode for which he was imprisoned in 2003. At sixty, Papa Wemba wants to completely turn the page through music. Sapologie, a number aimed at the Kinshasa “sapeurs” (dandies) and Abidjan “faroteurs” (show-offs), has the studio packed.

Nash, the unsubtle darling of Abidjan, raps in Nouchi, the Ivorian vernacular, and Papa Wemba, the dandy king, confirms his new reign. In R&B style, he also invites Ophélie Winter to sing on a more consensual number. Papa Wemba’s rumba should “assemble and resemble Congolese people” confirms the wise man, who cautions that on this album fans will find contemporary rumba, his trademark sound, mixed with old rumba, which the singer used to love to vilify.

Under twenty

On the studio console lay the lyrics of Charles Aznavour’s La Bohème, which Papa Wemba chose to take up again. “There’s a bit of my story in there! When I was twenty, my friends and I used to dream of reaching the top, but we didn’t have much money back then and we were hungry. Now we have children and grandparents, so we try to tell our own story”. La Bohème and the era that under-twenty-year-olds never knew was back when Kinshasa was known as Kin La Belle, with dance halls and big bands.

“Old-style rumba had a lot of lyrics and shorter tunes. Today, because the copyright culture no longer exists in this country, you have to make dedications to fill your wallet, and get yourself some publicity. People rush things together.” In the past, creativity was also correctly paid. “Back then, it we were happy selling 50,000 or 60,000 records. Today, to sell just a few, an album has to be played in discos, it’s a commercial world. I’m an artist and I try to promote my art. With these two albums, I’ve covered both aspects: artistic choices and more commercial ones.”   

Disappointed by all the changes in the record industry, Papa admits that the crisis has dampened his creativity and restricted his freedom. “That’s why, in the World album, which comes out in October in Europe, I took some risks.” Deliberately more toned down than the atmospheric Rumba, on World Papa plays a virtuoso card: in a duet with a Brazilian guitarist, he attempts a guitar/vocal combination. He invites the Guinean Sékouba Bambino and includes backing singers to highlight “the greatest gift God gave him”: his voice.

Papa Wemba Notre Père Rumba (Sina Performance) 2010
For sale in the DRC and specialist shops in Paris and Brussels.

Eglantine  Chabasseur

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper