The Voice of Lightness, Vol. 2: Congo Classics (1977-1993) [Album 1]

In 2008, Pascal Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabou suffered a stroke that forced his retirement from public life at age 68. His most recent position had been a Vice-Governorship of the city of Kinshasa, the capital of his homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before that he served in the country's transitional parliament and the cabinet of President Laurent Kabila. His public life had begun decades earlier, though, in the 1950s, when he made his singing debut with Rock-A-Mambo, one of the great early Congolese rumba bands. At the time, Congo was still the Belgian Congo, and the rumba music that would become one of its greatest cultural gifts to the world was still coming into its own. Tabou, better known by his school nickname Rochereau, joined the band of Joseph Kabasele, and it was in this band that he cultivated the star power that allowed him to strike out on his own in the mid-60s.

This period was well documented on Sterns' excellent 2xCD The Voice of Lightness 1961-1977 compilation three years ago. That set brought the story up to 1977 and cataloged Rochereau's many shifts in direction as he honed his band, Orchestre Afrisa International, and consolidated his position as one of the masters of Congolese music. By 1977, his only real competitor for the title was the great guitarist and leader of OK Jazz, Franco. Vol. 2 of The Voice of Lightness picks up where the last one left off, right after Rochereau's triumphant appearance as the leader of an all-star Congolese band at the World Black and African Festival of Arts & Culture in Lagos, Nigeria. The band he led at FESTAC '77 appears on the first track here, sounding confident and laid back and maybe even a little old-fashioned playing an airy brand of rumba that was at the time being eclipsed by the faster soukous of Zaiko Langa Langa and other relatively young bands.

Rochereau's own band, Afrisa, enters to stay on the second track, though, and throughout the set, they demonstrate a clear mastery of the new, driving pulse the music had taken on, even as the members come and go. Occasionally, Rochereau even addresses the turnover, as he does on "Ponce Pilate", where he dryly chastises his defecting band members, singing in Lingal [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| a, "We're shocked when we see someone injure someone else/ But we laugh when someone injures himself." Later, on "Sarah", he addresses turnover in his personal life, lashing out at his second wife after she divorced him while he was on tour in North America: "How does a man come to despise the woman he once loved?" It should be noted that Rochereau wasn't exactly treading on stable ground here-- he was never a one-woman man, and when I say second wife, I mean she was his second wife at the time. Rochereau was a practicing polygamist.

Even when he sang his most bile-filled lines, though, Rochereau's voice remained a light, supple instrument. He had a way of floating through an arrangement without getting a bit of the dust kicked up by the rolling guitars and insistently pulsing percussion on himself. When he's joined by his chorus, which on many of these tracks includes his lover/protege Mbilia Bel, their voices blend sweetly, contrasting sharply with the blasting horn section, led by Rochereau's longtime right-hand man Modero Mekanisi. This period found Rochereau's songs stretching out to accommodate long instrumental passages for dancing, and the tracks on this compilation average somewhere around nine or 10 minutes, giving the various guitarists Rochereau works with plenty of time to stretch their legs and solo.

Two of the greatest Congolese guitarists ever make appearances here. Rochereau had a falling out with Docteur Nico in the late 60s, when the two split from each other to form competing bands, but "Ohambe" finds them working brilliantly together once again-- when Rochereau cries out "Nico, speak!" Nico obliges with a shimmering, gorgeous solo. The occasion of Joseph Kabasele's death in 1983 brought Rochereau together with his greatest rival, Franco, for "Kabasele in Memoriam", which is a highlight in the careers of both men. Rochereau sings beautifully, sometimes in harmony with his old rival, and Franco offers a showcase on both acoustic and electric guitar. Franco was taken by the AIDS epidemic in 1989, and it would have been a shame had the two never recorded together.

As the second disc wears on, a few things become clear: The music was changing around Rochereau, and he had to change with it. This set avoids his Paris studio work with drum machines and synthesizers attempting to stand in for horns, but it still hints at that work in the synths that occasionally drop in for a squiggly solo. More importantly, though, Rochereau spent much of the time covered on the disc living essentially in exile, first in Europe and then in the United States. To his great credit, the singer managed throughout his career to keep more distance between himself and dictator Mobutu Sese Seko than many of his peers, and when living in exile in Paris, he recorded some of his most openly critical songs. The punning title of "Exil-Ley" belies a much more serious message-- the song is Rochereau plainly lamenting his nation's descent into graft and economic collapse. "Le Glas a Sonne", also recorded in 1993, directly indicts Mobutu's increasingly ruinous regime, listing off the great men of Congo and leaving Mobutu out, in effect likening him to the white colonial rulers the country had thrown out decades before.

Rocehreau's musical career largely petered out during the 90s when he lived in the U.S. As his attentions were drawn more and more to the politics and needs of his homeland. When Mobutu fell in 1997, he went back home to serve in the new government. Even so, his cultural legacy seems likely to loom high over his political legacy when the historical record settles. This compilation and its previous volume are the absolute best place for Westerners to begin exploring that legacy. They're by no means a definitive catalog-- this is, after all, a man who released four or five albums a year during the period covered on this comp-- but they gather much of his best work in one easy-to-digest set, and everyone needs a starting place. With its crisp sound, informative notes and impeccable track selection, this is the intro the great artist deserves.