Wake up tour... wouldve been a really good boost for congolese music

Why did Wenge El Paris flop so hard in the early 2000s? We’re they just not as good as the other bands? That’s what I would think

They haven’t been in Europe for 7 years which made them being deconnected from people living over there while in Kinshasa they had big succes. They hadn’t also someone to promote them in Europe since that all their people moved to other bands (viva La Musica, Wenge 4x4, Quartier Latin, etc.).

Also when your first concert flops in Europe it’s difficult to make from the rest of a succes.

Promoting the music is a big one. Congolese failed to market themselves in the US and allowed other countries to essentially take over. A lot of Congolese albums failed on paper due to marketing.

This, except for Fally Congolese leaders are terrible at marketing it is just fans caring about the leader/band supporting them, as I have said before Kylian Mbappe said "JB Mpiana Papa Cheri Tcheck" on Snapchat but JB just said Kylian Mbappe le footballer internazionali on a song who wasn't even the generique but lolee the 20th Sebene while an Artist with Marketing skills would have asked for Mbappe to partecipate on the video and share the so g on his social pofiles and with his teammates, imagine if that happened to Fally, Fally made our head so big with how he have performed with Gims, Gims here Gims that but JB no. And that's the synthesi of Comgolese music marketing just believing you are superiore to others and that the song will market itself, like when Seguin said in an interview " Man there are a lot of artist who keep making albums but even if JB is not making one he is still the number one " and things like that and I was like... what? Then don't get mad when peoole start to take Robinio more seriously then JB

That makes sense. We are in a social media era where it would easily get viewers and listeners if promotions were good. Congolese need to realize even hip hop in the US needs marketing. No song markets itself like that.

In my opinion the biggest two missed opportunities are Mirage and Afandes careers because if they had full careers the state of congolese music right now would look so different

i am tempted to say also celeo's europe tour of 2010 which got cancelled because of visa issues and influence of other artists, he had festivals and concerts lined up,and he had a strong managerial team for that era around him,its pretty much him and fally who were ahead of the game with internet and that tour if it was succesful was about to open for him a contract opportunity with a producer who was waiting to see,and as all collapsed the management staff went to another group and everything as we know has never been the same

I think that the mistakes and missed opportunities of the last 15 years are worse than any other because it’s led to the genre being the weakest era of Congolese music Of all time

Oh also Djouna Mumbafu solo album... how this album didn't gave success? It is a masterpiece but I rarely hear people talking about it

It was actually a succes. Djuna toured several african countries with this album (Zimbabwe, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, etc.). He was also nominated for the Kora Awards 2004. The album gave former Pepe Kallé some hope. But Djuna went sadly silent after it. Djhuna had a good promotion team behind him for Tonerre de Brest and the then new Trace TV helped him by recording the videoclips of the album. Djuna had normally to follow up project with a new album in 2005, but I don't know what happend.

Zaïko Langa Langa - Contract signing with Sony CBS, Zénith (1988); Bercy (2002)

Zaïko Langa Langa - Contract signing with Sony CBS, Zénith (1988); Bercy (2002)

Zaiko playing at Bercy?? Lol come on man that would’ve been a waste of a hall did you not see their performance at zenith, it was really boring and is arguably the worse zenith of all time

Zaïko Langa Langa - Contract signing with Sony CBS, Zénith (1988); Bercy (2002)

That was definitely a missed opportunity along with the Zenith.

They had Africa & the French West Indies in their hands and were fighting the legendary band Kassav in nightclubs. I wonder if they wouldn't lose their fans in Kinshasa and Zaire by doing commerical music. Or if Sony BMG would allow Nyoka Longo, Bimi Ombale and Dindo Yogo to do solo-projects outside the contract without the name "Zaiko", just to stay in touch with the people in Kinshasa. Doing commercial music was dangerous for Congolese artists. Look what it did to King Kester Emeneya. Papa Wemba was lucky because he was leaning on Stino & Reddy and years later also doing rumba-albums next to it.

Zaiko itself ended up by doing world-music with the album "Backline Lesson One" in 1997 but it was not a big succes. Also it was not the same Zaiko like the 1980s which was a dream-team. The Zaiko of mid-90s started to be centered around Nyoka Longo. Him being put big in album-covers. Today many foreign people think that Nyoka Longo's name is Zaiko. I saw a former Zaiko-fanatic being mad that when BOZAR made a poster for Zaiko's 50th anniversary in Brussels, Nyoka Longo being painted and him saying that it was a disrespect towards Mbuta Matima, Zamuangana, Bimi Ombale, Meridjo Belobi, Oncle Bapius, Likinga, Dindo Yogo, etc. who all contributed to Zaiko's succes.

For me the biggest missed opportunity is that Extra Musica left out the song: Karen Amour from the Trop Cest Trop album, only releasing it on the DVD as clip.