WOMAD

Ricardo Lemvo

From Other...

Over the course of eight WOMAD festivals at Rivermead, two particular styles of music have always been guaranteed to get an audience dancing – the flowing rhythms of West African soukous, and the jaunty horns that characterise much Cuban music. Ricardo Lemvo, born in Kinshasa and now resident in Los Angeles, makes full use of both styles. His Afro-Cuban music is not a hybrid – he rarely mixes the styles within one song – but it will get you on your feet.In his youth, Lemvo listened to soukous bands, highlife groups and his cousin's huge collection of Cuban music, so his use of all these styles is natural. He moved from Kinshasa to Los Angeles in 1972, singing with Cuban bands and Afro-pop groups. In 1990, he met Cuban arranger and multi-instrumentalist Niño Jesús Alejandro, and together they formed the group Makina Loca. Alejandro plays flute and piano, Nengue Hernández is the percussionist, Louis Wasson adds the soukous/makossa guitar lines and trumpeter Charlie Biggs completes the core line-up. On the band's debut album – and at some live dates around LA – musicians such as Sam Mangwana and the renowned highlife guitarist Huit Kilos Nseka have also joined the band.The album 'Tata Masamba' was released in the US last year. On it, Lemvo sings in three languages – Spanish, Portugese and Lingala – and his dynamic, gritty tenor voice jumps out at the listener, sliding over horn lines or initiating call-and-response choruses. The band's set includes mambo songs from fifties Cuba as well as a series of high-class originals.