Veteran world music star Papa Wendo, seen here in this undated handout from Afropop.org and who was considered the father of the Congolese Rumba, has died aged 82, an NGO announced Tuesday.
(AFP/Afropop-HO/File/Banning Eyre)
KINSHASA, Congo (AFP), July 29, 2008:
Veteran world music star Papa Wendo, considered the father of the Congolese Rumba, has died aged 82, an NGO announced Tuesday.
The musician "died Monday following a long illness," Shaka Kongo, head of Artists in Danger told AFP. He was admitted to intensive care at a Kishasa clinic on Monday suffering organ failure.
"A baobab of music is dead," headlined the Le Phare daily on Tuesday as Congo's newspapers led tributes to the singer-songwriter.
Born Antoine Wendo Kolosoy in the Bandundu region, northeast of Kinshasa, Papa Wendo was arguably the Democratic Republic of Congo's most popular musician.
His father was a hunter, his mother a singer and the house was full of parties, he recalled in a 2002 interview with specialist website Afropop Worldwide.
His father died when he was seven, his mother "when I was eight or nine." She bequeathed to him her prized mukwasa instrument shortly before her death, telling him he would make himself and others happy by playing it.
"After that, whites took care of me, priests," he said, but in a precursor of later disputes, he found their strict regime stifling, and left at 12 or 13, travelling up and down the Congo river as a river-boat mechanic and part-time musician.
He was a boxer in the 1940s, fighting as far afield as Cameroon and Senegal, before making his first record in 1948.
He achieved notoriety with his international hit "Marie-Louise," to which the Congolese in the 1950s attributed the magic virtue of being able to wake the dead.
The Roman Catholic Church considered the tune to have Satanic properties, and at their behest, he ended up briefly behind bars.
"The priests believed that this record was starting to wake up dead people. This is why they arrested Papa Wendo at the missionaries' place. That's the way it was," Wendo recalled.
He was friends in the 1940s with Patrice Lumumba, the country's first legally elected prime minister, brutally murdered in January 1961 by troops loyal to army chief Joseph Mobutu.
In 1965 Mobutu seized power, later renaming the country Zaire and himself Mobutu Sese Seko.
Papa Wendo stopped playing music, saying that "the fundamental reason for this is politics ... Because political men at the time wanted to use musicians like stepping stones. That is to say, they wanted musicians to sing their favours.
"Me, I did not want to do that. That's why I decided it was best for me, Wendo, to pull myself out of the music scene, and stay home."
In 1997, Mobutu was forced out, with Laurent-Desire Kabila installed as president.
The father of present leader Joseph Kabila, the elder Kabila rehabilitated Papa Wendo, who had fallen on hard times.
The head of state helped him move into a large house in the capital, arranging for him to be given a car and assisted with broader travel arrangements within DR Congo and abroad as he began recording and touring again.
A documentary about Wendo, "On the Rumba river," was released only last month by French film-maker Jacques Sarasin.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse.
July 29, 2008
CONGO: Papa Wendo, father of Congolese Rumba, dies at 82
Veteran world music star Papa Wendo, seen here in this undated handout from Afropop.org and who was considered the father of the Congolese Rumba, has died aged 82, an NGO announced Tuesday.
(AFP/Afropop-HO/File/Banning Eyre)
KINSHASA, Congo (AFP), July 29, 2008:
Veteran world music star Papa Wendo, considered the father of the Congolese Rumba, has died aged 82, an NGO announced Tuesday.
The musician "died Monday following a long illness," Shaka Kongo, head of Artists in Danger told AFP. He was admitted to intensive care at a Kishasa clinic on Monday suffering organ failure.
"A baobab of music is dead," headlined the Le Phare daily on Tuesday as Congo's newspapers led tributes to the singer-songwriter.
Born Antoine Wendo Kolosoy in the Bandundu region, northeast of Kinshasa, Papa Wendo was arguably the Democratic Republic of Congo's most popular musician.
His father was a hunter, his mother a singer and the house was full of parties, he recalled in a 2002 interview with specialist website Afropop Worldwide.
His father died when he was seven, his mother "when I was eight or nine." She bequeathed to him her prized mukwasa instrument shortly before her death, telling him he would make himself and others happy by playing it.
"After that, whites took care of me, priests," he said, but in a precursor of later disputes, he found their strict regime stifling, and left at 12 or 13, travelling up and down the Congo river as a river-boat mechanic and part-time musician.
He was a boxer in the 1940s, fighting as far afield as Cameroon and Senegal, before making his first record in 1948.
He achieved notoriety with his international hit "Marie-Louise," to which the Congolese in the 1950s attributed the magic virtue of being able to wake the dead.
The Roman Catholic Church considered the tune to have Satanic properties, and at their behest, he ended up briefly behind bars.
"The priests believed that this record was starting to wake up dead people. This is why they arrested Papa Wendo at the missionaries' place. That's the way it was," Wendo recalled.
He was friends in the 1940s with Patrice Lumumba, the country's first legally elected prime minister, brutally murdered in January 1961 by troops loyal to army chief Joseph Mobutu.
In 1965 Mobutu seized power, later renaming the country Zaire and himself Mobutu Sese Seko.
Papa Wendo stopped playing music, saying that "the fundamental reason for this is politics ... Because political men at the time wanted to use musicians like stepping stones. That is to say, they wanted musicians to sing their favours.
"Me, I did not want to do that. That's why I decided it was best for me, Wendo, to pull myself out of the music scene, and stay home."
In 1997, Mobutu was forced out, with Laurent-Desire Kabila installed as president.
The father of present leader Joseph Kabila, the elder Kabila rehabilitated Papa Wendo, who had fallen on hard times.
The head of state helped him move into a large house in the capital, arranging for him to be given a car and assisted with broader travel arrangements within DR Congo and abroad as he began recording and touring again.
A documentary about Wendo, "On the Rumba river," was released only last month by French film-maker Jacques Sarasin.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse.
