black titanic 111Stressing the hubris of the captain and passengers and thus marking this
climactic aspect, and not the sinking of the ship as one might expect, is
in line with the Adventist message: it is not the end of days as such that
needs to be emphasized but rather the imminence of the Last Days—there
are many signs which need only be interpreted correctly. Accordingly, the
sinking of the ship is performed less dramatically. Another rising tempo is
this time marked by a break in the musical accompaniment, which returns
only in the following verse. Finally, the intermediality may also account
for the song’s popularity. Given the circulation of Cameron’s movie on
pirated cassette and disc, many of the song’s listeners must have been
familiar with the story told by the lyrics. This means that people who
watched the Holly wood movie almost certainly saw images of Cameron’s
Titanic in their mind’s eye while listening to the song.
A CONGOLESE MUSIC VIDEO CLIPThe last appropriation I discuss is a song and video clip called Titanic,
by Wenge bcbg, a band from the Democratic Republic of the Congo
whose acronymic epithet, bcbg—an abbreviation of the French bon chic,
bon genre (good style, good attitude)—is a self-ascription of sorts, and con-
veys certain kind of chic that has become synonymous with Wenge. The
group has been at the forefront of a new generation of popular urban musi-
cians since the 1990s (W hite 2008: 50). The song is part of the album of the
same title that was released in 1998. As is common for Congolese music,
this album was produced and recorded in Paris. The music video, however,
was realized by Shabani Records, a company based in Kinshasa, the capi-
tal city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2006, a street-side
vendor on Nairobi’s R iver Road sold me a pirated copy of the video. Back
in my hotel room, I was riveted by the enigmatic images that appeared on
the screen when I slipped the vcd^10 into the drive of my laptop. Only later
on, after talking to fans of Congolese music and to colleagues familiar with
Congolese ethnography, did the images begin to make sense.^11
The clip consists of two parts: a supporting intro and the music video
itself. The intro begins with the credits (“Simon Music—sipe / presente /
Wenge bcbg / dans / Titanic”), which are copied on top of translucent-white