Live Report: Papa Wemba and Viva la Musica

The Koffi Olomide show had been an indoor Monday evening event, part of the Lincoln Center Africa Out Loud series. Papa Wemba’s New York show was planned as part of a series of free outdoor performances in the plaza immediately in front of the Lincoln Center. These outdoor "Midsummer Night Swing" shows included a fenced off area just in front of the stage with a wooden dance floor where dance classes were held prior to the show. Fans could either watch free of charge from a slight distance or pay $12 to enter the enclosure and take part in the dance class and enjoy the show in close proximity. I was extremely excited about the possibilities for the performance scheduled for Friday 27 July because it meant that the US debut of Viva la Musica would be a dance event in an outdoor setting. Being on a Friday, with no admission fee, the likelihood was that a large audience would get to see for the first time what the real music of Papa Wemba was all about, rather than his commercial Molokaï International presentation.

We had been in touch with European contacts in the days preceding the arrival of Viva la Musica in the US and we had been told that everything was in order. I’d received details of the proposed lineup and was confident that Wemba had chosen a strong team that would be able to present Congolese music in its best possible light. On the morning of the concert I was devastated to learn that the Lincoln Center performance had been scrubbed due to visa problems. I discovered that there had been a problem at the visa office in Paris where the musicians’ passports had been mislaid causing a delay. It all sounded very suspicious, but these catastrophes are common-place with African musicians and in particular Congolese bands. Whether the visa excuse was a smoke-screen for a financial problem, and exactly whose fault it was, is now irrelevant. The important fact is that Papa Wemba missed the golden opportunity to follow Koffi in scoring a major triumph for real Congo music in front of the prestigious Lincoln Center audience and the New York newspaper writers and photographers.

I was assured by the local promoter that the problem would be resolved quickly and the band would arrive the following day, Saturday, thereby allowing the rest of the tour to take place. Confirmation was received on Saturday afternoon that the musicians had arrived and would proceed to Washington DC to perform that night, returning to New York City on Sunday to play their scheduled performance at S.O.B.s. club. I had been in the US for three weeks now covering several musical performances, broadcasting on the radio, and generally having fun. Essentially, though, my trip was to cover the New York City Olomide show and the Wemba shows and so I was pretty disappointed that "big-brother" Wemba had figuratively "blown-it" compared to "little-brother" Olomide’s resounding victory. By missing the Friday night Lincoln Center showcase Wemba had lost face and would be unlikely to be ever re-booked by that particular venue. We had also done a lot of publicity for the show and many friends had joined us in New York specifically to witness the US debut of Viva la Musica. If I was disappointed having traveled from Europe, my friend and colleague Maestro Araï, the Japanese Congolese music authority, on his first trip to the US, must have been absolutely heart-broken to have voyaged so far across the world to find the show cancelled. 

On the afternoon of Sunday 29 July Araï and I arrived at the New York club S.O.B.s in the west end of Greenwich Village. S.O.B.s is a reasonably comfortable little club that holds about 300 and has a good sound system and small, but adequate, stage. At about 5.30pm the musicians arrived and I was surprised to note that several changes had taken place from the original proposed lineup. It was a stripped down Viva la Musica comprising four vocalists and five musicians that had managed to get visas. In Europe I’m used to seeing performances by Papa Wemba that rotate in excess of 30 musicians during the course of a performance. I remember one fabulous show in Bruxelles a decade ago where I ticked off a list of 15 Viva vocalists, all official members of the group. The prospect of Wemba performing this tour with a nine piece orchestra appealed to me greatly because it would allow him to tighten up the presentation and perform a shorter than normal "hard-edge" Viva la Musica show. Travelling around the US to play to non-Congolese audiences would not be practical if Wemba attempted the usual five hour performance. Like Olomide the previous week it would be necessary to reduce the length of the show and also perhaps cut down the song length (customary 25 minute sebenes might not go down too well with an unaccustomed audience).

Araï and I greeted Papa Wemba and our old friends from Viva. Wemba knew in advance that we would be there for his show, and the band were pleased to have a couple of familiar faces with them for their New York debut. Papa Wemba disappeared to his hotel and allowed the musicians to do the sound-check. My only concern about the band was that there was only one guitarist. It had been originally proposed that Viva soloist Alexis Azulino and veteran accompanist Sec Bidens would be augmented by the versatile roving Paris based musician Caen Madoka. In the end Yves Demukusse, another Viva regular of the last decade was the sole guitarist to arrive.

Having completed the sound-check the musicians retired to the hotel and Araï and I waited for the arrival of the rest of the AfricaSounds posse and various other friends that we had persuaded to come down for the show. By 9pm the club was pretty crowded and some of the audience were becoming anxious that the band were not going to show up again. I reassured them that the musicians would arrive soon. Eventually Papa Wemba arrived alone and I directed him down to the dressing rooms while I looked out for the rest of the band. There was nobody to look after Wemba so I went down to the dressing rooms to ensure that he had everything he needed. The band had apparently set off from the hotel before him but since they were staying at the north end of Manhattan I reassured him that they had probably taken a slower route to downtown. I made some coffee and for about thirty minutes "Bokul" (Wemba) and I relaxed and chatted. I gave him a huge pile of pictures taken at four different shows last year and he suggested I come over for this year’s New Year’s Eve show at the Paris Bercy arena where he intends performing with all of his musicians from both Nouvelle Ecriture and Viva la Musica Cour des Grands. We talked about Koffi’s show the week before and he was surprised when I told him that Koffi’s entourage numbered 27. "Where has the money come from?" he asked. We agreed that it wasn’t really practical to tour America with such a big band, but Wemba graciously acknowledged that Koffi had done well to break into the US market. I sympathized with Wemba over the lost opportunity at the Lincoln Center, but he was philosophical about it.

While we were talking the musicians had arrived and set themselves up on stage. When I heard them commence playing I excused myself, wished Bokul good luck, and left him alone in peace for the last twenty minutes prior to his arrival on stage. Upstairs the band had torn into the opening song with incredible gusto. Lidjo, Cele and Djo-Djo were dancing in sequence and the audience were pushed up hard against the stage. I eased myself through the crowd to the edge of the stage just in front of my diminutive guitarist friend "Demukusse-Demoukouata". He beamed a smile down at me and I pushed a can of beer towards him. He was clearly thrilled to have a new audience, mostly non-Congolese, who were already appreciating the Viva sound. A couple of friends tapped me on the shoulder and immediately said "Jesus! Now we understand what you’ve been talking about all these years. This band are incredible!" I smiled back smugly. "Yeah I know! Wait until they get warmed up!" Before too long Papa Wemba came onto the stage wearing his off-white Masatomo jacket, one of his favorites. The audience became even more animated and Wemba proceeded to thrill them with a series of old and new songs. He always performs with confidence and professionalism and like Koffi Olomide he knows how to milk the audience. Unlike Olomide he has not mastered any English so his little speeches between songs were in French and Lingala. The audience seemed to appreciate his warmth even if some of them didn’t understand his words. What went down particularly well was his little tribute to all the mothers of the world, something he does in every show. 

Viva la Musica gave the SOB’s audience great value for money, playing for approximately three hours. They broke up the musical performance nicely by inviting individuals out of the audience to come up on stage and demonstrate the outrageous Ivoirian Mapouka dance. It seemed like each person who got up came from a different African country and had their own variation, some sexy, some humorous. The musicians just cracked-up laughing as the eager crowd tried to out-do each other in the hip-rotation department. But it was Wemba and Viva’s show that was the main attraction and their performance left no-one in the audience un-moved.

My trip to New York and Boston during July 2001 was made all the more enjoyable by the friends old and new that looked after me. My sincere thanks go to all of them.