label Jeericho,
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases fIve videos of Congolese Sebene (also known as "Seben") music and dance.
This post also presents information about Sebene music.
The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, educational, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who helped create Congolese Sebene music and dance. Thanks to all those who are featured in these videos and thanks to all those who are quoted in this pancocojams post.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/09/five-youtube-videos-of-congolese.html for a closely related pancocojams post entitled "Five YouTube Videos Of Congolese Soukous Gospel Music (with some information about Soukous music)".
****
SHOWCASE VIDEO #2: Sebene Music Congolese By Jonathan TSHITAMBA
JSS Records, Nov 4, 2016
Celebrating 4 years as a young musician
-snip-
Total # of views as of September 9, 2022 at AM ET = 749,922
**** SHOWCASE VIDEO #3: ASAPH DU CIEL - La Louange des aigles (CLIP OFFICIEL)
Asaph du Ciel, Jan 10, 2017Pasteur Asaph du ciel -snip-
This is an example of Sebene Gospel music. This video has a total # of 25,369,656 views as of September 7, 2022 at 10:05 AM ET. **** SHOWCASE VIDEO #4: Auguy Nyembo - SEBEN CONGO au studio.(Official Video)
Augustin Nyembo Official, Dec 26, 2019 Une séance d’enregistrement avec les amis [Google translate from French to English: "A recording session with friends"]
Drum & Percussion : Auguy Nyembo
Guitar: Alfred solo
Bass: Jim Bass -snip- # of views as of September 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM ET= 182,085 -snip- Here are three comments from this video's discussion thread (with numbers added for referencing purposes only.] 1. Yinka Oluwole, 2020 "Whenever I listen to a soukous/makossa song, I always look forward to the guitar solo, I just love good seben guitar work...
In addition to that, I have ultimate respect for bass guitarists too, in my head I think of them like a father who puts his son(the solo guitar) on a bicycle and say "Go ahead son, be creative, have all the fun you want, but you can always trust that I won't let you fall cos I'm behind you all the time"..
Amazing work, fellas.. 👏🏾👏🏾 ** 2. Blessing Angel, 2020 "Ça c'est mon bassiste congolais. Bassiste de Michel Bakenda 🙏
Demeure béni big man" -snip- Google translate from French to English: "That's my Congolese bassist. Bassist of Michel Bakenda 🙏 Abide blessed big man"** 3. Misheck Mudiayi, 2021 "Pure seben nice sound"
SHOWCASE VIDEO #5: Acceleration (SEBENE) Congolese Wedding Entrance | WAKALI
K.K.T Productions, Oct 1, 2020
#WEDDINGENTRANCE#WAKALI#KKT -snip- Total # of views as of September 9, 2022 at 10:59 AM ET = 135,050 My guess is that "Acceleration" is the name of the group that performed this music. Notice the custom that is shown in this video of "spraying" ("showering") the dancers with paper money. I think that this custom started in Nigeria, but it is done in a number of African nations. For instance, during wedding celebrations the bride and groom are sprayed with paper money and in the midst of their performances, singers are sprayed with paper money. **** SOME INFORMATION ABOUT SEBENE MUSIC These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only. Excerpt #1 From https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/12/the-roots-of-soukous Seben Heaven: The Roots of SoukousMapping the evolution of a defining Congolese sound, from Cuban origins through to its accelerated final form
…."Congolese music had been popular across the African
continent for over three decades before it made much of an impact in Europe.
Early examples are often slow in tempo, featuring close harmony singing, bouncy
light percussion and, perhaps most importantly, virtuosic guitar playing. This
unique style of local popular music was simultaneously developed in
Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and Brazzaville, the capital cities of the Belgian
and French colonies on either side of the Malembo pool of the Congo river.
In the ’30s, local amateurs began taking inspiration from traditional music, French popular music and American jazz. Son cubano records heard floating through Radio Congo Belge, and imported physically on the G.V. series, played an especially key role. By the late ’40s local labels including Ngoma, Longingisa and Opika – all run by Greek immigrant entrepreneurs – began recording Congolese musicians and exporting their records internationally. The musicians often sang in phonetic Spanish or French, the language of the oppressor, but increasingly preferred Lingala, a trade language that crossed ethnic and regional barriers. Lingala has a sweetness and flexibility that lends itself to poetry which helped push the music far beyond the twin cities on river.
This music became known as rumba Congolaise because the imported records of Sexteto Habanero and Trio Matamoros were mislabeled rumba, an entirely different Afro-Cuban folkloric music. The influence of Cuban Son is clear on the massive hit “Marie Louise,” recorded in 1948 by Wendo Kolosoy and Henri Bowane. Bowane’s brief but energetic guitar solos hint at developments to come, invoking the sound of traditional likembe thumb pianos – best known worldwide as a mbira – and stringed instruments played across the region. In the bars of Kinshasa, Bowane reportedly stretched these solos into an extended dancing section, which became known locally as seben(e).
Once the seben arrived, there was no going back to the verse, similar to how the montuno functions in salsa music.
The prevailing theory is that the word seben entered Lingala at the same time as the acoustic guitar, introduced to the region by a community of sailors and dockworkers from Sierra Leone, Dahomey (now Benin) and Ghana, who came to the Congo basin in the ’20s and ’30s. Seventh chords were commonplace in their proto-Highlife, even barking out ”seven” to signal the musical changes in the solo section. The seben became more central to Congolese music as early pioneers reconfigured and revolutionized their relationship with the instruments in their hands.
[…]
Just as ‘Afrobeats’ today is used as an umbrella marketing
term to promote different styles of popular African music to Western audiences,
‘soukous’ was chosen by Island Records producer Ben Mandelson and Togolese
entrepreneur Richard Dick as the title of a 1982 compilation, Sound D'Afrique
II: Soukous. The compilation included music from Mali and Cameroon alongside
“Madeleina,” a tune off Pablo ‘Porthos’ Lubadika’s 1981 album Ma Coco, which
had been a head-turner in Europe. The tempo is hot from beginning to end, with
a steady kick underpinning sizzling hi-hats, and guitars that are bright as the
midday sun..”…
-snip-
I added italics to these portions of this excerpt to highlight them.
Sebene (also given as "Seben") is found in both secular and religious Congolese music.
****
Excerpt #2
From
"Sebene
The Sebene is a kind of instrumental bridge typically
executed on the electric guitar and is a characteristic element of the
Congolese rumba. The development of the sebene in congolese music has been
credited to both Franco Luambo, but it predates both of them with Congolese
guitarist Henri Bowane being the reputed inventor in the 1940s. In the sebene,
one or more guitarists repeat short phrases, while the lead player improvises
around the theme."
****
Excerpt #3
From https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.738.1531&rep=rep1&type=pdf McGuinness, Sara E. (2011) Grupo Lokito: a practice-based
investigation into contemporary links between Congolese and Cuban popular music. PhD Thesis.
SOAS, University of London
[page] 19
…"T.2.2 Congolese Music
When talking about the structure of Congolese music there are two versions of the spelling for the term referring to last part of the song, the seben. I have chosen to spell the word ‘seben’. I have observed that older writings on Congolese music use ‘sebene’, which I believe must be a French spelling of the word. In a recent work on music-making in Kinshasa (White, 2008), Bob W. White opted for ‘seben’. I concur with White as ‘sebene’ is not a Lingala spelling of the word and, in my experience of working with Congolese musicians, communication has been in Lingala. Indeed several of the musicians have little or
[page] 20
no French. I have always heard the word pronounced ‘SE-ben’, with the emphasis slightly on the first syllable. In Lingala, ‘sebene’ would be pronounced ‘se-ben-ay’, which I have only heard in the 1948 recording of Marie Louise by Henri Bowane and Wendo Kolossoyi. The consensus among the modern-day Congolese musicians I canvassed, indeed their adamant opinion, suggests the spelling should be ‘seben’."...
****
Excerpt #4
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
"Congolese music is one of the most influential music of the
African continent since the 1930s. Congolese musicians had a huge impact on the
African musical scene and outside. Many contemporary genres of music were
created or heavily influenced by Congolese music. As the genre of music in
Kenya Benga or in Colombia Champeta. Democratic republic of Congo and (Republic
of Congo ) are contemporary hub music in Africa since the 1930s /50s. Congolese
rumba joined in 2021, other living traditions such as Jamaican reggae music and
Cuban rumba on Unesco's "intangible cultural heritage of humanity"
list. Music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo varies in its different
forms. Outside Africa, most music from the Democratic Republic of Congo is
called Soukous, which most accurately refers instead to a dance popular in the
late 1960s. The term rumba or rock-rumba is also used generically to refer to
Congolese music, though neither is precise nor accurately descriptive.
People from the Congo have no single term for their own music per se, although muziki na biso ("our music") was used until the late 1970s, and now the most common name is ndule, which simply means music in the Lingala language; most songs from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are sung in Lingala.
[…]
Big bands (c. 1950–70)
Into the 1950s, Kinshasa and Brazzaville became culturally
linked, and many musicians moved back and forth between them, most importantly
Nino Malapet and one of the founders of OK Jazz, Jean Serge Essous. Recording
technology had evolved to allow for longer playing times, and the musicians
focused on the seben, an instrumental percussion break with a swift tempo
that was common in rumba. Both OK Jazz and African Jazz continued
performing throughout the decade until African Jazz broke up in the mid-1960s,
TPOK Jazz with Franco Luambo Makiadi[1] at the helm dominated soukous music for
the next 20 years.”…
-snip-
I added italics to highligh tthis passage.
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment