Various Artists - Honest Jon's The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo From the Congo, 1954-55 Review

Almost every other week, we’re faced with a slew of new rarities compilations — Lost Jungle Classics From Brazil Vol. 1! Thai Free Jazz is not a Four Letter Word! 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground! Each illustrates digital culture’s ability to crumble borders, expanding taste and perception in truly new and interesting ways. We simply have access to so much that it’s hard not to enjoy a wider variety of music, a notion upon which these compilations thrive. Gone are cliquish allegiances to genre. The new "cool" is loving it all, and why not? From a purely musical standpoint, there’s plenty to love about a collection like The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo From the Congo, 1954-55. The fact that its focus is so specific — highlighting a particular blend of Latin, jazz, and African music within a two-year period — gives us an inversely wider view of time and place.

Many of the tracks are extremely listenable and catchy, enhanced by their primitive recording techniques to allow the entire album to play like a mini-narrative — a small slice of history that we rarely experience in the West. And to be sure, these musicians — Jean Mpia, Laurent Lomande, Adikwa Depala, etc. — were alive and vibrant, considering both song craft and their intended audience the same way that many artists do now. Yet "foreign" or "world" music such as this is still relegated to outmoded archetypes based on a few musical principles, removed from the human element so clear in the music. To put it simply, when we hear music that sounds old, is in a foreign language, or uses musical tools we aren’t used to, we file it as "other."...full text VINYL FORMAT. Deluxe double LP version, in a beautiful gatefold sleeve. With insert featuring rare photographs and notes by Gary Stewart, author of Rumba On The River. Sound restoration done at Abbey Road. This is the fifth release in Honest Jon's series of albums exploring vintage recordings held in the EMI Hayes Archive. This album uncovers the dizzy beginnings of the golden age of African music zinging with the social and political ferment of the independence movement and anti-colonialism, after the Second World War and the daredevil origins of Congolese rumba - the entire continent's most popular music in the '60s and '70s. The new music grew in concert with a burgeoning night life especially in the twin capitals of Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) on the Belgian side, and Brazzaville on the French, where humming factories lured increasing numbers of rural Congolese with the offer of a steady, relatively well-paying job. The astonishing inventions of Europe and America also played an important role in the music's development. Traditional Congolese musicians began to master imported guitars and horns by mimicking what they heard. The jazz of Louis Armstrong and the ballads of European torch singers like Tino Rossi captured the imagination of the rapidly-expanding working class as well as the familiar-sounding music of Latin America. Local musicians swapped the Spanish of the originals for Congolese languages. In his version of "Peanut Vendor," included here, A.H. Depala replaces the seller's cry of "mani," or "peanut," with a lovelorn lament for a woman named "Moni." Depala went on to land a spot in the house-band of the prestigious Loningisa studio. Others failed to gain equivalent recognition, but their music was no less impressive. Listen to likembe (thumb-piano) player Boniface Koufidilia as he makes the transition from traditional to modern in the first few seconds of "Bino," which hits you with a vamping violin while he muses about death (including that of the popular Brazzaville musician Paul Kamba). Andre Denis and Albert Bongu both echo the sounds of palm-wine brought to the Belgian Congo by the coastmen. The sweet vocal harmonies of Vincent Kuli's track were learned, perhaps, in a mission church. Rene Mbu's nimble, likembe-like guitar plucking shines on "Boma Limbala," and is Laurent Lomande using a banjo as a backdrop to "Elisa?" Aren't those kazoos, buzzing along on Jean Mpia's "Tika?" It's as if the musicians, fired up by the times in their zeal for experimental self-expression, tossed into a bottle some new elements and some old, some near and some far, and then shook it hard, to see what would happen....full text 1 Bino Boton, Bosele - Boniface Koufoundila
2 Maboka Marie - Laurent Lomande
3 Matete Paris - A.H. Depala
4 Akei Cimetierre - A.H. Depala
5 Cherie Naluli Yo - Andre Denis
6 Yaka Ko Tala - Vincent Kuli
7 Klim - Jean Mpia
8 Ntango N'abali - Boniface Koufoundila
9 Musinichkie - Robert Yuakarie
10 Koseke Moniga Te - Albert Bongu
11 Boma Limbala - Rene Mbu
12 C. C. T. Ebongisi Mokiri - A.H. Depala
13 Bengala Ngai Bosele - Fabien Libasi
14 Elisa - Laurent Lomande
15 Moni, Moni Non Dey - A.H. Depala
16 Kioo Cha Nyumba - Norbert Yakari
17 Mokolo Bafuti Sanza - J.P. Ndagu
18 Tokowela Angelique - Boniface Koufoundila
19 Embonga - L. Lomande
20 Tika Koseka - Jean Mpia
21 Yoka Ngal - A.H. Depala...full text