Someone name the instrumentalists and the second atalaku, please. I can only name Didier Masela.

Drums: Titina Al Capone
Percussion: Don Pierrot Mbonda
Rhythm: Djolina Mandudila
Lead: Alain Mwepu (the guy in orange)
Mi-Solo: Maitre Fi-Carré


Didier Masela didn’t look happy, the way Alain Mwepu had difficulties to interpret Makaba’s lines of Kaskin

The interesting is that I like how Mwepu interpreted Kaskin. The sound can be different in live situations and in the studio. Sometimes what sounds good in the studio by the same player sounds bad live. And you need to adopt. To be honest, I think this is one of the best sounding live Kaskin that I heard. The guitar is loud enough, filling up the space nicely, and the essence of the Kaskin solo is there. I prefer this than someone interpreting the solo in a way that he is adding lots of unneccessary new segments that are not even in the original, and forget about what is essential. All in all, to summarize: there are situations in music and sound engineering when less is more.

It was understandable if it was an cover band like "The Best","Kossa-Kossa", "etc. or a street-band from Kasa-Vubu, Bandal, Matonge, Yolo, Ngiri-Ngiri or N'djili doing the first part . But Wenge Musica 4x4 was a professional band and already been voted as "Champion du Zaire".

Normally it should be a disgrace, if you look how high the competition in our music was at that time. Back at that time, soloists were required to play tracks exactly or almost like the tracks on the album, in the case if the main guitarist would not show up. Also they prepared Kin e Bouge in Kinshasa before going to Europe and all tracks already been played in concerts before they came out. It's a bit strange to see how Alain Mpewu played Kaskin and Fi-Carre having a bit problems in the same event when playing lead on Kin E Bouge. The sound had always been a problem during shows of Tele Zaire, but guitare partitions were always played well.

This is just a matter of taste how you look at it. Personally I am glad this recording survived, for me it is interesting to hear this interpretation that Mwepu played. One can get an insight into how things went back then, how different the approaches were to these songs compared to approaches nowdays. I don't feel at all listening to this that Wenge would have shrunk in my eyes, but rather the opposite: I admire them more now. We can debate on whether Mwepu played it in a childish way or not, but one thing is sure, he played it with a sound where it couldn't go wrong and we can have a decent live recording of Kaskin now at least. The image would be complete if we could compare it to Makaba, but personally I do not know any live recordings from those early years where his guitar could be properly heard.

From 18:56 min Kaskin live at Aquaboulevard in Paris (1995)



From 51:30 Kaskin live in Kinshasa at Cine Palladium (1993)

Well, believe it or not if I would have been offered 1 free ticket in those days to hear Kaskin I would have chosen to go to hear Mwepu. I know he had strange moments on that concert and totally ruined Kin É Bougé for example with his strange approach, but by surprise he could catch up on Kaskin in the end. Alain is going into the forest too much for me. There is another recording where he plays Djino Kota, that is fully proper, but on these versions of Kaskin he is somewhere out in the jungle I think. Why complicating it that much when he played it totally properly on the album?