Tabu Ley Rochereau is one of the great engines of Congolese soukous music. He was there at the Beginning and played with all the great ones who are no longer with us like Niko and Franco; but he lives on and continues to cast his long shadow over this great musical genre. Just attend a Tabu Ley live show and bring your dancing shoes because you’re gonna have a good time!
One of my favorite Tabu Ley songs is C’est Comme Ca la Vie (hear it). Tabu Ley’s penetrating tenor voice comes through loud and clear in this commanding soukous classic. It has that utterly joyful, rollicking soukous sound with the characteristic virtuoso guitar line romping all over the the instrumental and vocal lines. In fact, I’d say that the guitar line is one of the most distinctive musical characteristics of soukous. It is the heart of the infectious joy that informs the best of soukous. And C’est Comme Ca la Vie is no exception.
While I haven’t yet been able to locate the French lyrics or an English translation on-line, one hears in the soaring vocal harmonies a transcendant power that invokes the hardness of life alongside its many great joys.
You may purchase C’est Comme Ca la Vie at Amazon.com.
WARNING: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. It does NOT exist to enhance your private mp3 collection. So by all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here. And if you link to my mp3 file at your own site, then you’re stealing my bandwidth and being pretty uncool. So please don’t do it.
Great site Richard. I love world and folk music and all kinds of other stuff too.I have just started a yahoo group about my exotic finds at boot sales and charity shops etc. some recent files included some chinese pop, kanda bongo man and some extraordinary Bollywood film music from India.
All the best, michael. I will make a link from my blog.