« Special Return to the Origins»
with Nkelo Wa Kongo from Guadeloupe
press 1994
The fourth edition was inaugurated in Ntsila Mamba, towards Nganga-lingolo, a Brazzaville’s suburb.
The choice of this site was not casual: here the caravan route that connects Nzadia Mungwa (the sea) with Nzadia Kongo (Kongo river) passes.
This edition knew the participation of guadeloupeans and zairoises. In the heart of this big ceremony three brave guys, Louya Mpene Malela, Massengo Ma Mbongolo e Tshivili Tshibulu had no other resource than that of their art e their granitic will, in a quite unconstrained dynamics: that of gather men of culture from all horizons around a memory, that of their Ancesters e land.
This was enough to make their gaiety cries heard up to over the Atlantic.
In short, this edition knew the participation of guadaloupeans artists as: Jocelyn Gabali, Bébé Romspart, Mpemba « Benzo », and Marie France Massembo.
In the festival menu were theatre, plastic operas exhibitions, poetry, story telling, singing, theorical and scientific debates and above all… traditional dance. Different tam-tam sounds were heard: those from Kongo but also and especially the far off sounds of kongo drums and singing from Guadeloupe, enriched by the diaspora culture clash.
It was the perfect kermesse, as to abstract that hard civil war time that we were living, the tough time of Cfa franc devaluation.
And the audience, especially children, had flowed to come to this ancestral sanctuary and draw the necessary energy that would, tomorrow, make them become the Bukongo Kongo culture singers. A nowday plural culture because enriched by the emotions and humours from all our country’s regions and from the far off experience of all those who claim their Kongo roots.
One of the most important moments was the festival descent to the Massembo Loubaki train station, on the iron Congo-ocean road to satisfy and give honour to the guadeloupeans Marie France Massembo. She cared very much about seeing her ancesters’ village, and deeply lived this moment of happy reunion among tears. Then a rumbling of drum thunders accompanied “the prodigal daughter” arrived from the far off Guadeloupe to rejoin her “parents” remained in Africa. Gabali found again the Ngabali village and stream, as Benzo Mpemba found agin his Luango.
The fourth edition already revealed itselfas “the faithful translator of our ancestors thought who are close to the already moving diaspora”.
Since then, the bond between Africa and its prodigal children was renewed. Appointments were taken in Africa as in the Antilles, to get the Kongo puzzle rejoined. And a door for the Return to the Origins was opened, a real one, without any colonial or extraversion form’s heaviness.
