"Mongali" by Tabu Ley Ft. Afrisa International

I love this song, Mongali, without knowing what Tabu Ley's words, and lyrics as a whole, are really all about. Always have, though a few guesses are all I can come up with. In that, I am in the company of millions of Soukous -- or, shall we say, #LingalaPop? -- fans. And so they validate my peace of mind.

Click to listen to the audio

Still, three things have always drawn me to it, though subconsciously for the longest time, and kept it 'alive' in memory's store. First, the inexplicable magic of melody in the singer's voice. Second, the enthusiasm and utter musicality (as I understand music) in the band's many-sided engagement. Third, the truly fine and sustained montage of sounds that have always ensued -- for me.  

CONGOLESE MUSIC: Tabu Ley's (Rochereau's) Mokolo Nakokufa

We liked this song, in what seems now like the very, very distant past. It is quite to be loved even now, though the new converts will not, cannot, remember the old memories which were an integral part of its (and our) social and cultural, and also historical, milieu. That is the fate of all Golden Oldies, and so it goes -- on and on. 

Tabu Ley (a.k.a Rochereau) was like the lovable uncle we were happy to hang, aurally, around. We made only one demand on him -- that he make us happy. He came through most of the time, as I remember. And that was more than enough, there in Nairobi's expansive Eastlands.

Iconic Mokili Mobimba

For all intents and purposes, Mokili Mobimba was played in and for the generation before the video, at the floodgates of Africa's independence decade in the very early Sixties. The video was still more that fifteen years from becoming the meme it became. 

Music video wasn't a thing, then, when Joseph Kabassele and Rochereau (Tabu Ley) sang this song and Nico Kassanda played the guitar and other players played. We knew the song before we knew the singers, and it didn't matter much that we didn't. Only that we loved the vibes and that they seeped, without our knowing, into our subconscious and our souls, there in Nairobi's Eastlands. 

And then one forgot who the musicians had been and what the song's title ever was. It was a kind of forgetfulness that made the forgetting immaterial. But something did linger.

Decades later, long after the identities of the singers and the players (but not the 'play') were swept out of mind and into oblivion by the many 'growing-up' things that occupied boomer minds and wouldn't let go, I found myself, at infrequent and particularly nostalgic moments, humming distorted snippets of Mokili Mobimba. This wonderful tune buried so deep in my memory but whose prosaic particulars stubbornly resisted recapture.

Today (on this day!) the prodigal song returned, in a manner of speaking. It returned because I bumped into it during a frenzied google-search which was unplanned and so started out of the blue. It returned because I came upon it. And, I wanted to say as I finish, I won't let it go no more. But how does one chain a force greater than one?


Here, the audio:

MUSIC (Classic): Tabu Ley's Marie Clara

Music tells you a thing about where, in Time's spatial segments, a person has been, truly. It is an avenue to the soft wares of the soul. And the mind. Listening to an old song that one remembers returns many things we fumble to put together and make co-here with us at any precious moment of presence, or every which one. And so it is with Marie Clara. 

Music from the past tells us things we knew, naggingly. Things we knew we hadn't forgotten, but didn't have to remember -- and in that way thought were gone. Simply gone. Never to return in the same old way. As flashes in the deep sky, which recur. Perhaps. Twinkling stars we could see in brief moments in the dark, when ever we allowed our eyes to rise above all the whirlwind of life, and when the sky in its majesty likewise allowed. And, ah, behold.

See. We don't allow the past too much room in our active memories, much as we try. And so we build soft traps and cages to catch and keep it. Nay, to imagine that we can catch as catch can and keep a semblance of it. All them flashes. To make it somehow reachable in our private nests and public nets. But it values its freedom. As we do ours. Including the freedom we didn't quite know that we had to not remember. And so it is with Marie Clara. Whom one is glad to have once again, here (like this), even if only for a while. For this gem of a moment that's so orchestral, and so fine. And only for oneself. After all these years.


Click to listen to the audio

MUSIC: Ben Mbatha's Kadoli

Here's Ben Mbatha's Kadoli, from 2007. It lasts all of 8:54 minutes, but hold your horses! U haven't seen Franco or Tabu Ley or Mbilia Bel go the farther, farther distance -- the Congolese way. Have U?

Kadoli is but one instance of the "afterglow of creation", if I may p(h)un Stephen W. Hawking. S'il vous plaît.


Click to watch the video


Don't you just luv the tune! Juliet, I suppose, didn't (did she, that Juliet?) get such attention, such moves, from Romeo. Nor did Romeo from Juliet, Romeo didn't have no Coke, either.

How much farther ahead than Kadoli is Kenya's pop music these days? Is it, as it should be, sufficiently far? We must ask.