What made JB Mpiana not finish his tour of UK ? They were meant to return back after a stay of 1 week, but they ended up by getting stuck in Kinshasa again and never returning to UK anymore.


What happened ? Was it due to the combattants that tried to attack them in the UK with knives during their last show? Did a rival do everything to let them get stuck again in Kinshasa ? Or was it just a way to lure his musicians back to Kinshasa like the way Emeneya did in 2003 with his musicians (saying that they would just spent 2 weeks in Kinshas and go to UK) and Adolphe in 2001, by saying after Olympia that they would do Stade des Martyrs and after a 2 weeks return back to do UK, Canada and USA.

Wenge BCBG would be the last Kinshasa based band to have performed in UK, because after it the concertban started in UK and it would only end after 17 years, when Fally performed at OVO Wembley Arena. Different artists tried to plan a show but they were all cancelled by combattants after death threats and physical attacks against musicians and concertpromoters. 




from 2:15:18 min

In this video towards the end, JB and Wenge BCBG are getting interviewed by Djo K at the Ndjili Airport, them returning after touring 3 months in UK and performing at Dock Eiffel (France) and saying that they returned, to let bandmembers see their children return back to school after the holidays and returning back to UK the following week as they had perform in Newcastle. The tour-promoter even talked about them doing Wales and Glasgow (Schotland) in the coming weeks before starting with Canada and USA. Djo K also asked JB why they didn't return for FIKIN and JB responding that they couldn't return because they had to honor contracts and also for other reasons.

You’d think Jb and bcbg would’ve learned from 2002 to not return back to Kinshasa in the middle of a European tour when it still hasn’t finished yet, because the same thing happened last time they ended up getting stuck for years in Kinshasa whilst all their rivals were still going to Europe and gaining more success.

I completely agree.

JB was here just lucky that the impact of Europe-tours started to decline and from 2007 most bands just spending 2 or 3 months in Europe. JB Mpiana himself would return in 2008 to perform in Brussels and Paris. It went even in his favor  with the press at some point  starting to complain about artists spending long times in Europe without doing anything and not coming with something special when doing shows and giving JB's example of not staying long and coming every 2 years instead of every year

If I'm not mistaken, Burkina Faso ran away during that UK tour right? His partitions had to be reworked in Kinshasa by Patou Solo (San Permission in particular).

Yes, he run away. That's also why JB was praising Patou Solo in this concert and throwing shots to Burkina Faso and Pathy Moleso (he ran away in Paris) by saying "bakoki pe kokende".

Oh, Paty Moleso as well? Was the reason similar to Burkina? Richard Mukena and that one dancer ran away as well, which probably explains why they never came back to the UK

I don’t think that them running away would have changed anything regarding their trip to the UK, unless they had submitted new visa applications

According to Pathy himself, he was disappointed by the lack of support from JB after the death of his child. From that moment on, they had a conflict and JB started ignoring him. There may also have been other problems behind the scenes. This ultimately made him decide to stay in Europe. Richard Mukena ran away with Bibi Sucre, who is now his wife.

Burkina Faso was never very clear about his departure. He only stated that JB Mpiana no longer liked him and was openly saying that he did not like people from Bandundu