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QUATRE ETOILES, LIVE IN CONCERT. MP3 album download now available from CD Baby! Single tracks on iTunes, iTunes UK, Amazon.com
SYRAN MBENZA'S SOLO ALBUM, SYMBIOSE. MP3 album download now available from CD Baby! Single tracks on iTunes, iTunes UK, Amazon.com
LES QUATRE ETOILES: THE GREATEST SOUKOUS BAND IN THE WORLD
They are called Quatre Etoiles, or Four Stars. "The name of the band," wrote Chris Stapleton and Chris May in their book African Rock: The Pop Music of A Continent, "is no idle boast." Each member of this Congolese (formerly Zaire) supergroup has a distinguished resume covering 25 years of more. The four have been associated with the pre-eminent Congolese musicians of the 20th century: Franco, Tabu Ley Rochereau, "Docteur Nico" Nicolas Kassanda, Sam Mangwana. And for 15 years, both as individuals advancing solo careers and as members of Quatre Etoiles, they have earned their own places among the heroes of modern African music. Quatre Etoiles have been rightly acclaimed "the greatest soukous band in the world."
Syran Mbenza, Bopol Mansiamina and Blaise "Wuta Mayi" Pascal were all born in Kinshasa in 1949 or 1950, when the city was still called Leopoldville and the country was the Belgian Congo. Nyboma Mwandido, born in the Bandundu region in 1952, moved to Kinshasa as a child. All four began their careers in the late '60s, a period of tremendous ferment in Kinshasa's musical life. Guitarist Syran Mbenza and singer Wuta Mayi met in Orchestre Jamel National. Wuta Mayi went on to sing with Orchestre Bamboula and Rock-A Mambo, both of which included guitarist Bopol Mansiamina. After a stint with Dr. Nico's African Fiesta Sukisa, Bopol formed Orchestre Continental with Wuta Mayi. They enjoyed several hits with Continental before Bopol accepted an invitation to join Tabu Ley Rochereau's famous Afrisa International in 1973. The following year, Franco recruited Wuta Mayi into T.P.O.K. Jazz, one of the most important bands in all of Africa.
Meanwhile, singer Nyboma Mwandido was attracting attention with such popular new bands as Negro Succes and Orchestre Bella Bella. A public opinion poll in 1972 named him the best singer in Zaire. In 1975 he formed his own band, Orchestre Kamale, which represented Zaire at the landmark Festival of African Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977. Nyboma and Kamale subsequently embarked on an extended tour of West Africa, where they often played with the African All Stars, led by another famous Zairean singer, Sam Mangwana. The African All Stars included Syran Mbenza and Bopol Mansiamina. Syran, since his days in Jamel National, had earned a reputation as a first-class guitarist with bands such as Somo Somo and Lovy du Zaire. Bopol had toured widely with Tabu Ley and recorded with Ray Lema's Ya Toupa before joining Sam Mangwana's band and then Nyboma's. It was in the West African cities of Lome and Abidjan that Orchestre Kamale and the African All Stars developed a new style of dance music that blended the Congo rumba and other Zairean rhythms with elements of West African highlife and Afrobeat, Cameroonian makossa and Antillean zouk. The style eventually became known worldwide as soukous. The first international soukous hits weere Sam Mangwana's "Maria Tebbo" (featuring Syran's guitar) and Nyboma's "Double Double" (with Bopol on guitar. On the strength of those successes, Syran, Bopol and Nyboma moved to Paris, where they were joined by Wuta Mayi, who had just left T.P.O.K. Jazz at the end of a European tour. The four joined to form Quatre Etoiles in 1982.
No sooner had they completed their first Quatre Etoiles album in 1983, under the aegis of producer Ouattara (Les 4 Grands Vedettes), than they got involved in various solo projects and collaborations. Thus they established the modus operandi that they have sustained to this day: on the one hand, recording and touring as a group; on the other, working as individuals independently of the group, often lending their talents to other artists' records and concerts. Members of Quatre Etoiles have, over the years, collaborated with Tabu Ley Rochereau, Pepe Kalle, members of Kassav, M'pongo Love, Kass Kass, Papa Noel, Madilu System and other notable artists. With their collective experience, professionalism, openness to innovation and sheer creative talent, Quatre Etoiles made an immediate impact on the Afro-Parisian music scene of the 1980s. Their reputation soon traveled back to Africa (setting them up for successful tours) and to other parts of the world, particularly the French Antilles.
As the decade unfolded, contemporary African music gained avid fans among Europeans and Americans. Making their North American concert debuts in 1988, Quatre Etoiles--more than anyone else--introduced the current Zairean sound to American audiences (though others became better known). In 1993, the group's album Sangonini was released in the U.S. Under the Sterns label. The following year, Quatre Etoiles, accompanied by drummer Komba Bellow Mafwala and bass player Miguel Yamba (each an esteemed musician in his own right), appeared at the 13th annual Caribbean Music Festival in Cartagena, Colombia. Subsequently, their single, "Doly," hit numero cinco on the Colombian pop charts, becoming the most popular record not sung in Spanish that year. Following their South American success, Quatre Etoiles came north to perform in Canada and the U.S. before embarking on a tour of East Africa.
[Biography courtesy of Ken Braun/Sterns Music]
Additional North American tours took place in 1995, 1996 and 1997, along with one exhilarating performance at the WOMAD festival in England in 1995. (Follow the link on this page to buy downloads of this live concert recording.) However, by the end of the '90s, the boom was pretty much over for the popularity of the style of soukous established by the Quatre Etoiles, increasingly replaced by the synthesized, computerized, drum-machined and overly animated ndombolo trend performed by the next generation of Congolese artists. The group took a break from performing and recording for a while, until a new opportunity arose to reunite under the banner of Kekele, a group that rediscovered Congolese rumba roots and joyfully performed it on acoustic instruments, in a decidedly retro rebuff to the current state of Kinshasa's pop music. Launched in 2000 by producer Ibrahim Sylla, Kekele reunited three of the Four Stars: Syran, Nyboma and Wuta Mayi, and what began as an uncertain experiment blossomed into a new musical direction and spawned a Congolese rumba renaissance. For more on Kekele, go to www.myspace.com/kekele
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