KIZABA

“Global Beat” Series featured by CISM

• Opening concert : Akpossoul

Daft Punk/David Guetta meets Zaiko Langa Langa/Papa Wemba. Computer in one hand, some kind of drum in the other, the singer-songwriter-composer and multi-instrumentalist Lionel Kizaba considers himself a son of La SAPE —“Société des ambianceurs et des personnes élégantes,” literally the “Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People”—a Congolese movement, as cultural as it is social, that has had several incarnations, a reminder that we are all in search of some kind of benchmark, as writer and academic Alain Mabanckou has wisely noted. Kizaba, who studied Jazz at the Kinshasa National Institute of Arts, reclaims African traditions with a personal flair, delivering an Afro-electro sound with catchy, funky melodies as he takes on Afrofuturism in his own way.