ABC's

After a layoff of several years, the superb British label RetroAfric is back in action this year, recently issuing a collection of work by Sierre Leone's Geraldo Pino—a formative influence on the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti. Earlier this year it released a killer collection of Congolese rumba by Gaby Lita Bembo and Orchestre Stukas du Zaire. Aside from earning a reputation for his outrageous showmanship and flashy duds, his band played with more aggressiveness and flash that most of his Kinshasa rivals. Stukas featured a succession of dazzling lead guitarists including Samunga Tediangaye—who’s admiration for Jimi Hendrix went as far as the old playing-guitar-with-the-teeth routine. In 1975 he jumped ship to join the mighty Orchestra Veve, but his replacement Bongo Wende was just as able. Tediangaye returned after just a few months, but he died tragically in 1977 from hepatitis. Another guitarist, named Kembo, admirably filled his shoes, even if they became work boots instead of high-heeled sneakers.

As with most Congolese bands, Bembo’s lead singing was closely shadowed by superb harmony vocals and buoyant polyrhythms, but this stuff is ultimately all about the contrapuntal lattice of effervescent guitar lines, overamped and deeply propulsive. The group soldiered off and on until 1986, but its best work was done in the 70s, and that’s what the excellent Kita Mata ABC focuses on.

Odeyo 1

Buy it here.

Comments

[Frans]

Thanks for this one.
More Gaby Lita Bembo and Orchestre Stukas (together with other very good African music) can be found at this blog:
http://aduna.free.fr/aduna.blog/blog.htm