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Papa Wemba of the Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People

Papa Wemba, star of the third generation of post-1945 Congolese musicians, has died. He exemplified Congo's cultural knack of creating distinctive, non-western ways of defining modernity

By Tom Salter
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Two of Africa’s superstars, Brenda Fassie and Papa Wemba, with the 1999 song ‘Ngiyakuthanda’.

Sadly, we have lost another great of Congolese music – Papa Wemba.

Papa Wemba was born Shungu Wembiado in 1949. He came to musical prominence in the great beating heart of Congolese popular music, Kinshasa’s famous district of Matonge in the 1970s during the belle époque of Congolese popular music. The people of the capital, and especially its musical heart, are now mourning one of their musical heroes. Oh Kinshasa! Oh Matonge!

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0