{"id":17,"date":"2015-12-10T15:22:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T15:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2021-11-25T13:28:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T18:28:39","slug":"masanga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/","title":{"rendered":"Masanga (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0Lm2xtZquig\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When I was in high school, I spent hundreds of hours at the public library, which was between the two high schools (Rindge Tech and Cambridge High &amp; Latin), listening to records. Thanks to the music librarian, Ken Williams, that library had a terrific collection <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3553 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Guitars-of-Africa.jpg?resize=256%2C248&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"256\" height=\"248\" \/>of jazz, blues, international and other LPs, and that was where I first heard Jean-Bosco Mwenda&#8217;s playing, on an LP called <em>Guitars of Africa<\/em>. Like everyone else who heard that record, I was blown away by his instrumental version of <em>Masanga<\/em>, and fortunately both Pete Seeger and Happy Traum had published tablature for it, so I managed to cobble together a half-assed version.<\/p>\n<p>That LP was part of a collection of recordings made in the 1950s and &#8217;60s by Hugh Tracey, who worked out a deal with the Gallotone label to record musicians all over Africa, with the more commercial results appearing on Gallotone and the rest filed in what became the International Library of African Music at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. <em>Masanga<\/em> was one of the most successful of the Gallotone releases, influencing guitar styles throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. As I <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3608 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/young-Bosco.jpg?resize=257%2C232&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"257\" height=\"232\" \/>recall, Tracey&#8217;s notes said that Bosco was in his late teens when he made the recording, circa 1951, and had only been playing for a couple of years&#8211;which seemed incredible, but he was a pretty incredible person. (Though, to be fair, he told me a different story when I <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/elijahwald\/jean-bosco-mwenda-interview\">interviewed him about his early life<\/a>.) As I will explain in later posts, I traveled to Lubumbashi, Zaire (now Republic of the Congo), in 1990 and spent a couple of months studying with Bosco and his cousin, Edouard Masengo.<\/p>\n<p>I explain a bit about the song in my video, but should add a translation of the second verse, which says, &#8220;A woman without a man is like a bicycle without a headlamp.&#8221; I found that puzzling, and asked Bosco what it meant. He smiled and explained, &#8220;She will go fine in the daytime, but may go wrong at night.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s more about Bosco and his music, including a short interview I did with him, on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/afcds.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">African Acoustic Guitar<\/a> page of my website, and in the posts about other songs he taught me: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kijana-muke\/\">Kijana Muke<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bibi-theresa\/\">Bibi Theresa<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/\">Kuolewa<\/a>.&#8221; And here is his handwritten lyric for Masanga (with my chord boxes and minor annotations): <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3493 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Boscos-lyric-to-Masanga.jpg?resize=474%2C644&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"644\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Boscos-lyric-to-Masanga.jpg?w=510&amp;ssl=1 510w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Boscos-lyric-to-Masanga.jpg?resize=221%2C300&amp;ssl=1 221w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(The unusual tuning DADF#AC# and the three chord boxes have nothing to do with &#8220;Masanga.&#8221; I wish I still remembered which song they belong to&#8211;I&#8217;m pretty certain it would have been something of Bosco&#8217;s, since I wrote it on this page&#8211;but I have no recollection of adding this&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in high school, I spent hundreds of hours at the public library, which was between the two high schools (Rindge Tech and Cambridge High &amp; Latin), listening to records. Thanks to the music librarian, Ken Williams, that library had a terrific collection of jazz, blues, international and other LPs, and that was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Masanga (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Masanga (Jean-Bosco Mwenda) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Masanga (Jean-Bosco Mwenda) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was in high school, I spent hundreds of hours at the public library, which was between the two high schools (Rindge Tech and Cambridge High &amp; Latin), listening to records. 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The first was Dave Van Ronk, for whom I spent a year in the wilds of Greenwich Village; the second was Jean-Bosco Mwenda, for whom I traveled to Lubumbashi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/john-Mwenda-Bosco-300x264.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":827,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/anybody-going-san-antone\/","url_meta":{"origin":17,"position":1},"title":"Is Anybody Going to San Antone (Doug Sahm)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A heartfelt tribute to Doug Sahm, Texas roots music, and the Cambridge Public Library.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"f_1210_gallery-image_28989","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/f_1210_gallery-image_28989.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3642,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/","url_meta":{"origin":17,"position":2},"title":"Kuolewa (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Each lesson with Jean-Bosco Mwenda would focus on a particular song -- \"Masanga,\" \"Bibi Teresa,\" \"Kijana Muke\" -- and after I'd learned the guitar parts to three or four of these I asked if he could write out the lyrics for me. Polite as always, Bosco got out a pen\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/EW-with-Bosco-and-family.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4760,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/victorina\/","url_meta":{"origin":17,"position":3},"title":"Victorina Mpenzi (Edouard Masengo)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 22, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another song I learned in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), when I was there in 1990 to study guitar with Jean-Bosco Mwenda. I've already posted a bunch of songs I learned from Bosco (\"Masanga,\" \"Kijana Muke,\" \"Bibi Theresa,\" and \"Kuolewa\"), and this is another --\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/EW-studying-with-masengo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2900,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/shame-and-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":17,"position":4},"title":"Shame and Scandal","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This semi-feminist calypso is a rewrite of a song with a somewhat different title by the Trinidadian calypsonian Sir Lancelot. He performed it in the movie I Walked with a Zombie (1943), then recorded it with Gerald Clark's Caribbean Serenaders on Keynote Records, the leftist New York label known for\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Zombie-SirLancelot.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3649,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/","url_meta":{"origin":17,"position":5},"title":"Lwa Kiyeke (Edouard Masengo)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"While studying with Jean-Bosco Mwenda in Lubumbashi, I was fortunate to also spend some time with one of the other important local musicians, Edouard Masengo. Bosco and Masengo were cousins and had recorded together in the late fifties and early sixties, but their later lives had followed very different paths.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Masengo-coke-ad-208x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4536,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/4536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}