Monswet, Nedule, Papa Noel -- doyen de la musique Congolaise!"

On a hard-to-find album, Odemba (JWSCD3), the second of two noteworthy splashes of super-smooth, tasty recordings of Paris soukous by Afri-Jazz (expatriates from both Tabu Ley's Afrisa International and Franco's OK Jazz), vocalist Malaga de Lugendo introduces Papa Noel's initial, nimble and strategic Spanish-style guitar solo to Bopol Mansiamina's "Mere Pepe," enunciating every syllable of the guitar soloist's given and stage names in a formal, respect-filled accolade. As Noel closes out his solo, Malage salutes Noel's position among their musical colleagues.

Papa Noel is a world treasure—the last of his generation's guitar giants. If I were a documentary filmmaker and I wanted to chronicle the Congolese music phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century up to the current day, I'd go out of my way to find a way to document the musical career of Antoine Monswet Nedule, NoNo, as he is known affectionately, the illustrious Papa Noel.

He began his career as a teenager with now-legendary Ngoma Records, which boasted such great stars as Manuel D'Oliviera et Les San Salvador, Tino Baroza and the Beguen Band, Leon Bukasa and Wendo Kolosoy. One can sample the young Noel on Guenter Gretz's Popular African Music compilation, Ngoma, The Early Years 1948- 1960 (PANAP 101). He accompanies then-popular singer Leon Bukasa on "Bibi Sultani,"and later serves as soloist for Trio Fylla and the three Fylla brothers'  band, L'Orchestre Machina Loca.

Although he is best known for his long stint as a soloist for Franco Luambo's Tout Puissant OK Jazz, in his formative years as a guitarist Noel played in many of the illustrious orchestras and bands in Kinshasa and Brazzaville. He was a soloist and songwriter for Joseph Kabaselle's African Jazz and Jeannot Bombenga's Vox Africa, which also featured the vocals of a very young Sam Mangwana. He played with the moto-mambo band. Rock-a-Mambo. He was the initial lead soloist for the original Brazzaville salseros Les Bantous de la Capitale. After he left the Bantous and returned from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, he served as the guitar soloist with Orchestre Cobantou (a group made up of former members of Congo Succes and Les Bantous de la Capitale). He formed his own group, Orchestre Bamboula, representing Zaire at the first Panafrican Music Festival in 1967.

He was widely recognized as one of the greats among the first wave of Congolese guitar soloists before he began his 20-year stint with the most popular band on the African continent, Franco's OK Jazz. When asked what songs that he recorded with Franco he wished his fans to be aware of, Noel responded, "Mobali Malamu," [Le Quart de Siecle, Vol. I: Respect (Pop 01)], "Tangawisi," [Tres Faché (Sonodisc CD 56863)] and one of Franco's most famous numbers, "Mario."

Since Franco's death, Noel's career has continued to expand in a variety of directions despite a serious bout with tuberculosis that hospitalized him in 2002. Because of his recent work, especially with Kekele on Kinavana  (STCD1101), and the current interest in and passion for the fusion between the music of the Spanish Caribbean and Africa, critics, musicians and fans have celebrated Noel as one of this international music genre's foremost soloists.

His passion for Latin beats and melodies has been more than just a fancy of a contemporary fashion in world music. As a boy, he grew up listening to Cuban music in his own household. "At this time," Noel in an e-mail recalled, "my mother had a record player (the make was His Master's Voice) on which she played Cuban music every morning. She had a whole pile of records. I remember some of these tunes, like ‘El Manicero,' (but I do not know who the composer was; it was probably one of the first recordings which had guitar/voice/trumpet). There were also the Trio Maravilla/Chapotin and more, other marvels.   I was much too young to know how to read but enjoyed being lulled, every day, by this beautiful music. Later on, when I arrived in Havana, I looked for this version of 'EI Manicero,' and could not find the album, but by chance, on Radio Havana that evening, they played this very song in its original version. I cried. I must say that this Cuban influence penetrated the whole of me and established itself inside me like a second nature."

In recent years, Noel has recorded with Cuban tres maestro Papi Oviedo on the original Bana Congo (TUMCD101) and formed a touring band of the same name with Cuban and African musicians. There is a live July 4, 2004 recording of Bana Congo playing at the 2004 Music Meeting Festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands on Radio Netherlands (www2. mw.nl/mu/en/), which one can hear online and arrange to broadcast with the radio station. It's a lively set with white-hot sebenes that happily beg for repeated listenings.

During these same years, Noel has also continued playing and advocating by example an extremely sweet version of Congolese rumba, beginning with his solo album Haut Tension and playing with Bana OK and former OK Jazz musicians such as Carlyto Lassa, Wuta Mayi, Mose Fan Fan, Malage de Lugendo and Josky Kiambukuta. He recorded with Sam Mangwana on Galo Negro (Putu 140-2), and toured in Europe and America with Mangwana during that same period. He has been one of the leaders of the current push toward acoustic instrumentation among Congolese musicians. His 2000 acoustic WOMAD concert with Mose Fan Fan and Syran Mbenza has been widely discussed, and Ken Braun at Stern's once noted that far more people had heard that concert than perhaps were actually there. Soon after, Noel recorded Mosala Makasi  (YHCD3),  a charming piece of music, with young Cuban troubadour Adan Pedroso in a live acoustic concert at the Bath International Guitar Festival in 2001.

Finally, Papa Noel, whose solos set the tone and drama for Kekele's richly praised (and deservedly so) Kinavana, was a founding member of the group, and his acoustic stylings and breezy Caribbean accents are equally part and parcel of their initial recording, Rumba Congo (STCD 1093). Noel plays a slender, agile, steel-sure and graceful guitar. It has an unerring ear for lyricism; his fingers an unerring sense of time in rhythm, tempo and syncopation. At first, it seems that he plays more than he actually plays, because, like the very greatest musicians, he actually plays the stops and silences as part of the whole composition, so you hear them as music and vibrating rhythm. His guitar is capable of expressing delight, tenderness, wisdom and wistfulness. He can lead, solo, rhythm or disappear, gently holding up his bandmates if so called upon. Noel, his spectacular musical skills, talent and Congolese, Cuban and Caribbean dance styles and variations, his advocacy of acoustic instrumentation, his sophistication and poetic guitar style continue to enliven the musicians he plays with, the music he plays, and like a stone dropped at the lake's center sends out its magical ripples worldwide.

"African Jazz Mokili Mobimba"

Africa! Entero mundo!: Papa Noel's beyond- borders musical geographies. Thus, how appropriate it is that Papa Noel and Sana Congo open his latest recording, Café Noir (Tumi 114), with that happiest of anthems, "Africa Mokili Mobimba," the all-time gold-standard hit of Congolese rumba.

In 1994, Gary Stewart, author of Rumba on the River, wrote in an article for The Beat, "'Africa Mokili Mobimba' (Africa and the whole world) is perhaps the best known of any song ever to come out of the [African] continent." Originally titled "African Jazz Mokili Mobimba," it served as one of the several band anthems for Joseph Kabaselle and his orchestra African Jazz. The Grand Kalle's two great independence songs, "Independence Cha Cha" and "Table Ronde," have been more widely anthologized, but no song produced by the groundbreaking orchestra, fountain spring of modern Congolese music, has had such an impact or following.

An African music collector I know called it the "National Anthem of Africa," and it combined the Cuban festival feeling that is associated with rumba music all over the world—rumba callejera (street rumba) as Cafe Noir's liner notes name it—with an announcement that African culture, art and music had become a contemporary, modern, international force for the entire world to love and to dance to—“Oye, balingi babina miziki Africa."

As Stewart wrote me recently, "the glow of independence wore off after awhile. There was something catchy about hearing a bunch of the different African countries' names. Perhaps since it wasn't related to one certain event that rapidly faded into history, it had more staying power." There were probably songs before it in which the singers gave a shout-out to various African nations. But there was something about this song's pride and joy in doing so that puts a smile on my face, no matter who sings it, every time I hear it come round to those Lingala-i cri-ay-o's, "Cameroon-eee-o!...Mali-ay!....O Ameri-ka,.,. mokili mobimba."

Legendary Docteur Nico was the lead soloist on the original with African Jazz, and years later Nico working on his final recording, Derniere Memoire, with Empopo Deyesse takes that same solo handed to him almost 20 years before and runs with it, pealing off a lightning-like, flashy, edgy tour de force performance that is my personal favorite. Empopo's vocal reverberates and echoes out from a high-speed tunnel of sonic dynamism; Nico a wily, driving and irresistible rock –n- roll rumbero just styles to take your breath away and then takes off on an ecstatic, blazing rampage.

On a 1990s recording Tabu Ley played it as a guajira, as has been his preference for the greater part of his entire songbook, and Huit Kilos does in his solo an honest homage to Dr. Nico and his early recording "string of pearls" playing style. Sam Mangwana with Dizzy Mandjeku on lead solo guitar has recorded it. Of course, Tshala Muana had a big hit with it in the ‘90s, Dino Vangu the guitar soloist. Vangu, like Noel, is a nimble, slender soloist whose rapid-fire arpeggiation on the various solos distinguishes his from all other versions I have heard, and his performance certainly was a factor in Muana's version being such an overwhelming success.

Les Quatres Etoiles folded it into their live performance of Nyboma Mwandido's "Papy Sodolo," with Syran and Bopol weaving their magic in and out of the long sebene, on what appears now to have been their final recording as a band, Live in London. Likewise Maika Munan, long-time rhythm guitarist, keyboardist and arranger for Papa Wemba and Viva la Musica, folded "AMM" into "Soul Malebo," a medley of classics, including Tino Baroza's "Jamais Kolonga" and "Lolo wa Ngai" and Rochereau's "Paquita" from the golden age, the years of success. Recently, the Rumbanella Band, whose musicians are Noel's contemporaries, put a version of it on their wonderful and silky-smooth collection of classic hits, El Congo Brazza Kin.

Sam Mangwana's rendition of "Africa Mokili Mobimba" on Rumba Music (Stern's Africa STCD 9003), more than any other, gives homage to African Jazz. While many continue to have shout-outs to the African Jazz musicians, such as those in Mangwana's version—Willy (Kuntima), Dechaud and singer Mujos, Mangwana amplifies the tribute by repeatedly shouting out to the band itself, African Jazz. Meanwhile, Dizzy Mandjeku puts his personal stamp on the song's guitar solo. Mangwana also gives a greater tribute than those before him to the song's Cuban antecedents initiating the song with a piano on the hook.

Ricardo Lemvo and his orchestra Makina Loca have also recorded it under the title "El de la Rumba Soy Yo," Kilos on guitar. While writing this, I had the good fortune to see Makina Loca perform "Africa Mokili Mobimba" live, and Huit Kilos delivered a smoking solo, something his own, all the while alluding to the Eternel Docteur's Demiere Memoire burning style. What a show-stopper that song is--makes everyone in the audience feel el de la rumba soy yo.

"Africa Mokili Mobima" was authored and composed by Mwamba "Dechaud" Mongala. Dr. Nico's elder brother, a great songwriter and rhythm guitarist, who created the essential role in Congolese rumba of the rhythm guitar as second soloist and as the rhythmic surface upon which the lead soloist plays out his embellishments. If the brother, Nico, whom he mentored was tagged with the epithets eternel and Dieu de la guitare, Dechaud was credited with being "the guitarist who made Lucifer and his 10,000 devils dance."

Nico initiated the original African Jazz version with a hook as unforgettable as the first chords of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, only a whole lot more funky and a whole lot more fun. Willy Kuntima (Willy Mbembe as he was affectionately known) and the African Jazz brass section chimed in with an equally catchy rhythm solo before Kabaselle's chorus of singers signed on. Mbembe's brass rhythm lead has been as widely adhered to, if not more widely, than Nico's guitar intro over the years.

The chorus and guitar, chorus and brass, call and response, Nico doing genius variations off the hook and in response to the choral monologue when the coast is clear, and ear-catching under currents when the brass or the joyous vocalists, coro or solo, carry the day. At the very end, Dechaud leads out a final dance break, a wash of rhythmic surface for his brother, le bon Docteur, to punctuate and embellish. Right there, you can hear the very thread of Congolese sebene design DNA; "hey, hey," the brass rhythm solos on top of it all, a wall of dance beats that are just too much fun till the chorus brings it down to "Ah- free-kah, Ah-free-kah. Ahhh-freeee-kaaaaa!" [This song has been reissued most recently on the compilation Golden Afrique Vol. 2 (Network).]

Black, With Sugar

Noel takes up the evolving theme and variations of "Africa Mokili Mobimba," an encore number on his 2004 Music Meeting performance, and performs it to provide a grin-inducing hook to his latest full-length recording. Cafe Noir. It's a performance made with all the pride and seriousness he brings as a craftsman and all the joy he can conjure as an artist impassioned by the hands on this number that have gone before, the people for whom it means so much, the song itself.

In a guitarist's nod, Noel has Coto initiate the hook on his bell-toned tres. Sonero Coto turns the engine over and Bana Congo's crisp and pitch- perfect brass—Ozmil Ordonez Garcia and Miguel Angel Valdez de la Oz—take off. Heraldic and heroic, they put spit, polish and shine on Willy Kuntima's classic brass rhythm theme. Coto holds the initial hook, traditional tres style, under the brass as rhythm, the punctuating percussion bubbles up.

The first chorus drops in on the instrumental and introduces the song's vocal component, and it must be mentioned here, this song is meant to be just the big production number Bana Congo makes of it, so indeed there are two different chorus groups. Niurka Galarraga Piquero's full-bodied Cuban vocal, slightly flattened by Papa Noel's bass in one of its higher registers, provide the interpretative, lead chorus—flavor and soul. "Africa Mokili Mobimba" is an old-fashioned, Jack-be-nimble, Jack-be-quick Congolese rumba tempo requiring the vocalists run through breakneck shifts in note-making. Then, just in case you had forgotten, the brass responds to coro call and announces the dance floor.

The first chorus returns and introduces Piquero in her role as soloist who then leads a second chorus with Papa Noel. Noel takes over, con gusto basso, as the soloist who begins the uninhibited litany of shout-outs that bear the song's stamp--"Oh Brazza-ay!"

Brass and tres take up the trademark "AMM" theme again framed by the rousing background "Ah-free-kah" chorus, which includes Abby Surya, Stella-Liv Makasso and Pierre Belkos and frames this whole first movement of the song with the famous and thrice repeated "Ahh-freee-kah" that will bring the whole song down at the end.

The solo—ah, Papa Noel all alone on the dance floor with his magic rhythms—the solo to "Africa Mokili Mobimba" in pure Noel style—sweet and Spanish, syncopated as all get-out and so, so smooth. Then quicker than you could say "chubah" or "sabroso," Noel shouts out, "blo, blo, blo" and stings at his guitar. Sixty-six years old and no more than 40 if he's a day.

The next, however, is a stroke of genius. Coto takes over the solo on tres. And this is no simple rhythm solo, no, no, no, no, no! In the pure spirit of improvisation, Coto takes off after he takes over and lights into it with echoes of Cuba and North American Afro-Cuban jazz. It's a show-stopper from out of nowhere, and utterly sinipatico with the ever-increasingly grin-inducing play of the whole arrangement. Noel briefly reprises his own solo with its own echoes of North American jazz guitarists, while Coto embellishes with a rumbling rumba ritmo on the tres.

It makes sense of course. Dechaud popularized the unique-to-the-Congo mi-solo guitar style that he learned from his pre-African Jazz days when he performed with guitarist Jhimmy the Hawaiian, to whom Stewart credits its invention. The guitar is tuned differently and is used as second solo guitar to create the possibility for effecting piano and local instrument rhythms and sounds. Thus, the tres, which also brings a different, in this case ringing, sound to the music, es perfecto!

When asked about how he came to use the tres in such a manner, Noel replied, "I want to thank Mr. Mo Fini who introduced me to a grand master of the Cuban tres, Papi Oviedo, with whom I realized and completed the formula of my Congolese-Cuban musical dream, which we named Bana Congo with the collaboration of singers Maria Cristina Garcia Azcuy, Nana Akumu and Baniel Mbambo. Before the Bana Congo 2004 tour, Papi Oviedo left us to go and perform with Omara Portuondo. Mo Fini employed a young tres player, Antomarchi Padilla Juan de la Cruz, whom everyone calls Coto, to tour with me in 2004. Coto and I are now close friends and accomplices."

And the crime doesn't stop there. Piquero moves everyone out of the way to belt out the roll call of nations—“Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia," where fans of this kind of music might congregate around a cd player or an iPod with speakers, "El Congo, y el mundo entero!"

The brash brass kick down the doors once more; have I told you the percussion is irresistible? No? Well, mea culpa then. Piquero sums it all up by singing, "en la manera  African Jazz, eh compay?" The big chorus is into it now and for the duration with its three-part "Ah-freee-kah"s,  and who would waltz right in just then, bringing with him one more bit of still-alive styling African Jazz ambience, but Manu Dibango, too smooth and too happy, soloing over the understated guitar and tres string rhythms, framed by the "Ah-free-kah” chorus.

The lead trumpet takes the whole party out and rightly so. Breaking from the strict bones-and-muscle rhythm-led brass chorus that in its flex has held the whole together from the beginning, he just gives in to the pure ecstatic blast and peal, whaling away with a muy hombre tang of barbacoa y rom in big and brassy improvisations till "Ah-Free" chorus closes it all down in a slow, strong tempo, and wrings the final "Ah-free-kah" triplet for all it's worth.

And that's just the opening number.

There are many "marvels" to enjoy on this re cording. Vocalist Sultan Zembellat adds a touch of Central Africa to the whole that echoes and elaborates upon the Bana Congo formula of Papa Noel's formidable African-Cuban musical dream. "Democratic" is a heartfelt hymn to the enduring idealistic political dreams of Central Africans. His "Salsa Africaine" is a welcome send-up of one of the most powerful strains of African/Cuban music—“salsa de Bangui, Bamako, Dakar”; West African salsa, which is more correctly defined as a form of African son in that it bears a greater relationship to son montuno that led to the evolution of salsa than salsa itself.

Manu Dibango joins this recording's cover of "Soukous Son," Noel's style-defining song, much in the same fashion as Dibango's "Soul Makossa" has been considered self-defining—how apt. And Noel's almost-cracked bass vocal allusions to Dibango's own rhythms on African rumba, "Sandokan" (a song on which Dibango does not perform, though you feel his presence) express an irrepressible joy. No sweet, uninflected vocal could equal or come close to muster.

Noel sings, cracked bass, a bit flat, cracked bell and all, on Cafe Noir with all the gusto and charm of a man who has lived life long enough to realize a dream he's worked at and cherished for a life time. If you want tender and sweet, open your ears to the guitar playing—was there ever anyone more? And I like the man with that lifetime's experience, humor and philosophy on vocals too. My favorite track on the recording is its title song, the instrumental "Cafe Noir." No need to break it down here, except to say that his solo picks at the heartstrings, expressing the elegiac, black coffee of emotion—the power and tenderness of love—for someone or for someone's great passion, for the work one man can accomplish in one life with his own hands—all brought into relief and made rich by mortality, which the guitar regards with a victorious tenderness as it shadows.

Then it's boom, wake-up, next track "Sandokan" and your rockin' Father Christmas is rollicking in a buzz of black coffee with cracked coffeebean bass vocals: "Lalaylolalolaylolah"- you youngsters. Try to keep up with him. "Bolingo, eh mama? Bolingo!". Yeah, NoNo, the illustrious Papa Noel.