LIFE

Last band standing

Life, John Clewley, Published on 19/11/2019

» I first heard Orchestre Les Mangelepa's seductive and sweet sound on one of their songs from the late 1970s, Embakasi, which was a nationwide hit in Kenya and beyond. Initially, I thought they had recorded the song in what was then Zaire but in fact they were expatriate Congolese musicians who had settled in Nairobi, Kenya, mainly to take advantage of the sophisticated recording industry that had developed around East Africa's biggest commercial centre.