Hello everybody, Babe(b)logue goes on holiday, so this will be the last post for a while. See you soon, and stick around! Radu. P.S. As far as I know, this somewhat mysterious CD collects two beautiful Pela Simba’s albums originally published during the first half of the 80’s, Pela Simba and Sambara. If you discover more info, please leave a comment here. Cheers! «Pela Simba,

«Marabi is the independant label created in 2002 by Christian Mousset, director of the Festival Musiques Métisses d'Angoulême in France.The festival, place of exchange and discovery, is widely opened to urban popular musics from the African Continent, Indian Ocean, the Caribbeans, America. Marabi is mainly a discographic extension of this event. On the same artistic line, the label puts upcoming

«Recorded in a trio with bass-guitarist Etienne Mbappe and drummer Francis Lassus, Ray Lema’s new album, Paradox, is an eclectic mix of language and genre. It is hardly surprising to find such diversity from a musician who has always been frustrated by pigeonholes.RFI Musique: Let’s talk about a word that you seem fond of, “paradox”, since it is the title you gave your album.Ray Lema: We live in

Pascal Lokua Kanza was born in Zaire, the first of eight children. After his father died tragically while captaining a ship at sea, Kanza helped provide for his family by taking part-time jobs while he was still in school. Setting aside a few hours each day to teach himself guitar, he soon began playing with friends in local bands. As he got older, his approach to music grew more serious. After

«Blues? That’s American Deep South stuff, right? Well, not only. The quest for “authenticity” in music has taken so many spurious turns in recent years that it has perhaps managed to overlook the overarching patterns. It’s these patterns that have made up the blues, that inimitable form of misery set to music that’s as vibrant today as ever. It has a long history – musicologists have traced the

Hello everybody! I’m leaving for a brief holiday, but I’m not gonna leave you thirsty for music, ‘cause this is a real gem, which I am sure will be in heavy rotation in your mp3 player for the whole summer! So, have fun with the African Party! See ya soon, Radu «In the nineteen-seventies, many quality recordings of classic Congolese bands were issued in the AFRICAN 360 series,

«Hailed throughout Africa as "le Dieu de la Guitare," Nicolas Kasanda was born of Baluba parentage on 7 July 1939 in Mikalayi in the Kasai province of the then Belgian Congo. His father played accordion. In 1950, aged 11, Nico was introduced to Opika Studios by his cousin Tino Baroza and older brother Mwamba Déchaud who were session musicians there. At 14, he joined Joseph Kabaselle's African

«Most of the great Afropop styles have grown out of a joining of urban and rural ideas, of indigenous roots and foreign borrowings. The story of Congolese pop music provides a complex and powerful example. By the closing years of the Belgian Congo, the city of Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) was a place where city boys plucked out highlife songs on box guitars, phonographs and radios played the

«Dopo il mercato centrale di Kasavubu, Matongé è il cuore pulsante di Kinshasa, città di 4 milioni di abitanti [nel 1978] suddivisi in 400 etnie, capitale di un paese grande quattro volte l’Italia che ha conosciuto grandi sconvolgimenti sociali e una lunga dittatura. […] Matongé è la valvola che lascia sfiatare il vapore, una zona d’ironia libera per non impazzire. La musica zairese contemporanea

«[…] Nato a Matadi nel 1930, [Joseph Kabaselé] frequenta i corsi di musica dei cori cattolici, come quasi tutti gli artisti del Congo belga. […] Bocciato in terza media per cattiva condotta, nel 1949 l’adolescente Kabaselé entra a far parte di un gruppo vocale, La voix de la concorde, poi si lascia alle spalle le canzoni religiose per dedicarsi alla rumba afrocubana, uno stile musicale ricco di

«This amazing record is the product of utility, coincidence, and accidental discovery as much as it is a product of academic deliberation, and it manages to sound old and traditional even as it is refreshingly (even radically) new and avant-garde. Konono No. 1 was formed in the 1980s by a group of Bazombo musicians, dancers, and singers from the Democratic Republic of Congo to play traditional