114 african appropriations
figure 3.6
dvd cover art for Wenge bcbg’s Titanic (1998).Yo yongana ngambo mama You cause me problems
Tala nga nakudila See how I am crying
Lelo olali wapi? W here did you sleep last night?
Awa makambo kuna makambo Problems here and problems there
Biso tosuki wapi? W here did we end up?^12Werrason promptly reacted to this provocation by releasing the album
Force d’intervention rapide (1998). This title, borrowed from military lan-
guage, made it quite clear that Werrason’s new band, Wenge Musica Mai-
son Mère, was ready to take up the challenge.
The Titanic music video suggests M’piana and his band are the only sur-
vivors of the tragedy and therefore the true heirs to Wenge Musica’s legacy.
Their survival is in fact encoded as a spiritual resurrection, combining
symbolical references derived from both local cosmology and Christian-