Let us support Winnie Mandela in the continuing fight against apartheid.Īlthough both were excellent LPs these discs, particularly Esclave, suffered from poor European distribution. The stranger still rules in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Sister Maria Teresa. I know they are in Guadeloupe, Martinique, New Caledonia and the Antilles. They struggled for the cause and freedom of the black man. Slave in Africa with a rope around my neck slave in America on the railroads. I was raised by the whip, bowed beneath the pain inflicted by strangers. What has happened to me, the son of the sun. The song was later re-recorded and appears on his first world music LP (Papa Wemba, Sterns 1988). The first was an LP titled Sika Ya Mungu aimed at the international market, and then the excellent Viva La Musica-backed Esclave LP, on the title track of which Wemba tackles the subjects of slavery and racism, singing of the centuries of repression faced by black people throughout the world. Wemba followed this by undertaking two new musical projects. The picture proved to be an international hit, and won awards at a succession of independent film festivals around the world. 'La Vie est Belle' was also the first feature film made in Zaire since the country's independence from Belgium in 1960. It explores the psyche of Congolese society and, even today, remains both a humorous and semi-factual account of life in one of Africa's biggest capital cities. The film is a lighthearted comedy which shows almost all the evils that afflict Zairian society, together with all the niceties - music, beer, women, drugs, griff, stimulants, sorcery, polygamy - that make Kinshasa such a fatal attraction, to visit with trepidation and to enjoy only with great care.
In 1986 Papa Wemba made his acting debut, starring in the film 'La Vie Est Belle' ('Life is Beautiful') where he plays the lead role of the young singer, Kuru, who arrives in Kinshasa from the countryside and quickly learns how to survive in the big city. I am going to play music for all humanity."ġ985 found Papa Wemba the subject of a one-hour documentary, 'Chef Coutumier de la Rumba Rock' ('Chief of the Rumba Rock Tribe'), made for Belgian TV. I said to myself, I don't want to play music only for Zairians anymore. "Even though I was a star in Zaire, a star in Africa," he told his interviewer, "I decided to slam the door on Zaire. Wemba later explained his rationale for this decision in a 1990 interview. As can be imagined, the song's lyrics promoted the latest couturier costumes of designers from Gianni Versace to Yoji Yamamoto. It also launched the new Viva Sapeur dance 'La Firenze', (a homage to the Italian fashion capital of Europe), where Wemba sings of style and elegance, against a swaggering and lilting electro rumba rhythm.
He recorded his first non Zairian LP, titled Malimba, in Brussels that same year with Belgian avant garde composer Hector Zazu.ġ984 saw Wemba undertake a long period of rest, recuperating in Europe for several months after the previous couple of years' frantic activity. Wemba capitalised on this during another European trip. He later sang the story and thanked all the hospital staff who had cared for him on record, in the folklore hit 'Bukavu Dawa'.īy late 1983 Wemba and Viva were celebrating their new dance called the 'Rumba Rock - Frenchen' and, due to an increasing European interest in African music, Viva found their LPs regularly selling well in Europe for the first time. Wemba spent several weeks in a small village hospital recovering.
Then, while travelling back from a concert in the Bukavu district of Eastern Zaire, Papa Wemba was badly injured in a road accident when the radiator of the vehicle he had been driving burst, covering him with scalding water. The new look Viva were also progressing well and had begun to claw back some success through the addition of a number of new recruits. He was also still enjoying solo success with the previous year's Franco-financed recordings, which had only just been released. From bukavu to tokyo (la vie est belle) 1983-1986Īfter the exodus of musicians, Wemba began regrouping Viva La Musica during early 1983.