Papa Wemba

Didier Bokelo takes us through two parallel universes of the « man » and « the artist » Papa Wemba. In his margin of creative freedom, which is also that of the imaginary, the artist deploys all his inventiveness and is generous with respect to his fans and fellow musicians. Cannot be worthy of such a beam of sympathy that an artist who will have marked singularly the spirits of his time, as much as time itself has allowed him to mature his art for the good of his community. Papa Wemba turns out to be in the memory of our most tender feelings, the most friendliest and the most smiling ; he is the poet of our faith and our hopes. In his small urban village Molokaï « in the heart of Matonge », it is said to be steeped in kindness and wisdom, because he was « the customary chief ». In this beautiful world of good living, juvenile to the end of adventure, he embodied the hope of a whole youth who in his footsteps, suddenly began to invent the Eden of youth rocked for more than three decades by texts and melodies carved in sound marble. Papa Wemba was one of the most contagious optimists the perpetually adolescent soul.