Belgium was really strict, religious and conversative during the colonization. Which made Congolese politicians adopting the conversative side. Altough Mobutu putting emancipation for women forward in the first years of his regime. It was seen as bad when women would wear jeans and small skirts and also forbidden for them to do that. Hence why in old pictures of you would see free-women wearing maputa in nightclubs. Its only from April 1990 that it changed. But in the first years when women would walk with small skirts in the streets, people would sometimes follow them and screaming "aboma luambo".
Also with music they were strict. Back then politicians would censor everything that they saw in their eyes that they saw as immoral for the population.That is the reason why it was rare to see artists seeing about sex and when doing that using other words to sing about it indirectly. But the songs then still being seen as explict and most of Congolese people also not really liking it. However with the new generation its start getting normal and all songs only being about that.
An example about Zaire's censorship back in the day. Songs that today are seen as normal would back in the days getting censored. In the early 1970s Franco sung a duet with Youlou Mabiala about infidelity. Singing how a married man and married women were meeting each other to have a secret affair, them agreeing to argue alot with each other on streets to make people not suspect them. The song was seen as immoral and was censored. The same for a song in the same period. About Franco and Sam Mangwana singing about a desprerate woman that would like to marry a dog. I forgot the title of both songs.
The song with Sam Mangwana is Nakobala Mbwa, which was recorded three times, here’s the 2nd version (uncensored; listen chorus at 4:23):
3rd version (censored, re-recorded; dog reference removed, listen 4:12):
lol for once i will revive a very old topic lol i was just listening to some folk music in kikongo and those languages of the bas congo region and it reminded me of this ekokota crying at hotel "ah munu fuidi ehhh mamema munu fuidi",because somebody told him that the white girl was rumoured to have caught aids from one of her many african partners, and werra storming into the room we were in like "diii yo petit robert enfin donc nini koo yo mukolo boye ozo lela na hotel kanga mbanga na yo sinon na kobuka yo machoire oyebi nga bien" then he left and came again like " petittt nayebisi yo zala mobali",the level of relief my man had when he did his test,my friend who went with him said he even did backflip of joy there loool that bad disease was traumatizing people back in the days so hard
I was also surprised when I his name when watching the booklet of Eureka on youtube. I didn't knew that the album was for a big part recorded. I guess that they started recording in Kinshasa after the first canceled Zenith that was planned for July 2001, when the apply for visa's got rejected which created alot of polemic, one bandleader and journalist being cited among the guys who were behind it.
I must relisten Eureka to hear the differences. I never listened properly to Eureka because of not liking the new Zaiko-team, I had only the generique and Ngoma of Bidjana on repeat.
Btw, what was the song where Papy Cocaine's animation refered to the time they spent in jail in Tanzania ? "I am call centro" or something like that.
The song with the jail cri is Vertige (Marcel Bakenda). It’s a good album despite Nyoka Longo barely placed his voice. My fav tracks are Choix, Délestage, Criminel d’amour, Révélation and Vertige.
I guess Djolina played acoustic guitar in Délestage
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