Coming soon...
In this thread i will explain the various steps of how cultura was created until becoming an important group
from even before his early albums to signature which really established cultura

I can't wait to hear all about it, Wazewka's success was truly a nice surprise!

Can’t wait

THE GENESIS OF CULTURA PAYS VIE

prior to the birth of his singing career let alone the birth of his group felix wazekwa will like everyone knows a writer for koffi olomide and papa wemba but also the real author of duc herode's album aswell as collabs with soukouss stars
after his brilliant collaboration with papa wemba on foridoles,papa wemba will start suggesting him to record his own album to which felix does not feel ready yet being a full time bank accountant at that moment
during the holidays of 1994 to 1995 he returns to kinshasa he'll start pondering the idea of releasing his own album as he gets to interpret some of his foridoles songs with a group of his hometown matete with young guys like nono fudji,jc parara and co
once he is back in europe,he starts selecting between his songs what he'd save for a personal project and what he'd give to other artists and during his second collaboration with papa wemba,he is again told about recording his own album and papa wemba promises to him that he'll sing even just a song to kickstart his singing career
he'll then record in europe his first album tetragramme yhwh(alluding to God,Yehowah) with the help of various experienced artists and also featuring madilu aswell under direction of maika munan and didier milla
during his return that year to kinshasa to present posters of his album he will meet vicky kibambi later known as nasdaq and guylain essamba who have been spotted by his friends and who are willing to even just do playbacks with him,he'll give them some money to do some tv promotion for him when he is back to europe
the year of 1996 will mark a major step forward starting to have a band as in the area of matete noise is starting to rise about a guy from their area who has provided wemba and koffi major hits and who is starting career so  a lot of young men start to be interested seeing their dreams to join wenge musica or quartier latin almost impossible
once in europe he is working on his second album pauvres mais already and starts being more and more convinced about having a band even just for playbacks or small concerts in the area,and before assembling a band he'll says to himself that the first step is to have his own instruments before thinking about recruiting people
with the money he's saved he buys and frets instruments from europe to kinshasa via congolese agencies but he is scammed(and years later he'll discover that those instruments were given to another group)
it is a hard blow for him as he had saved money the whole year to fund it but comforted by the experienced musicians he works with on the second album he does not give up
he returns to kin a first time to see how a first group of people are starting to be gathered by his guys,and finds there his friend vavason who he used to sing with in his group kin verso in the 80's and when he presents album pauvres mais he starts seeing that he could really do something in music as his album is awarded revelation of the year by the musical experts 
with the help of beniko popolipo,some tests are done when wazekwa is back in europe and several young guys are recruited and one of the recruited guys pitshou buela often talks about his friends of a group info musica in ndjili who he wants to bring in to strengthen the group
among the recruited guys there is also josé nzita who later on will have a gospel career,the group with no name,no form,no hierarchy yet will be rehearsing in the family house of the wazekwa's in matete but when he comes back again he makes two important decisions,first about the instruments in order to be sure that the previous problem does not happen again he decides he'll take those instruments to kin himself one by one(asmuch as he can take per trip) until the whole set is complete
and the second major decision he'll make which will be crucial in shaping his group is to move the rehearsals from family house to a house he'll be renting and he goes again to europe for a couple of radio interviews and decides to fully resign from his job and focus on music
the decision to move to the new house will be quickly followed by another big decision which will materialised after the recruitment is considered as shaped and good enough to kickstart the group project
in fact,with the arrivals of guys like bassists papy tshisekedi,guitarist pascal mavita,singers stanford eyilo,josé senga and co wazekwa's guys who are monitoring tests in his absence see the group as good enough but lacking a bit on the dance side since we are then entering the years of ndombolo
pitshou buela then invites again his friends from info musica to join which also attracts interest of other ndjili talents,and in space of a couple of weeks and months,the likes of eric milondo later known as gesac,papy "louange",bijou depaulga,hono kapanga but one arrival in particular will catch wazekwa's attention
when he lands back in kin he is informed of a very promising singer who came from info musica that he should listen to,that singer is no other than joslain dienayami aka petit manda as he sang like manda chante,and from the moment he listens  to him he turns and wispers to his close friend and cousin raoul lamba "this is the guy who will take over from my group when i die",not even knowing his name yet
 the arrival of joss is followed by the decision to create what will become a 2 years lockdown at that house to build chemistry in the group,in that period guylain essamba is not there as his family refuses him doing music and has forced him to finish university first before having a chance and sometimes when he comes in weekends he is not given a good welcome by those who were recruited in his absence,having often to call wazekwa from europe to intervene
it is then time to structure the group,and first ever chef d'orchestre will be papy tshisekedi the bassist,but he does not last too long in the group and wazekwa decides to create a whole hierarchy which will make way for the conventional 3 4 5 main posts of the hierarchy in congolese groups but also some rather funny and original ones aswell
in fact apart from the new chef d'orchestre joss diena who is picked based on votes and french and english dictation results,chef of discipline late josé senga"yaya" and vicky nasdaq,artistic direction of bijou depaulga and hono kapanga,and the most original roles shared by joss and vicky which consisted in controling the looks of musicians never untucked shirts never basketball shoes,making sure each musician completed 100 push ups everyday,is not hiding weed at the house...
Of course those guys manage to breach the rules from outside most of the time,smoking when they are out to look for money with donors or to visit friends and family and also many of them seeing sorcerers to battle out being favorites
as the group is starting to perform in some halls of kinshasa there is debate for a definitive group name,some want matete musica,some suggest that he revives kin verso his former group of the 80's,i personally suggest nova stars,one of the guys suggests to take their name of info musica and turn it into info musica international,then while waking around with a paper where he was writing names wazekwa says cultura musica but he is not satisfied as he wants something unique
the day after he wakes up and comes at the back where the guys rehearse and he says he found the name,cultura pays vie,la culture africaine dans un pays qui vit(african culture in a dynamic country
but also he reveals that in dreams he saw that cultura sounds like qui le tuera in french(who will kill him/it) and that they could use it as motivation to "kill the myth" of big 4 which was starting with the wenge split koffi and papa wemba
the album they were rehearsing they will not get opportunity to record it as visas were denied so it will be recorded with experienced musicians of europe and will start putting the name of wazekwa on the african map with success on panafrican radio africa Number 1
the musicians start to go more and more on tv to promote their new album and group,and one event will boost their determination as they meet maison mere musicians who belittle them after interviews
from that moment the musicians will intensify their work to prove a point,taking their rehearsals to up to 16 hours  a day with the objective to find a way to really burst into the big stage
in the transition of 1999 2000 they will be rehearsing songs which will end up serving on two projects,sponsor which will be recorded in kinshasa by the group which is the first full record of the band under the label of JPS productions which wazekwa joined thanks to the good success abroad of bonjour monsieur
in the meantime the group will have its first concert abroad as they are invited to new year event of equatorial guinea and to his surprise joss diena misses out of the list as behind the scenes the musicians took it spiritual again to make it on the 13 people list gone to that concert and briefly joins didier masela's wenge4X4 and returns once they are back
the group starts reaching another dimension starting to perform more and more in kinshasa even in popular halls like cinemax and while they keep rehearsing the remaining songs for future album they end up getting visas for france to record album
in order to really stand out from other congolese musicians,wazekwa decides that they should do all their best to make a full generique of unused animation of other groups since in that era it was possible for every group to use the same animations despite rivalry
and atalaku papy louange spots in the streets an animation male mambwa being made popular by comedian esobe and proposes it to the "comitee of censorship" of the group which validates every vocal and animation(joss,vicky,cheri b)
the group goes to france leaving some musicians like vavason behind as the promoter put some members of his family on list without the musicians knowing
once there the group will record album 4 times but the producer and wazekwa himself are not satisfied with the sound and mixing and the 4th time files are even lost so jps who is getting impatient after paying studio sessions says with a lot of anger okay i give you two more weeks if its not good by then i rip off the contract and i send you back to congo
during two days off they will rehearse in the afternoon and pray in the morning and when its time for the recording sessions to restart they will record the album live for 11 days out of the 14 and the result is impressive
and by the time the group returns to kin the generiques especially are catching big success going along with the fact esobe's theaters at that time are also having success with that dance male mambwa
wazekwa stays in europe emotionally exhausted by the difficult recording process and wondering if those efforts will pay off he'll be getting echo from kin that album is going very well but he first thinks its just hype from his friends and the musicians who are just happy to be seen on tv and boasting a bit in their areas,he'll take it seriously when he comes across jb mpiana who was buying a new bass guitar somewhere who tells him "why are you wasting your time here your album is doing great in kinshasa,seize the opportunity and perform while its still hot"
and few days after he meets other musicians from his early session albums who tell him the same thing and he returns to kin with a new set of instruments as he makes some extra money with his pair of instruments he had being hired by other groups so as he was bound to perform more often he needed to have anothe pair in case
meanwhile,a young guy who used to be at the "pays vie" house dies,it will be obviously interpreted as sacrifice for success of album and lead to a very hostile week for the group until they even left there and started renting houses or for some living with wazekwa at the first house he had bought and was building
but in reality the young man was suffering from epilepsy and found himself having seizure somewhere where there was a lot of sand so as he collapsed a lot of sand entered his ears and nose and cause major damage
there starts the era of cultura pays vie rising into becoming one of the strongest outsiders to the leaders of the game starting to participate to major events like kora awards like them for example

i will end this with a personal confidence from himself,when the group started there was only one person,his elder brother from the area,martino kavuala having a car among himself the group and his friends,a couple of years after he bought a mazda and in the long run his musicians bought many cars
he never accepted his staff's idea to also buy expensive cars each new album like some of his colleagues do as he is not specially impressed by cars but on insistence of his children he bought last year a rolls royce which he insists on all whats dear to him that he will never show to people let alone show up with him

guys topic updated

You can feel the power they had in Signature. It's an excellent album. Jean Pierre Saah  had to do the same thing with "Yo Nani?". The album is mwaa, apart the two generiques, kito epula and complexe.

Felix Wazekwa often told a story in interviews during the second Koffi-Wazekwa war that he became even more closer to Joss Diena, the moment all musicians ran away during a Europe-trip. He said that, he and Jos Diena were lonely in the cold, both crying and hugging each other. This made me wonder which trip it was. Because sometimes bandleaders like to exagarate, for example when there are splits and them often saying that all musicians which is never the case. Was it the one of Signature ?

yes the trip of signature,he returned only with joss as singer gesac and louange returned one week later,there was only joss bijou depaulga hono and the drummer doudou tcheke   so that was more than half of the band who remained,some said that their family told them to stay because wazekwa may never come back again with them in europe

Can’t wait

topic posted

yes the trip of signature,he returned only with joss as singer gesac and louange returned one week later,there was only joss bijou depaulga hono and the drummer doudou tcheke   so that was more than half of the band who remained,some said that their family told them to stay because wazekwa may never come back again with them in europe

I think Wazekwa would of had more respect if he followed the solo album then group album format like his peers do in Wenge and QL. He's not a strong singer, but is a good songwriter and has an ear for talent (Joss Diena, Tripason, Jose Nzita).

The rhumbas people remember often have his singers put more vocals, like Kito Epula and Texto. When he sings the ones by himself, he has that annoying tenor because he can't hit those high notes like Triapson or Joss

Good work archos. Deep down Wemba was a good man.

Good work archos. Deep down Wemba was a good man.

Lol no he wasn't

i think he means in the way of encourageing wazekwa to start a career instead of remaining forever in the shadow

Good work archos. Deep down Wemba was a good man.

Lol no he wasn't

He probably wasn't the best to work for (not paying musicians and sex scandals) but he seemed like a very down to earth  person.

Good work archos. Deep down Wemba was a good man.

Lol no he wasn't

He probably wasn't the best to work for (not paying musicians and sex scandals) but he seemed like a very down to earth  person.

Lol nearly something with 90% of men so I won't bother about.

Good work archos. Deep down Wemba was a good man.

Lol no he wasn't

Ndeko no single artist has ever encouraged their main song writers to go solo in the history of Congolese music