{"id":3642,"date":"2018-04-14T01:30:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T05:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2018-04-14T17:49:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T21:49:39","slug":"kuolewa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuolewa (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kuolewa\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qikZLiVXi_E?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>Each lesson with Jean-Bosco Mwenda would focus on a particular song &#8212; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Masanga<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bibi-theresa\/\">Bibi Teresa<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kijana-muke\/\">Kijana Muke<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; and after I&#8217;d learned the guitar parts to three or four of these I asked if he could write out the lyrics for me.<\/p>\n<p>Polite as always, Bosco got out a pen and started writing, but he was clearly puzzled. &#8220;Do people in the United States understand Swahili?&#8221; he asked.<\/p>\n<p>I said no, in general they didn&#8217;t &#8212; obviously I didn&#8217;t either, since we were talking in French.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then why would you sing to them in Swahili?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The question took me aback. I&#8217;d assumed if I was learning his songs I would sing them with his words, and that would be what he expected and preferred. But he was genuinely puzzled, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. He described his own music as an adaptation of the cowboy songs and &#8220;Spanish&#8221; music (meaning Cuban) he&#8217;d heard on records as a youth, and he had taken <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3620 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/EW-with-Bosco-and-family.jpg?resize=308%2C345\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/EW-with-Bosco-and-family.jpg?w=396&amp;ssl=1 396w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/EW-with-Bosco-and-family.jpg?resize=268%2C300&amp;ssl=1 268w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 308px) 100vw, 308px\" \/>those influences and created a style that was distinctively his own, performed in Swahili and occasionally Kiyeke, the languages of his listeners.<\/p>\n<p>Bosco took pride not only in his musical skills, but in his role as a teacher: while European singers tend to sing about romance and adventure, African singers have traditionally used their songs to educate and admonish. Bosco had composed some love songs, but also many songs intended to make his listeners think about social conditions and improve their way of living.<\/p>\n<p>This is a typical example, bemoaning the follies of unmarried motherhood:<\/p>\n<p><em>You say you don&#8217;t want to get married.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Every year you have a new baby.<br \/>\nThis baby has no father<\/em>.<br \/>\n<em>It is very difficult to find food for it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Another thing is the young man,<br \/>\n<\/em><em>He makes you pregnant and he runs away.<br \/>\nMoney for milk to feed the baby,<br \/>\nIt takes a lot of effort to find.<br \/>\n<\/em><em>In the baby bottle, you put beer<\/em><br \/>\n<em>To feed to the baby.<br \/>\nThat is wrong, mother.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>(Note for non-Congolese Swahili-speakers: the second time through, instead of singing <em>pombe<\/em> for beer I sing <em>simba<\/em>, which is a popular local brand. Bosco would also namecheck <em>tembo<\/em>, a darker, stronger brew from the same company.)<\/p>\n<p>(Note for guitarists: for this song, Bosco tuned his low bass string up to F, allowing him to get an open F when he wanted, but more importantly to get the low G by wrapping his thumb around at the 2nd fret, which is more comfortable than stretching up to the 3rd.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each lesson with Jean-Bosco Mwenda would focus on a particular song &#8212; &#8220;Masanga,&#8221; &#8220;Bibi Teresa,&#8221; &#8220;Kijana Muke&#8221; &#8212; and after I&#8217;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 and started writing, but he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kuolewa\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kuolewa (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-3642","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>Kuolewa (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\/kuolewa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kuolewa (Jean-Bosco Mwenda) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Each lesson with Jean-Bosco Mwenda would focus on a particular song &#8212; &#8220;Masanga,&#8221; &#8220;Bibi Teresa,&#8221; &#8220;Kijana Muke&#8221; &#8212; and after I&#8217;d learned the guitar parts to three or four of these I asked if he could write out the lyrics for me. 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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":3619,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bibi-theresa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":1},"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":17,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":2},"title":"Masanga (Jean-Bosco Mwenda)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"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 & Latin), listening to records. 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":3649,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":3},"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":3642,"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":4525,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/malaika\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":5},"title":"Malaika (Fadhili William)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1990, I hitchhiked from Capetown to Nairobi, stopping for several months in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), to study with two giants of African acoustic guitar, Jean-Bosco Mwenda and Edouard Masengo. In Nairobi, I met Herbert Misango, a story I've told in another video, who\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\/2021\/11\/Fadhili-William-business-card-web-300x175.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\/3642","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=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3707,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}