"Prima Donna"

Ricardo Lemvo is a Congolese born, Los Angeles raised singer/bandleader with ancestral roots in Angola, as fine a lineage for the creation of dance music as one could imagine.  On his fifth album, Ricardo Lemvo returns to what he calls his “root mission,” to explore connections between Congolese and Cuban music.  These eleven tracks find him singing comfortably in Lingala, Kikongo, Portuguese and Spanish, and working with Congolese legends like singers Nyboma and Wutu Mayi, and guitarists Huit Kilos Nseka, Bopol Mansiamina and especially Papa Noel, whom Lemvo feels has never received his due.  These guests meld comfortably with Lemvo’s tight, versatile band, Makina Loca.

There’s deep history behind these songs.  The opener, “Kasongo Boogaloo” features Huit Kilos playing a guitar solo borrowed from Dr Nico, who first played it on the early 60s African Jazz hit “Kayi Kayi.”  That song was itself an adaptation of a contemporary Cuban hit, but Nico’s solo takes its inspiration from yet another, “Seis Lindas Cubanas,” a celebration of Cuba’s six provinces that includes oblique references to the 19^th century Cuban war of independence against Spain, and its celebrated hero, General Antonio Maceo.  The result of all these layers of influence and inspiration is both deep and delightful, a marriage of montuno vamp, piano, percussion, brass, and distinctly Congolese guitar and vocals.  “Prima Donna” inverts the formula, infusing essentially a soukous number with powerful Latin brass. 

Lemvo also reinvents the Franco classic “Malambo” with a brassy, Cuban flavor, and new lyrics in Portuguese and Kikongo.  Why Portuguese?  Well, that goes to Lemvo’s Angola ancestry, elegantly expressed in his marriage of soukous and the meringue-like Angolan kizomba style on “O Casamento,” as well as the slow, sensuous homage, “Serenata Angolana.”  Lemvo extends himself furthest on the final track, “Elbette,” a Turkish folk song he renders in Turkish, and as a Cuban bolero.  Free from orthodoxy of all kinds, and yet fiercely true to his roots, Lemvo maintains his standing as an Afro-Latin original. 

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org