Wa Sangi

Description

" And if the forest could speak? Since their beginnings, Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin have been building a work at the crossroads of transmission and experimentation. After a notable debut album, followed by Ya Mizolé, which affirmed a strong afro retro-futuristic and feminist identity, the collective continues its journey with WA SANGI: "listen to the forest". This third album marks a shift. The perspective broadens, without ever leaving the initial anchor point: that of women, mothers, and their role in transmission. Here, it is no longer just about preservation. It is about alerting. In Congo, deforestation is not an abstraction. It disrupts the climate, depletes the soil, dries up rivers, weakens agriculture (the main source of livelihood), and endangers entire social balances. In a context marked by instability and the constraint of speech, music becomes an essential space for expression, sometimes the only one still possible. Carried by Gladys Samba, her Mamans du Congo, and Robin, WA SANGI adopts a frontal viewpoint: that of mothers who observe, tell stories, and transmit. The central piece, Bidilu Bia Sangi, gives voice to the forest itself. It becomes a character: it speaks, pleads, negotiates. It describes its own disappearance and reminds what it makes possible: feeding, inhabiting, existing. Behind this personification, a reality: that of the peoples whose living environment is disappearing, notably indigenous communities. Around this core, the album unfolds a series of stories rooted in reality. Les Casseuses de pierres documents the daily life of women reduced to breaking rocks to survive, participating in building a city from which they remain excluded. Mamba Kani exposes a brutal paradox: living on the banks of the Congo River while lacking drinking water, at the cost of regular human tragedies. Taleno imposes a simple gesture: to look, as a starting point for awareness. To this documentary material is added a more symbolic and narrative dimension. The lullabies, central forms of the project, become ambivalent spaces: protective on the surface, but traversed by social critiques, as in Lili, which questions selfishness and the absence of solidarity. Elsewhere, Ngoma Ngoma invokes healing rituals to tell the drifts related to the quest for quick money, between beliefs and collapse. Musically, WA SANGI deepens the group's signature by affirming a unique creation method. No pre-established framework: neither tempo, nor aesthetics, nor format. The pieces are born from the voices, songs, and rhythms carried by the Mamans du Congo, which Rrobin extends in real time. The compositions are built in jam sessions, in a logic close to live performance, where chords, structures, and textures emerge from direct contact with the vocal material. Faithful to its tools for over twenty years, Rrobin develops here an approach contrary to current production standards. The electronic textures, entirely shaped over time, escape sound banks and presets: a personal, organic sound palette, in constant evolution. A pillar of the project, Mel Malonga plays a central role in the musical construction of WA SANGI. Arranger of the album and live creations of Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin, he transforms and structures the material carried by Gladys Samba and the Mamans du Congo (songs, rhythms, oral and percussive traditions drawn from the source) to give it its definitive musical form. It is thanks to his expertise that traditional Bantu rhythms, repurposed objects, percussive dynamics, and electronic textures developed by Rrobin manage to dialogue coherently. Composer of the rhythms and co-architect of the project alongside Rrobin, Mel Malonga consolidates and brings to life this meeting between heritage and contemporary creation, becoming one of the essential artisans of the group's sound identity. On stage, this material takes on a physical and immersive dimension. The project unfolds in an organic live form where voices, dance, percussion, and electronics intertwine, extending the intensity of the stories and reinforcing their direct impact on the audience. Designed as a direct extension of the album, the WA SANGI show takes the form of an immersive musical and visual fresco. Between pygmy polyphonies, traditional percussion, electronics, dance, and video projections, the group stages the human and environmental consequences of deforestation in Congo. The forest, water, indigenous peoples, and invisible workers become the central characters of a narrative traversed by memory, resistance, and transmission. Supported by an evolving scenography and significant rhythmic work (tam-tams, lokolés, cans, stones, repurposed objects), the live performance alternates tension, trance, and moments of closeness with the audience, extending the political and sensitive reach of the project. With WA SANGI, Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin sign their most frontal work to date. An album with multiple levels of interpretation: ecological, social, economic, and human, which documents as much as it challenges. Listening to the forest, here, is not a metaphor. It is a necessity." --- Jarring Effects ---