Remmy Ongala

Remmy Ongala

His Super Matimila Orchestra are without doubt Tanzania’s most well known band, and have performed many times in Europe and the USA.
Remmy Ongala is originally from Zaire/Congo. He was born on 1947 in Zaire.
He lost his mother when he was nine years old and had to take on the responsibility of raising his siblings. As a 17-years-old he was in a youth band, Bantu Success, as a singer and drummer.
This was not popular with his family, so Remmy had to leave the band. Two years later he was again involved with music when as a guitarist he joined a few groups, among them Mickey Jazz in Zaire and Grand Mika Jazz in Uganda.
In 1978 he moved to Tanzania and joined his uncle’s band, Orchestre Makassy in Dar es Salaam.
In 1981 he joined forces with Matimila, an 18-member band owned by a local businessman.
Later on he formed Super Matimila and developed a style based on three guitars, bass and drum, plus saxophone.
Remmy Ongala based his music on Soukous, that he proffers in a more raw version than usual, rooted as it is in local Tanzanian traditions.
He sets great store by Swahili lyrics that often have political stings against the wielders of power of all description, but he also shows a loyal defence of the common man’s condition.
Because of the lyrics’ so-called healing properties he is called “The Doctor” and is an enormously popular man in the Sinza neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, where he lives with his English wife, five children and a parrot.
The last few years he has not been able to perform as often as before, due to his suffering from diabetes.
For those with an inner relationship to African music Remmy Ongala’s performance at Roskilde was one of the Spring’s peaks on the concert landscape and it is with joy that we greet a new album from the man.
Home in Tanzania he has superstar status, in spite of the fact that he was born in neighbouring Zaire, a fact that is reflected in his music.
Soukous is an angle of incidence to Remmy’s music, a horse of a different colour than we normally associate with a sophisticated crooners like Kanda Bongo Man and Pepe Kalle.
Ongala’s music is rougher around the edges and has a distinctly different twang from the guitars (Soukous’ most important instrument, after the human voice!) than the slick and affected sounds of his colleague in the field.
Having said that, I must also mention that this is not a “new” Remmy Ongala album. Instead, it is a gap-filler from BBC’s notorious Andy Kershaw, a collection of radio recordings of Remmy and his band made between 1988 and 1993.
But this doesn’t matter, especially since only a couple of these songs are from “Mambo” (1991).
I recommend without reservation this collection as an introduction to his slightly droll East African world. With a blend of politics and humour, he plays over a great Soukous backing that, as it should, run amok at times.
This is not only for fun, but most of all for dancing!