Congo Vibes
Music => Congolese Music => Topic started by: Mfumu Vata on December 21, 2024, 15:40
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Notre Père of Papa Wemba is underrated as album. People often tend to mention the albums before Somo Trop, while Notre Père is also very good. The album put him back on the map, because after Banzokion, which was his last succes. The albums after it, Nkuzi Lele with Viva Tendance and Kaka Yo, weren't really well received. With Notre Père is fame came back and he started to receive contracts for abroad to perform in Ivory Coast, Tchad, Equatorial Guinea, etc. However, I feel that the album wasn't promoted well engough and that people people only know the songs that got released as clips such as 6 Millions ya ba Soucis (which he sung with Nathalie Makoma), Kemafumbe (Tetele Folklore), Sapelogie (coupé décale track) and the remix of Ye Te Oh with French R&B singer Orphélie Winter (I hate the remix version). But not the remaining songs in the album. Also Wemba himself killed the succes of the album by releasing an EP (Trait d'Union) the following year, while other artists at that time would let their album breath and wait 2 or 3 to release another one. Putting himself back on the position, how he used to be before Notre Père. At the same time, activist "les combattants" coming with a hate-campaign against and calling him "Papa Zoba", trying also the bring his scandals of previous years back and claiming that he was the reasons that the Congolese diaspora didn't go forward back in the days and encourage children to live on the street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtjvZw_wNrw
The second part of the rumba reminded me of late Vicky Longomba (who used to be the main star of TP OK Jazz before leaving it to form his own band). It looks like her daughter Asta Paola also sung in the chorus. I wonder that his song Awilo thought when hearing the song. So sad that most people already forget Vicky and mainly talk about Franco, Dr Nico and Tabu Ley and in some cases Johnny Bokelo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYuDKuLLX2A
Nzembo ya ba Yankée. This is a song made in the original image of Viva-fans. The way the rumba-sebene is played remind me a bit of the sebenes I used to hear in tracks of late Rapha Boundezki from Brazzaville.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ7piOmiq8k
Great song about life. Those songs were really rare in the deccenium of the 2010's. The crazy thing is that everybody complained about such songs missing, but nobody paying attention to it when they were released on rare occasion. But sometimes it's also the rythm that counts. Some songs are justs hyptonizing when hyou listen to it others not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9nexCurSF0
This song was made with Nouvelle Ecriture. When listening to the rhythm and also the way the song started, you would think that the song would end with a strong sebene. But at that time, recording sebene-song was like a sin for Congolese artists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Kr_3tIoDk
This song made me think about the songs Baniel Bambo and Nana Akumu made when they joined TPOK Jazz (Les On Dit, Je Vis Avec Les P.D.G., etc.). Papa Wemba really recorded this album in vision of original rumba.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O_OvcTPzyY
Great rumba
Many forgot that there were two versions of Notre Père. One called Notre Père World and the other Notre Père Rumba. Both albums were made to celebrate Wemba's 60th anniversary and his 40 years of music-career. But the release of the rumba album was delayed to 2010 and the world album meant to be released in 2012 with a long world-tour, but because of concertban and him often receving threats it didn't come out anymore and later on Wemba decided to add it on the album Maitre d'Ecole next to the rumba songs, which was orginally meant to show people that he was the true master of rumba and not Fally or Ferre, who were in his opinion either making it modernized or to monotonous. But the album although alot of publicity and promo in press during the release, sadly flopping.
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This album gave me hope back in the day when I thought the genre was truly dead. Most of the songs are great and the acoustic quality was proper at time when people got lazy and recorded everything at Studio N’Diaye
Though the album struggled on wide market - it was celebrated by Viva fan club members that were worried he lost steam.
Mitard is my favorite song of the album - yes the quintessential ba Yankee / sapeur rhumba. I remember watching studio sessions before the album came out and being taken by the long solo at the end. He invited a young French jazz guitarist if I remember correctly.
Thermomètre, Ziguida, and Philosophe Y’a la vie are all great numbers and representation of the classic rhumba he hopd to bring back
Another great album that was slept on from that time was Modogo GFF’s 16eme Arrondissement, which was recorded at the same time as Notre Père. Songs like Indiana Jones, 100% Mode, Amour Perdu, and Forza Italia were in rotation at sapeur events during that era with Notre Père
https://youtu.be/jHFtvZ4U8k0?si=mh8C4XEA3mNe6N1N
https://youtu.be/e8sxdWd66Tk?si=TsoXgbgiWIJQrTZj
https://youtu.be/KPUBz8xgq_4?si=axg4EAdK7S4P2KmX