The DIPENDA project (Independence in the lingala language) was born from the aspiration to give the compostions, written by Fabrice Devienne for the production of the play Une saison au Congo, a new lease of life. The musical show resulting from this project groups 13 musicians singers and slammers onstage.
Césaire’s play tells the story of the congoleseindependence process in 1960, through the rise and final assassination in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first prime minister. Devoted body and soul to this struggle, PL managed to lead his country to independence. An independence that represented so much in terms of hope and sacrifice but also very soon, so much in terms of treachery, plotting and disillusion.
In DIPENDA, a true fusion of artistic styles, the poetic and militant words of Césaire’s play meet Pitcho Wonga Konga’s writings reflecting on the wider issues of independence. This encounter is accompanied by a musical universe at the crossroads of Africa, Cuba and Jazz.
The show unfolds as a musical tale. We are told a history and many stories of independence in French, they are sung to us in lingala, swahili and spanish. Independence includes such concepts as freedom of thought, of expression and the freedom to act. However, as history shows, it paradoxically also drives people into the upheavals of exile.
This history of Congo in the sixties is present throughout the whole show, both through Césaire’s prose and conceptualisation of « négritude » and the cuban musical influences of some of the songs. Indeed, Cuba and the Congo have a strong economic, political and artistic link going back to the days of the slave trade.
Most of the musicians on this project are active on the european jazz and world music scene. Their wide talents of improvisation echo the music and are in perfect tune with the aspirations of a people fighting for freedom and the full recognition of its rights.
DIPENDA invites you to travel between several continents and to reflect on their common history – colonisation, post-independence and the economic, social and cultural migrations that followed.
Slam, songs and music fuse together in a series of rhythmic, moving and sometimes dreamlike sequences in which different languages meet and mingle to create a new idiom in a new world of sound – somewhere between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.
