For lack of a better title I chose to have the above title to express my thoughts .

The translation of Brigade's interview with Papy on his thoughts about Ingeta...."WMM played their generique for long before releasing" prompted me doing this piece.

One.....
For some time I have notice a change in the way Congolese bands are releasing albums. Initially you could know songs and dances to an album before release. Now you are hit with an album that you just heard was in the works. Call me "old school" but I used to boast to my pals that unlike the western artist who keep their album a secret until the official release date that Congolese artist are so good they are not afraid to show their material before release of their albums. My take is that the new age style is using secretiveness to rump up sales and interest .

Two.....
Why short generiques with many atalakus? I prefer long generique ( call me old school again). Again long generiques equals long dances. This gives atalakus and soloists amble space to showcase.

Three...
Fikin used to be prestigious and you played to promote your new releases. Now well many just..

Four....
New albums had specific name a of a dance..now you just  release an album with no dance.

Lastly five....
Musicians of a band can now feature in another band  for pay. This to me dilutes the uniqueness of a band .

So I ask is this the NEW AGE OF CONGOLESE MUSIC?

I believe so I think we have to accept and update ourselves the new style I even though I ain't the biggest fan of it but lets see what it brings to the table, one of thing I will say is don't want any western African inputs in our music it just does not work unless it is like a song (for example a zouk song). 

A bit of a surprise is better, remember how people reacted when JB Mpiana released Quel est ton probleme, we had not heard any songs prior to its release, we heard a few short extracts of the generique but when the album came, the generique was so powerful and different from what BCBG had ever done before. The rhumba songs too were surprising and it was the first time JB had made the young musicians mix with older ones, we never expected that either but now everything is predictable.

Not all long generiques are bad, Quel est ton probleme is one example of a good long sebene and another perfect one is Sous Sol because the atalukus combined well each with a different message but on Ingeta,we were given long boring repetitive animation. The Execution of the main Generique décolage on Ingeta was good and the way Bercy the ataluku arranged the animation was good but the lyrical content was absolute crap, there was no message in the animation and it's the same stuff he did from when he auditioned, he didn't add anything new so people got tired of it all after a few days of the album coming out.

I think Brigade is right. Sometimes less is more and more is less. In this case, i heard Bercy's animations so many times at zamba repetitions and shows that when I heard the studio version, it didn't hold a punch. Brigade is one of the few that can actually pull off an animation in repetition and still have a lot substance in studio versions. Even he is careful about not using all his animations. I guess it depends on the versatility and creativity of the atalaku.

Also, shorter generiques are probably the best way to conquer international markets. Most radio stations won't play anything longer than five minutes. While us Africans could usually listen to a fifteen minute songs, the rest of the world probably won't.

So yes, Congolese music is going through a renovation.

I have no problem with five minute generiques, and I prefer for them to only play like a 1-2 min of a new generique and the same with a rhumba.

I love the new trend....especially short generiques and rumba....we don't need long ass meaningless generiques *cough...decolage *

I love the new trend....especially short generiques and rumba....we don't need long ass meaningless generiques *cough...decolage *