Category: Congo (Democratic Republic)

Batila: Tatamana

February 23, 2022

At the junction of multiple roads you often see signs pointing in many directions, and Batila’s debut solo album is a crossroads of sorts. Son of Congolese and Angolan parents, he was raised in Germany and England and now lives in Berlin, but his destination is more about identity—encompassing freedom, cultural integrity and Black love—than a place on the map. His signs are esoteric but he invites us in: Batila, his name, is Kikongo for “one who … More Batila: Tatamana

Syssi Mananga: Mopepe Mama

December 23, 2021

The title track of Syssi Mananga’s captivating second album is an autobiographical ballad of freedom and motherhood, one concept pulling toward exploration, the other toward roots. Mopepe means “wind” in Lingala and the singer-songwriter is an amalgam of the boundaries she traverses as easily as the breeze and lineages she nourishes within. Daughter of a Congolese mother and Belgian father … More Syssi Mananga: Mopepe Mama

Céline Banza: Praefatio

June 23, 2021

Céline Banza’s voice is so utterly captivating it seems to eliminate emotional distance, merging melancholy with hope, grievance with comfort, artist with audience. On her debut album the Congolese singer-songwriter tells stories of love, separation and chauvinism—plus childhood innocence lost and miraculously recovered. Time has been as thin as space in her 24 years: Born in Kinshasa in 1997, she composed songs before age seven and her father … More Céline Banza: Praefatio

Wuta Mayi: La Face Cachée

January 27, 2020

Just as the Congo (Kinshasa) inhabits Africa’s center, Gaspard Wuta Mayi is central to the nation’s musical saga. The rumba singer-songwriter is a veteran of a series of seminal ensembles, including Orchestre Bamboula, which represented the Congo at the landmark 1969 Pan-African Culture Festival in Algiers; TPOK Jazz, the leading Congolese band from the 60s to the 80s; the Paris-based Quatre Étoiles, which surfed the soukous wave … More Wuta Mayi: La Face Cachée

Toto Bona Lokua: Bondeko

March 27, 2018

Bondeko, the work of three prodigiously gifted artists who mix voices and compositions to produce a dreamy, multi-layered sound, is a transcendent microcosm of the musical diversity of Africa and its Diaspora. The singer-songwriters—Gérald Toto (Paris-born guitarist/musical director with roots in Martinique), Richard Bona (Cameroonian bassist, who commutes between Paris and New York) and Lokua Kanza (Congolese guitarist based in Paris)—first … More Toto Bona Lokua: Bondeko