Papa Wemba, Congolese King of ‘Rumba Rock,’ Is Dead at 66
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Version 0 of 1. Papa Wemba, the internationally renowned Congolese singer known as “the king of rumba rock” for his upbeat, vibrantly danceable numbers that fused African pop with a welter of world musics, died on Sunday after collapsing onstage early that morning while performing in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He was 66. The cause was heart failure, his North American manager, Alex Boicel, said. Papa Wemba’s death occasioned public mourning throughout Africa. Baudouin Banza Mukalay, culture minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, called it a “great loss for the country and all of Africa,” praising him as “a role model for Congolese youth.” One of Africa’s foremost representatives in world music, Papa Wemba was widely admired for his sweet, supple, haunting tenor, with which he sang in his native Lingala and in French. His music — a style originally called Congolese rumba, and in later years soukous, a word derived from the French secouer, “to shake” — melded traditional African and Caribbean rhythms with rock and soul. Papa Wemba, who had homes in Paris and Kinshasa, his homeland’s capital, appeared on stages throughout the world with his band Viva la Musica. In New York, he was heard at S.O.B.’s in 1989 in a performance that Jon Pareles, writing in The New York Times, called “lilting and kinetic, a marvelous lattice of percussion and melody.” In the 1990s he toured with the British rocker Peter Gabriel; for Mr. Gabriel’s record label, Real World, he recorded the albums “Le Voyager,” “Emotion" and “Molokai.” An occasional actor, Papa Wemba starred in “La Vie Est Belle,” a 1987 film musical directed by Benoît Lamy and Mweze Ngangura. In the movie, shown that year at Film Forum in New York, he played an aspiring singer. He was famed as well as a latter-day Beau Brummell, favoring extravagant outfits by European and Japanese designers. Papa Wemba was also known for having pleaded guilty in 2004 to his role in a scheme to smuggle dozens of Africans — billed as musicians but curiously devoid of instruments — into Europe. Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba was born on June 14, 1949, in the Kasai region of what was then the Belgian Congo — later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of Congo. His family moved to the capital, then known as Léopoldville, when he was a child. His father was a customs official and his mother a pleureuse, a professional mourner who sang at funerals. From her, Papa Wemba later said, he received his first musical education. As a teenager, he sang in the choir of a local Roman Catholic church. “When I started singing pop music, I left religious music completely,” Papa Wemba told the publication African Business in 2004. “But there was always the influence of religious music on my voice because, with religious music, the minor key always recurs. When I compose songs, I often use the minor key.” In the late 1960s he became a charter member of Zaiko Langa Langa, a hugely popular soukous band. He was later the lead singer of the group Isifi Lokole before starting Viva la Musica in 1977. Papa Wemba, who spent part of his career in France, made international headlines in 2003 after he was arrested there and charged with attempting to bring African immigrants into the country illegally. He had aroused the authorities’ suspicions two years earlier, when he tried to bring some 90 Congolese individuals — whom he described as members of his band but who possessed neither instruments nor costumes — into Paris. Papa Wemba, who admitted only to having played a small role in the affair, served three and a half months in a French prison. “If I ever took money — and I’m not saying I did — it was for humanitarian reasons,” he said in an interview quoted on Sunday in his obituary in The Guardian. “I took a dozen children out of the country so they could escape the terrible conditions that exist there.” Papa Wemba was long regarded as the muse of the Congolese youth movement SAPE, known in English as the Society of Poseurs and Persons of Elegance. Its adherents, young men called sapeurs, dress in Roberto Cavalli, Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake and other designer labels. His ardor for couture even found its way into his music. “Listen my love,” one of his numbers runs: On our wedding day The label will be Torrente The label will be Giorgio Armani The label will be Daniel Hechter The label for the shoes will be J. M. Weston. Papa Wemba’s survivors, according to Mr. Boicel, include his wife, known as Mama Rosa; three brothers; two sisters; 33 children; and nearly two dozen grandchildren. To critics who asserted that Papa Wemba’s musical style was not traditional enough, he had a succinct rejoinder. “What I create is not Congolese music anymore — it’s not even African music,” he said. “It’s just simply music.” |