How Kasongo came alive, four years after song composer died

“Where are the others you used to perform with,” Daniel Ndambuki aka Churchill asks the late Kasongo Wa Kanema in a past interview.

He bows down emotionally and with his hands covers his face as tears flow freely. The venue thronged by hundreds of Churchill show fans goes dead silent. Some start sobbing as reflections of one of the greatest rhumba bands to ever rule the entertainment landscape, burst untold realities.

“Many of my colleagues were called by God, the Holy one,” he says before getting more emotional, now weeping uncontrollably.

“Sorry. I don’t like to discuss that story. It hurts me so much. Only three out of 13 who used to be in the band are alive,” he says.

This legend is one of the most celebrated artists in Kenya, where he died and got buried. His prowess leads us to the Kasongo song that has found itself back into local entertainment spots, thanks to a social media trend created by a generation that may never know the joy of the rhumba sound.    

Kakolele Viva Christmas was a song famously known and played during festivities, from Christmas Day to New Year in the 1970s and ‘80s.

It was one of the famous songs that rivalled Christmas songs composed by Western artistes. While sung in Lingala dialect, the song rivalled Mary’s Boy Child by German singer Boney M or US gospel artiste Jim Reeves.

The Kakolele Viva Christmas song was composed and sung by Congolese music star Kasongo Wa Kanema, the band leader of Super Mazembe, which resided in Kenya after relocating from Kinshasa, Zaire - now Democratic Republic of Congo - in 1974.

It had 10 artistes who have since died save for one in Loboko Passie, a guitarist based in Mombasa. The band made Kenya their home and released many popular hits like Kasongo Yeyeye Mobali Na Ngai.

Kasongo Wa Kanema died on May 12, 2020 and was buried at Lang’ata Cemetery in Nairobi. Of all Super Mazembe Orchestra’s songs, Kasongo Mobali Na Ngai shot the band into fame and the song has lived the test of time and is today rehearsed and replayed in many entertainment joints by different bands.

It’s a love song where the wife of a man called Kasongo is pleading with the husband to return home and assist the family suffering from the pain of separation.

The song recently went viral after Uganda’s Pastor Aloysius Bugingo sang a rendition of it. It was used as a voice-over for a clip of a warthog quickly going backwards into its burrow and has since been adopted as a background sound for a number of unfortunate videos.

And thereafter, it (the song) was kind of adopted and went viral in the Kenyan social media platforms or landscape by content creators who blamed the government for a wide range of issues affecting the citizenry.

One of the problems are the high taxes and Kenyans are asking ‘Kasongo’ to heed their cries.

And most Kenyan social media users have nicknamed the government as ‘Kasongo’, saying it had turned its back on them. One social media user C Munialo said people are suffering harsh economic times.

“And today, we unapologetically refer to the government as Kasongo,” said another user.

Local Congolese promoter Dr Nico said the original song of Kasongo was composed and sung by Kasongo Ley only to be remixed later by Kasongo Wa Kanema, the band leader of Super Mazembe Orchestra after relocating from DRC. “Not many people know that. They think Kasongo Wa Kanema was the original composer of this song after it became popular with Kenyan revellers in the 1970s and 80s,” said Dr Nico.

He said the song was a comedy directed at the government for its failures, just like many other sarcastic songs. “Such sarcastic songs are there world over but always differ in meanings from time to other,” he said.

Dr Nico said most of these trends were started on TikTok.

He (Dr Nico) is in partnership with Jans Nsana, another Nairobi-based Congolese promoter who signed most of the contracts that have seen most foreign rhumba artistes perform in Kenya.

This year, the duo has brought in a number of artistes, including songstress Mbilia Bel, Koffi Olomide and Zaiko Langa Langa. US based Samba Mapangala was well known to Kasongo Wa Kanema. “He was a good musician who knew the art in the trade and most of his compositions were beyond reproach,” he said.

And many had earlier emerged having similar themes like ‘Kasongo’.

A perfect example was ‘Pili Mswahili’ composed and sung by the late Moreno Batamba in the eighties.

“These songs have a lot of moral teachings but at the same they are stressful to the affected parties,” said William Odhiambo, a rhumba fan.

And Odhiambo is not amused with the abuzz in the social media by the younger population of this song.

“Hardships in life is what could have driven the social media outbursts in this song,” he said.