{"id":3567,"date":"2018-03-31T07:05:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T11:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3567"},"modified":"2018-04-27T14:08:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T18:08:55","slug":"kijana-muke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kijana-muke\/","title":{"rendered":"Kijana Muke (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kijana Muke\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JEgvlJd-oY4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve loved a lot of musicians, but only twice made serious pilgrimages to study with anyone. 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 of the Congo).<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-3610 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/john-Mwenda-Bosco-300x264.jpg?resize=285%2C251\" alt=\"\" width=\"285\" height=\"251\" \/>As I wrote in my post on Bosco&#8217;s masterpiece, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Masanga<\/a>,&#8221; I discovered his music on the <em>Guitars of Africa <\/em>LP in the Cambridge Public Library, but the two tracks on that record had been recorded in the 1950s and there had been no news of him since he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969.*<\/p>\n<p>Then in the 1980s an English guitarist named John Low published a book called <em>Shaba Diaries <\/em>about traveling to Zaire and studying with Bosco and two of his contemporaries, Losta Abelo and Edouard Masengo. I&#8217;d been thinking about a trip to Africa since my teens, and a South African woman I&#8217;d met in Italy provided further temptation&#8230; so I spent six months busking on cafe terraces in Antwerp,\u00a0 caught an Aeroflot plane from London to Zimbabwe, and after a couple of months hitchhiking through Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia hitched up through Zambia to Lubumbashi. I had written to Bosco when I arrived in Zimbabwe and received no reply, but he was an important man and easy to find: I just asked a cab driver to take me to his house. He welcomed me cordially<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-110 size-medium alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/me-and-bosco-with-picture-300x241.jpg?resize=300%2C241\" alt=\"me and bosco with picture\" width=\"300\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/me-and-bosco-with-picture.jpg?resize=300%2C241&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/me-and-bosco-with-picture.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>, I played him my inaccurate version of &#8220;Masanga,&#8221; and he said he would be happy to teach me to play it right and show me some other songs. So for the next month I went over to his house twice a week, had lunch with him, and got a guitar lesson. (The letter I&#8217;d sent two months earlier finally arrived a week or so after our meeting.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Kijana Muke&#8221; (also issued as &#8220;Muke Mzuri&#8221; and &#8220;Nimemukuta&#8221;) is one of the half-dozen songs he taught me, along with &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bibi-theresa\/\">Bibi Theresa<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/\">Kuolewa<\/a>.&#8221; The lyric is in the local dialect of Swahili, one of at least four languages Bosco spoke fluently, along with French, Lingala, and his &#8220;village language,&#8221; Kiyeke:<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3611 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kijana.jpg?resize=474%2C239\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kijana.jpg?w=545&amp;ssl=1 545w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kijana.jpg?resize=300%2C151&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>I met a girl, very beautiful, oh, mama<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I said to her, &#8220;Hi, darling,&#8221; she replied, &#8220;Hello.&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I said, &#8220;Where are you going?&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>She said, &#8220;Tomorrow.&#8221; <\/em><br \/>\n<em>I went home to sleep, I dreamed of her.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Early next morning I went to her place to see that lady.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Just the same way she told me, &#8220;tomorrow.&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I went home to sleep, I dreamed of her.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>*<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wolfgangs.com\/music\/jean-bosco-mwenda\/audio\/20020427-50522.html?tid=4852915\">All three of Bosco&#8217;s sets<\/a> from Newport are now on-line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve loved a lot of musicians, but only twice made serious pilgrimages to study with anyone. 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 of the Congo). As I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kijana-muke\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kijana Muke (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Kijana Muke (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\/kijana-muke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kijana Muke (Jean-Bosco Mwenda) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve loved a lot of musicians, but only twice made serious pilgrimages to study with anyone. 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 of the Congo). 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Thanks to the music librarian, Ken Williams, that library had a terrific collection of jazz, blues, international and\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Boscos-lyric-to-Masanga.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3642,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":1},"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":3567,"position":2},"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":3619,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bibi-theresa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":3},"title":"Bibi Theresa (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another I learned from Jean-Bosco Mwenda during the month I spent studying with him in Lubumbashi. It is a song of love and longing, which would make it pretty standard fare in a lot of places, but is less common in the Congolese repertoire, where a lot of\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\/Me-and-Dominic-Zaire-1990.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3649,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":4},"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":[]},{"id":2900,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/shame-and-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":5},"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":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567","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=3567"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3748,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}