The man who gave us melodies to laugh, cry, love, muse and dance

Tabu Ley released 30 albums, comprising more than

300 songs, produced by the rhumba maestro in six

decades of excellence. FILE 

By Joyce Nyairo
 In Summary

Born in Bandundu in the then Congo (later Zaire and now DRC), Tabu Ley was barely 14 years old when he wrote his first song Bessama Muchacha.

What is you favourite Tabu Ley song? Silikani? Ibeba? Mokolo Nakokufa? Kaful Mayay? Muzina? ‘Maze? Kebona Kebo? Savon Omo?

Did you know that Savon Omo was, in fact, an advert in praise of the detergent Omo – “ah Savon Omo, sabuni yako kamwa, Savon Omo sabuni ya bilanga.” It doesn’t matter that you may have spent many hours gazing wistfully at the photograph of a loved one as Savon Omo played in the background! What really matters is that you were deeply moved by the sweet melody of African Fiesta. Tabu Ley’s voice was always as smooth as a lark, crystal clear and gliding with such persuasive ease over each lyric.

Born in Bandundu in the then Congo (later Zaire and now DRC), Tabu Ley was barely 14 years old when he wrote his first song Bessama Muchacha. At 20, he rose to instant national fame when he sang Joseph Kabaselleh’s classic Independence Cha Cha — a brilliant fusion of Cuba and Kinshasa composed by the Grand Kalle himself in which he mentioned politicians like Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu, who participated in talks in Brussels to negotiate independence from the Belgians.

With over 30 albums and close to 300 songs Tabu Ley should be remembered as one of the world’s most prolific artistes. A musician whose work straddles six decades all the way into the millennium, moving him from his home in Kinshasa to Belgium, France, the US and finally back to the Congo where he even served in the senior Kabila’s cabinet and in the younger Kabila’s transitional parliament of 2001.

Tabu Ley wasn’t just a musician with a skillful voice, he was a dynamic artiste, constantly evolving, inventing, adapting and experimenting with the rhythms of Africa and elsewhere to create a new sound.

Think of Franco’s music as the predictable rhythms of a long-standing and stable marriage. You remain in love because you know what to expect. And then think of each of Tabu Ley’s songs as the intense and whirlwind passion of a fleeting romantic fling! You remain in love with the magic of (pleasant) surprises.

In the early 1970s, Tabu Ley’s frequent appearances on French television and gigs at the Paris Olympia earned him a world market and made it easy for many other African musicians to get to Europe and exploit recording facilities than the ones that were available in their home countries.

In 1975, Tabu Ley visited Kenya. Like many Zairean artistes of the day, he often came to Nairobi to make use of Polygram Record’s vinyl pressing plant. On that occasion, Tabu Ley was called into the Mambo Leo TV Show at the then Voice of Kenya to market his visit.

When he was asked to give TV audiences a glimpse of what he would be presenting in Nairobi, he stunned viewers with both the melody of his chorus: “eh mama sambulu ma, mama yai, sambuluma” and the lithe movements of his nubile dancers, the “Rocherettes”.

Tireless innovation was the hallmark of Tabu Ley’s career. He was the first Congolese musician to choreograph a stage show complete with especially hired dancers. The power and nimble grace of his amazing footwork (in platform shoes!) alongside that of his dancers stole the show on an international stage in Kinshasa in 1974 when he curtain-raised an all-star African American concert.

It featured music legends James Brown, BB King, Celia Cruz, Sister Sledge and Bill Withers – the original composer of the world-acclaimed and much covered anthem of solidarity Lean on Me. That concert was the precursor to the big “rumble in the jungle” contest between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman.

The three day music festival preceding the fight is immortalised in the 2009 documentary, Soul Power. Though it shows amazing footage of Franco and the then exiled South African songbird Miriam Makeba, nothing tops the versatile movement and serenading pitch of Tabu Ley’s performance.

Local Producer Tabu Osusa remembers from his years in Kinshasa that it was Tabu Ley who first to introduced the drum-set to the stable of the Congolese rumba band in the 1960s. Tabu Ley had such vocal range and an innate sense of rhythm.

From Rumba to Soukous to Samba, he was delightfully experimental and eclectic. But there are those who might say that Tabu Ley was not as musically radical as Orchestre Sosoliso. Sosoliso were so quick to imitate James Brown’s garb and repertoire after that 1974 visit to Kinshasa and you hear calls of that all-American enthusiasm, “come-on”, on many of the songs they recorded thereafter.

Because the bulk of Kenyan audiences do not understand Lingala, they may not know that Tabu Ley was a real poet, a skillful social commentator whose themes ranged from the difficulties of forced marriages to the turmoil of illicit love, love betrayed, love found, beautiful women, difficult women, pressures of urban life and the difficult search for wealth and happiness.

In 1974 Tabu Ley topped the charts in Zaire with Kaful Mayay. The song exploits the rhythms and language of Tabu Ley’s Yansi people.

Though raised in Kinshasa, Tabu Ley spoke KiYansi and recalled its numerous folksongs. Kaful Mayay tells the story of an arranged marriage and of the misery of the unwilling wife who finds herself forced to live with a much older man who is cruel and harsh. The chorus introduces a third person perspective – angry onlookers who repeat the refrain “ask Mayay why his wife should look so neglected”.

Muzina and Mokolo Nakokufa are two of Tabu Ley’s most philosophical songs. Muzina was the chart-stopping club favourite of East Africa in 1995. It is ironical that this song became a club anthem because its lyrics are about Christian worship and the spirit of the Gospel. The acapella opening is the Catholic invocation of the sign of the cross, Father Son and Holy Spirit: ‘muzina gitata, eh gimwana, eh gipepesantos muzina gitata save, yamuzina’.

The last part of this eight-minute song is an exchange between the soukous rhythm of the guitars and the background singers responding with shouts of ‘Yahweh!’

When Mokolo Nakokufa first hit the airwaves in Zaire, fans wondered what had happened to make Tabu Ley so pensive as to ask this haunting question “what will happen when I die?” The song imagines people of various social and economic classes contemplating their deaths: the prostitute the driver; the cook, the minister?

Whether he was singing about death, beautiful cities, soap, the love of a woman or the love of God, Tabu Ley coined memorable expressions. He worked with many dynamic artistes including Papa Wemba and Sam Mangwana.

Under his Afrisa International Tabu Ley trained many promising artistes including Faya Tess and Mbilia Bel, whom he would later marry.

Melodie, the name that Tabu Ley and Mbilia gave to their only daughter is a fitting salute to the man’s life-long dedication to making sweet music.

Over the last four years that TabuLey has battled with his health, he has been stoic and philosophical.

In 2012 he said to a sympathetic interviewer: “I feel very well as you can notice. As per my doctors, my health conditions are improving every day. The thing is that I have to accept my current condition with good-naturedness. I am 72 years old and find it normal to face some physical weaknesses. I am a Christian and trust in God,” he declared.

Rest in peace, Tabu Ley Seigneur Rochereau.

A true titan, your work crossed the boundaries of your birthplace giving us a melody with which to love, to laugh, to ponder, to muse, to cry, to dance and to reminisce!

Dr Nyairo is a cultural analyst jnyairo@gmail.com