WOMAD

Manu Dibango & Ray Lema

From Cameroon, Congo Dem. Rep., France

MANU DIBANGOBiography supplied by management, September 2002: Who knows ? If he had not been born under the star sign of Sagittarius, he might never have had the temperament of a nomad and the taste for adventure.. Having been sent to Europe at the age of 15, he would have come back an academic success.As it was, he was affected by musical grace in the very first years in the protestant temple. Little Manu on the road between Paris and Brussels, thanks to the masters he discovers (Armstrong, Ellington, Young, Parker…), wandering in places where jazz rips the nights apart voluptuously, a musician’s soul was being formed.Then the famous singer Kabasele arrived in Brussels from Zaïre (Democratic State of Congo), and proposes he join their group “African Jazz” to play Congolese music ; Manu takes up the challenge. He features in around forty records, then goes on tour near Kinshasa. This was to be a decisive step.An idea was gradually taking shape during his life as a well-known musician : to invent a patchwork made up of rich and spirited conversations between jazz and African styles of music. Being of an eclectic mind, listening to the sounds of his era – in 1972 Soul Makossa was the first “French” hit to conquer the States – Manu takes secret pleasure in breaking the musical chapels, building bridges between continents and throwing passageways between tradition and the sounds of future.The first in France to clear the land where the African wave was well established ; he produced albums and went on tour endlessly with warm, passionate enthusiasm and committed himself to humanitarian causes, giving a hand to young talents along the way. He used his time to create musical scores for African music and ever to write his own autobiography.Time to call it a day ? Definitely not ! Manu is nearly 70, but he’s not yet ready to put down his saxophone..RAY LEMABiography supplied by management, September 2002:Is it because he was born in a train in Zaïre (or the Democratic Republic of Congo as it is called today) that Ray Lema has always had such an inclination for travel, for adventure, for the universal ? his had been an edifing path. The child who was later to probe deeply into traditional music of his country and to become musical director of the Zaïre National Ballet (in 1974) was introduced to music by the priests of a little seminary in Kinshasa. His musical infancy was nurced by the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.Then came the time when young Ray took the urban music which provides the «atmosphere» in the nightclubs of Kinshasa, when he ran the gamut from rumbas to Beatles or Jimi Hendrix titles with the same zest. Although he was passionatly interested in the mysteries of sciences, Ray gave up studying chemistry at university and devoted himself to the alchemy of sound.In 1972, now a field musicologist and already in the grip of the perfectionism which would always be part of his character, he was exploiting the musical heritage of 250 different ethnic groups. Seven years later, the Rockfeller Foundation invited him to the USA, where he slaked his insatiable thirst for new experiences with different varieties of Afro-american music. Master of many instruments (keyboards, percussion, guitar, vocals), peerless in the comand of rythm, he also produces and does arrangements for other artists as well as music for movies and theater.Ray Lema has collaborated with artists from many different horizons : among them are Stewart Copeland (drummer of The Police), Jacques Higelin, Charlélie Couture, the jazz pianist Joachim Khün, The Ensemble Pirin from Bulgaria, the Tyour Gnaoua from Morrocco and the Sundsvall Chamber Orchestra from Sweden, for whom he composed «The Dream of the Gazelle».