WENDO KOLOSOY, Musician

"A baobab of music is dead,"

Born Antoine Wendo Kolosoy in the Bandundu region, northeast of Kinshasa, Papa Wendo was arguably Congo’s most popular musician.

He was a boxer in the 1940s, fighting as far afield as Cameroon and Senegal, before making his first record in 1948.

He
achieved notoriety with his international hit "Marie-Louise," to which
the Congolese in the 1950s attributed the magic virtue of being able to
wake the dead.

The Roman Catholic Church considered the tune to have Satanic properties, and at their behest, he ended up briefly behind bars.

"The
priests believed that this record was starting to wake up dead people.
This is why they arrested Papa Wendo at the missionaries’ place. That’s
the way it was," Wendo recalled.

He was friends in the 1940s
with Patrice Lumumba, the country’s first legally elected prime
minister, brutally murdered in January 1961 by troops loyal to army
chief Joseph Mobutu.

Papa Wendo stopped playing music, saying
that "the fundamental reason for this is politics …" Political men at
the time wanted to use musicians like stepping stones. That is to say,
they wanted musicians to sing their favours.

"Me, I did not want
to do that. That’s why I decided it was best for me, Wendo, to pull
myself out of the music scene, and stay home."

Years before his
death, Laurent Kabila helped him move into a large house in the
capital, arranging for him to be given a car and assisted with broader
travel arrangements within DR Congo and abroad as he began recording
and touring again.

A documentary about Wendo, "On the Rumba river," was released only last month by French film-maker Jacques Sarasin.