Out of all the issues DRC faces dude chooses to put attention towards this?? Smh
I don't think this has any use debating on this. Compared to donating a new Viva La Musica and even some other potential reunions is a very very tiny fraction of the amount and work that is needed for raising the quality of everyday life in Congo. Generally in Africa the problem is that there are only raw material industries, and the product making industries (steel and cars from iron, electric parts from gold, phones from coltan, etc.) are abroad. Universities for training doctors for clinics are abroad. And I could mention many other aspects. Financially, this means: training doctors and creating 1 hospital in your country costs proportionally higher than for my country, where there is university of medics, factories for manufacturing healthcare machines and construction industry for manufacturing the hospital. While, at the same time, my country is richer. So in your country, you pay more while you are poorer. And this is true in many African countries. This is a challenge that noone will be able to solve in 1 single presidential term, but I think not even in a decade. To train a group of reliable medic community is the work of a generation, not just 1-2 election time.
I don't know the exact situation in Angola, but I can generally read that apart from a few successes, rural areas are still very much behind, and in spite of the oil incomes, it is still ranking as one of the worst places to grow up as a kid.
You can also argue with the example of Ruanda against me, that in a few decades on Congolese minerals they grew big. But there is something to consider: my country is 93K square metres with 9 million people. Ruanda is only 26K square meters with 13 million people. My country is bigger with a smaller population, that is constantly declining, Ruanda is a much smaller country with a constantly raising population. Burundi Uganda is not better either, nor Kivu. From this you can conclude for how long the upheaval will last in Ruanda. This is a road to nowhere.
And all I mention here are just the situation until recently. Climate change will add on this even more, making a much more complicated situation than the already complicated one before.
So don't blame Tshisekedi too much. Based on these facts I can assure you that Congo and many other countries will have a lot lot longer road ahead than his own term until a satisfying level of living conditions, no matter who controls the country. Compared to the costs of that long road, donating Viva la Musica is just the tiny head of a needle.
I can tell you this is the way that it needs to be done. This is how it worked before 1997 and this is what congolese musicians are used to. And such sponsorships can be very effective in the "folkloric" scenes. I hope he will succeed and that others, even from the private sector will follow his example.
There is a charity group that is running a campaign on Gofundme for helping poor kids in Congo. I know the girl who is the boss personally, this is a legit thing not a fake fundraiser. If you feel like support their campaign, even with just a few dollars:
I remember there was a discussion here or somewhere else about where sebene came from. Apart from who says what, today I found some interesting addition to this topic, wondered if you noticed it already.
By accident Google showed up an LP for me in the search results today, one that I never heard of yet: the title is Kasongo! and it is a record from 1957 from East Congo. I was surprised to see on the back, that next to the songs the genres are also listed, and some songs were marked as: Sebene. I thought WOW I need to listen, firstly because rural recordings are not common from those days, secondly because it even has sebene music, and I was surprised it was already an acknowledged genre at that early age of Congolese music. And very interestingly, the songs sounded as I expected from a sebene or something similar:
One thing that definately doesn't help is the inability to tour abroad, you are right about that.
Koffi's new direction is not a good direction either.
Afrobeat is popular, because electronic music is the most popular today in dance music.
But recently there are only solo artists with a band present in Congolese music, or even without a band, this way the productions are always less elaborated. For example there is Levyson, how can you expect him to release an album like they did in Extra Musica, when he is without the knowledge of Espe Bass, Ramatulaye, Roga Roga and Sonor? Not hard to conclude he won't have that spectrum of instumentalizing what Extra Musica had together. The trend to keep productions low cost and simple instead of spending much money on a band is not helping the productions to gain that success like earlier.
The biggest surprise for me in their history is that Nono animated for them, too. Hoe could that happen? on the album: Kenya Safari he is present on several tracks. How come Nyoka Longo did not mind?
Wasn't it the start of problems that after Familia Dei started out, very soon Bimi Ombale and Ilo Pablo couldn't agree on the directions of the band. And that's why Bimi Quit? If it happened like that, I wonder what exatly they could not agree about. To my mind their biggest hit was Loiseau Rare, but after that they did not make other big songs like that, for a few exceptions that were near. Moreover, they became quite oldschool, and unfortunately in the bad sense.
So from artistic point of view I am not surprised at all that they were on the decline from the beginnings, and in such circumstance you get stressed and stress causes illness.
Also, being able to play well does not neccessarily mean you are good at choosing direction, or have the ability for management. If you don't have the latter too, no matter how good musician you are, you will be unsuccessful.
And stress and unsuccess result in the decline of health long term. Especially in poort countries like Congo.
I did not check the video but I guess the burial happened recently. He got into an accident about a year or half a year ago, and he died in spring or sometimes the beginning of summer. That's why I am surprised it is only in the news now.
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