Language:

Lingala Swahili

Genre:

Soukous Benga Rumba congolais

Instrument:

Guitar Bass Drums Male vocals

Biography

This extraordinary and highly influential group dominated the Kenyan and East African music scene from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.The band's roots lay in Congo-Kinshasa (then Zaire), and specifically in the band's hometown of Likasi, near Lubumbashi, in Shaba Province. In 1967 Mutonkole Didos Longwa founded a group called Super Vox. Two years later they headed for Zambia where the group eventually met the acclaimed musician Nashil Pichen of the Kenyan Super Eagles Limpopo Band who fired their imaginations when he told them about the vibrant music scene in Kenya. And so, in 1974, they headed for the bright lights of Nairobi, one of the musical hubs of '70s Africa. It was then that they changed their name to Super Mazembe (Lingala for bulldozer) boasting that their music had the same earthmoving effect!
The group quickly found a willing audience and took the country by storm. They popularised their own dance style, mushosho, as they vied for popularity with rival groups Les Mangelepa, Les Kinois, Les Wanyika and Orchestra Virunga. Many bands were tied to specific venues by resident-band contracts, but this was not the case with Mazembe, who criss-crossed the country and a!so toured in Tanzania and Uganda setting audiences alight wherever they appeared. They became a household name. According to a Nairobi newspaper the group was so popular that "agricultural shows and top hotels scrambled to book them".
From the mid 1980s the group was beset with problems and vanished from the music scene. There were attempts to revive the group in the 90s, but with the death of the leading band member Longwa Didos in 1999 it all came definately to an end.

Relevant artists:
Virunga
Remmy Ongala
Tatunane
Orchestra Makassy

MAZEMBE
AIT Records/1980

KAIVASKA
Virgin/1982

GIANTS OF EAST AFRICA  
Earthworks/Sterns Africa/2001

Stern's Africa/Earthworks continue their energetic digging through the archives to bring us African classics. This time Trevor Herman has discovered forgotten gems of East Africa, an area hitherto partly hidden and forgotten, musically speaking. As this album shows, there's absolutely no excuse for that. Orchestra Super Mazembe becomes a very pleasing acquaintance, and Trevor Herman is probably right when his liner notes assert that the group would have made an international breakthrough if they had lasted a few years longer. "Giants of East Africa" is comprised of tracks from the afore-mentioned two albums, and presents the group in fine fettle. The music is soukous based, but with the same East African flavour that one finds with groups such as Virunga. Super Mazembe was a nine-man strong group, playing tightly and dynamically, with guitars as their driving instruments, in the typical soukous manner. The guitars are used as rhythm instruments with fast, short, repeating riffs constantly creating new patterns. Several vocalists sing against one another, the whole thing is elegantly performed, and of course it works well. The whole thing works elegantly throughout. Saxophones can also be heard in the backing on several occasions and Super Mazembe has the same little aroma of jazz as Virunga, making comparisons easy. I feel the best pieces are the song "Jiji", by Tabu Ley, that swings softly and poetically, plus the melodic and melancolic "Shauri Yako". The sound is good, though (of course) not quite on a par with recordings from this new century. But my Tanzanian friends were jumping for joy at the pure sounds from their old idols!

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Design: Idar Lind
English: Katherine Stewart-Kreisman (katherine.scharansky@virginmedia.com)
Swahili: Francis Chagula (francis.chagula@malvik.kommune.no)
Swahili: Habiba Rajabu (habiba@online.no)
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