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On the Rumba River
A film by Jacques Sarasin
The new film On the Rumba River will be shown around the U.S. in the spring and summer of 2008. Click here for details.
Jacques Sarasin’s film On the Rumba River offers an engaging, sympathetic, beautiful, and essentially honest portrayal of the fate of old-time Congolese musicians in the harsh reality of Kinshasa today. It focuses on 79-year-old Wendo Kolosoy, who made his first hit in 1948, and the venerable musicians with whom he still performs today. We learn nothing about countless other Congolese stars who followed Wendo, and little about the sensational intricacies of Congolese history, from Belgians to Lumumba, Mobutu, and the Kabilas. But that’s okay. The strength of this film is its delicious visuals—old faces and hands, beat-up cars and guitars, rusting river boats floating among clumps of greenery on the wide Congo River, well-dressed ladies and gents from another age—and a moving story about these weathered artists do their best to keep spirit and dignity alive in a city laid threadbare by the remorseless ravages of a singularly cruel history.
The music is wonderful as well, although not for the high-octane dance energy we generally associate with Congo music. The best musical moments here are spare and understated, Wendo crooning “Camille” with just clave sticks, bass and an acoustic guitar backing him up, Antoine Moundanda of Brazzaville teaching the brass section a song by plucking on the thin tongues of his likembe (thumb piano), or that same brass section improvising solos in rehearsal. [A lovely and also understated CD, On the Rumba River (Marabi), is just out, and it complements the film nicely with both music from the soundtrack and older studio recordings by Wendo.] Fittingly for a film like this, the musicians themselves are the principle focus. Sarasin wisely avoids excessive narrative, as well as risky claims about “the first this,” and “the best that.” The absence of hype is both appropriate and refreshing. A preponderance of closeup shots—mouths, eyes, and busy fingers—reinforces the sense of a narrow focus. The miracle here is that these musicians are still able to make music at all, despite advancing age, crushing poverty, and a public that has largely forgotten them.
That said, Wendo shows himself to be in surprisingly good voice here. He can still belt and yodel as ever. The conceit of the film is that Maman Avion (Aminata Panda), Wendo’s wife and the leader of his courtly lady dancers, is browbeating him for being lazy and manages to goad him into reassembling his band so they can get back to work. Wendo’s initial apathy seems quite real, but he stirs himself, and slowly, the band and dancers come together. After a long search through Kinshasa’s back streets, we meet the charismatic lead saxophonist, Maproko (Joseph Munange). The fact that nobody in his neighborhood seems to know who he is speaks volumes. Then we see his wife his berating him for practicing his saxophone, as if he were a wayward teen. She clearly sees no upside to this reunion, and that too is poignant.
Wendo’s cryptic persona emerges in fragments. We learn he was an orphan who worked on river boats and had a go at a career in boxing. We learn that he was one of those tough fellows who flog passengers with rubber whips down at the port where the ferry boat passes between Kinshasa and Brazzaville. When Wendo took up music, he outraged the Belgian priests who cared for him. They thought his signature song, “Marie Louise” had the power to awaken the dead. Wendo laughs at this, but when he gives a pep talk to his reassembled band, he inveighs gravely against “witches” and bids his musicians to lay aside past rivalries and grievances and play music in the spirit of the Almighty. The respect he commands is evident, although those with knowledge of Mobutu’s rapacious, authoritarian rule may squirm at the sight of veteran guitarist Bikunda (Mukubuele Nzoku), with his sunken eyes and haunted expression, mouthing praise to Wendo—“No one measures up to you, Papa”—in the monotone of a fearful supplicant. I spent time with Wendo and some of these musicians in Kinshasa a few years back, and found him quite unwilling to discuss the politics of any time in Congo history. So it’s no surprise that the flavor of the country’s monumentally troubled past come through mostly in telling little moments like this. They greatly enhance the film.
The musician’s personal tales can be heartbreaking. The flashy and stylish trumpeter Biolo (Alphonse Batilangandi) has 32 children to care for, in his own words “a bad situation.” Maman Avion breaks down and cries as she remembers her past, a moment that makes her beaming smile and elegant couple dancing all the more affecting once the band is up and running. The key performances do not take place before adoring throngs. Rather the musicians and dancers themselves are as much audience as performers, as if the act of reliving their gentle, timeless art were enough. The arrival of the glib, elfin Moundanda from Brazzaville gives the film its climax as he bursts into a rehearsal with Wendo at his side, the band already playing, and improvises a song for the occasion. Hearing his likembe alongside the horns reveals much about the roots African, and borrowed Latin and European elements in the Congo sound, once again, mercifully free from any explanation.
Echoes of Wendo’s life—river boats and boxing rings—interweave the film’s episodic action. A sense of decay and a past receding from view pervades. At no point, does one sense that this band—like the Buena Vista Social Club—will ever arrive at Carnegie Hall. In fact, they have performed internationally during the past decade, although that too has been a tale of struggle as much as triumph—a tale wisely not told in this film. The point here is not to “rediscover” Wendo and his peers, simply to observe them and honor the fact that they lived and made beautiful music under the most dire of circumstances. That willingness not to invent or overreach, but simply to let these colorful, mysterious characters be themselves before the camera, makes this film a winner.
Contributed by: Banning Eyre
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