Funny to see Etats Unis animating for Extra Musica International and them then dancing Helicopter. The public coming from DR Congo must have been thinking "why are those liya's always copying are music and dances" (not knowing that Extra Musica International actually created the helicopter-dance). The journalist called them l'orchestre de demain, but they dissapeard quickly after releasing Merci the same year.
Papa Wemba's show at Olympia de Bruno Coquatrix was excellent. I really liked the intro of the fioti fioti's along with the traditional Bateke drummers. Also the way he splitted his show in two parts, one with his worldmusic band Molokai and the other with Nouvelle Ecriture and some Cour des Grand-musicians (Demukuse, Ikonola,..). But on the other part I felt that the event was not really natural. That he just performed because of his staff, his younger brothers JB Mpiana and Koffi Olomide having already performed there and finally taking his chance because performing there became easy (just self producing the event). Not that a big concertpromoter invited him like the Afrophonies event at Zenith de Paris of 1999 (I forgot the name of the French woman who was very influent in France) or his 50th birthday at the big Forest National of Brussels who were heavily promoted on French and Diaspora-media. Btw it was also one of the last shows of his 2000 Euro-tour with Nouvelle Ecriture.
I really wonder how it would have been if Papa Wemba performed at Olympia in 1996 when he was with Peter Gabriel's label and n1 with his Pole Position-album. It would have been a big buzz because of then being really known in France because of his many tv-roundups for la Sape and world music and being then the 3th Congolese artist to perform there.
