The Comedy of Errors: M’Pongo Love - Partager (6 June 1992)

Buy this from Discogs

How wonderful to finally hear some female-fronted soukous after so long.  M’Pongo Love’s story is one of a constant battle against ill health (she contracted polio when she was a child) and the cliff-face of the African music business.  Aged 19 she was able to develop a professional relationship with TPOK Jazz Band saxophonist Empopo Loway.  After developing her craft through the mid/late 1970s, she struck out on her own in 1980 and joined the soukous exodus in moving from Zaire to Paris.  It was there that Love developed the feminist lyrical themes that would define her work in the 80s.

“I sing about women’s problems.  I try to give them courage...and I will stop singing when the relations between men and women in Africa become problem free.  But what man in Africa doesn’t have a mistress?  In addition to a hard life, women have a lot to endure.  I have a feminist duty to see they fight, they defend themselves, they hold their heads high, that they take independent women as examples...We must know how to say what we are, we African women without fearing all the modernism that we need to assimilate.”  (M’Pongo Love speaking in 1989. Quote and background can be found here.)

Featuring Dally Kimoko on guitar, Partager, which translates as Share, is the title track of Love’s 1987 album, which curiously doesn’t feature any self-written material.  When he played this, Peel wondered whether her surname should be be pronounced “Lov-eh” but worried this might be felt affected.  Sadly, the lady herself would have been unable to provide any clarification on this.  She died of complications related to cerebal meningitis in 1990.

Video courtesy of Africa-Hits-70+

HOUSEKEEPING - I’ve been delighted to receive comments on some of these posts over the last few months including an invaluable one about the equipment used to achieve the early 90s rave piano sound.  Frustratingly, Blogger is not publishing my replies.  I’ve done everything I can in my settings to rectify this, but to no avail.  I will keep working on it.  Just know that if you do leave comments, I can see them and I’m very grateful for them.