Papa Wemba

Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba — known to the world as Papa Wemba — was born on the fourteenth of June 1949 at Lubefu, in the Sankuru district of the Kasai region of the Belgian Congo, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Of the Tetela people, he was the firstborn son of Jules Kekumba, a former soldier who had served in the Belgian colonial army, and of Marie Nyondo, a pleureuse — a professional mourner who sang at funerals and wakes. It was at his mother's side, amid the sacred sorrow of those songs, that his soaring, keening voice was first formed.

In December 1969 the young singer helped found Zaïko Langa Langa in Kinshasa, the band that launched the third generation of Congolese rumba and stripped the music down to guitars, voices, and driving rhythm. In 1975 he took the name Papa Wemba and formed his own ensemble, Viva la Musica, which became a nursery for a whole generation of Congolese talent. From the 1980s onward his art carried him beyond Africa to the world's great stages, and he became one of the most celebrated African artists of his time.

Papa Wemba was also the animating spirit of La SAPE — the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes — a movement of impeccable dress and bearing through which Congolese youth claimed dignity, elegance, and self-possession. His fusion of tradition and modernity, of village mourning-song and global stage, made him a monument of Congolese and African culture.

On the twenty-fourth of April 2016 he collapsed on stage in Abidjan, singing to the last. May the King of Rumba be honored forever, and may his voice go on carrying his people's pride across the world.