17 Mar 2022

Alliance Française of Gaborone, a non-profit organisation that promotes language and cultural exchange, will this weekend host Rhumba music live performance  as part of Francophonie week celebrations.

The show will feature celebrated Botswana rhumba music icons Kapenda Katuta and Alfredo Mos of Les Africa Sound fame.

After striking recognisable success with over 30 recording artistes locally, the legendary Congolese lead guitarist Katuta engraved his name on rhumba music fans locally.

Popularly known as Kwasakwasa, the rhumba sounds have since faded into oblivion, but Katuta has made a reassurance that the Saturday night concert will reincarnate the once popular music genre.

Having featured as a lead guitarist to a number of top groups in Kwasakwasa music, Katuta is recognised as one of the central shaping factors of this type of rhumba music, which became popular in the late 90’s.

On Saturday, the Democratic Republic of Congo born rhumba star will perform alongside guest artist Alfredo Mos in a music concert to be held at Alliance Française premises opposite University of Botswana.

In an interview, Katuta said he would be performing with a ten-member band fondly known as Ngwasuma Stars - Congolese professional rhumba musicians who have worked with many local and international artists for cultural exchange.

Alliance Francaise director, Angelique Saverino said the show was part of the bigger celebrations of the Francophonie week.

She said they had also invited one celebrated French artist Sian Pottok - a vocalist, composer and writer whose origins go from India-Pakistan-Congo to Belgium and is currently based in France. “Francophonie week is an international annual celebration promoting French speaking language and Francophone cultures. This year the celebration week runs from the 12th March-20th March 2022,” she said.

She said the  week also gave people an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the diversity of the Francophone cultures, adding that Alliance therefore chose to celebrate with the public through rhumba music, which had recently been recognised as a world heritage by UNESCO.

“Collaboration with Congolese artists makes it even more interesting as rhumba music originates in DRC, which is a Francophone country,” Saverino said.  

Katuta is a lead guitarist of note locally and some of the songs that moved him up the list in music circles are Odirile ‘Vee’ Sento’s popular kwaito-kwasa hit, Letlhale lea tsamaya.

He was also instrumental in arranging Eskimos’ Mpulele hit amongst others and has worked with Wizards of the Desert of the Tla o je phokoje fame and Chris Manto7 of

Zwakapressa. He tried other genres and worked with Afro disco artistes such as Unik Attractions, Dvyne, Lilly, Mr Tagg, Ashley Gops, and Suggie Fisher; among others.

The Ipabalelo Tseleng hit maker is a living legend of rhumba music in Botswana. BOPA