Nyboma

Congolese musician

Nyboma Mwan'dido (or Muan'dido), often simply Nyboma (born 1952), a prominent Congolese soukous tenor vocalist, has been over a fifty year span a leading member of several outstanding bands, including Orchestre Bella Bella, Orchestre Lipua Lipua, Orchestre Kamale, Les Quatre Étoiles, and Kékélé, in addition to performing and recording as a solo artist. He is widely recognized as one of the best singers in Congolese music.

Nyboma was born on 24 December 1952 in Nioki, a river town 200 km northeast of the capital of what at the time was the Belgian Congo, later the Republic of the Congo and Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He learned to sing as a child in Nioki, in the church choir. He sang in the school chorus when his family moved to Kinshasa while he was still in primary school.

He then signed with the Editions Veve record label owned by Verckys Kiamuangana Mateta (a soukous recording artist and producer/financier, composer, saxophonist, and band leader in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He joined the band Orchestre Bella Bella, led by the Soki brothers, in 1972, when it was part of Verckys's stable of artists, until 1973 when its founders left Verckys and Editions Veve. In 1972 Bella Bella's record Mbuta, with Nyboma, was considered the song of the year. Another of Bella Bella's records was called Lipua Lipua, for which Nyboma named his next band in a pattern that continued to the following band. In 1982, he moved to Paris, where he has lived since, except for a period in the United States in the 1990s. The supergroup Les Quatre Etoiles which he founded with three other leading soukous musicians, Bopol, Syran Mbenza, and Wuta Mayi, recorded and toured from 1982 to 1996. The group was a loose arrangement that allowed its four members to pursue their own projects while they were members of Les Quatre Etoiles. Nyboma’s 1995 album Anicet was also produced by Sylla, whose signature is evident from the polished, multi layered songs in the album—including a song in which Nyboma pays tribute to Malcolm X (in a song of the same title) and to Pan Africanism in a song entitled Abissina. In a 1990s interview with the journalist Gary Stewart, Nyboma expressed unhappiness with the African music then being made in Paris as being commercial, and lacking feeling: "Commercial music is appreciated here [in Paris]. Because here you don't put in a lot of words. You just put in music that goes, Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! To sell it, just to sell it." "There are a handful of Congolese singers: Franco, Nyboma, Sam Mangwana, Papa Wemba, who have unmistakable and magical voices, capable of transporting you with a few notes," "One of the great singers of Congolese music, Nyboma's tenor voice is airy, effortless and supple,"

The following is based on several sources.