Mbilia Bel

M'bilia Bel (born 1959) is a Rumba/World Music singer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She is known as the "Queen of Congolese and African Rumba". She rose to fame after being discovered by first Sam Manguana and later by Tabu Ley Rochereau who really helped to gain confidence, fully control of her powerful soprano-voice and to reach to the summit of one the best Congolese female singers.

M'bilia Bel became successful in the early 1980s when she joined Tabu-ley Rochereau's band (Afrisa International). Both of them have made several tracks together included her own solo albums. In the mid 80's due The birth of her child with her mentor and husband Tabu-ley prompted her to take a break from performing for a year, however and after a last album with Tabu Ley in 1988, she moved to Paris. There she started working with guitarist Rigo Star Bamundele and Between 1989 and 1990 she went on touring the United States, Europe, and West Africa. With a combination of beauty, an angelic soprano voice, really good dancing/dancers, and tremendous agility on stage, M'bilia Bel stole the hearts of music fans all over the continent and every where outside of the African continent. She was Africa's first female transcontinental diva. And also became the first notorious female singer from Africa who could claim popularity all over the entire continent. In fact, one could argue that there has not been any female singer from Africa who has captured the imagination of music fans across the continent as much as M'bilia Bel did in the eighties. South African Miriam Makeba known as "Mama Afrika" popularity peaked in the 1960s but could not attract as many fans as M'bilia Bel did later.

At the age of seventeen Mbilia Bel began her performing career singing as a backup-singer for the Queen of (perfumed-Soukous) as she used to call her own music's style the one and only Abeti Masikini and later with Sam Mangwana. She really burst into the music scene when she became Tabu Ley's protegee. And the combination of Tabu Ley's composing genius and Mbilia Bel's heavenly voice resulted in high sales of Afrisa records. Their couple as performers was phenomenal with plethora of hits. Mbilia Bel's first song with Afrisa, released in 1981, was "Mpeve Ya Longo", which means Holy Spirit in Kikongo. It was a moving song about spousal abuse. In the song, she sang the part of a woman who had been abandoned by her husband and has to raise the children by herself. The song was very popular, especially among women in Zaire.

Mbilia Bel's ever first album, released in 1982 was the extremely popular with the title "Eswi yo wapi", one the song in the same album which roughly translates to "Where did it hurt you?", composed by both Tabu Ley and M'bilia Bel. The song won the award for the best song of 1982 in Zaire, and M'bilia Bel won the award for best new-comer. And the rest of the songs in th same album such as Tabu Ley's "Lisanga ya Bambanda", "Kelhia" and Dino Vangu's "Quelle Mechancete" were all huge hits to point that Afrisa International popularity started soaring. Even songs that did not feature M'bilia Bel were receiving more exposure. The stranglehold that Franco's band TP.OK Jazz had held in the music scene was now being loosened, as Afrisa could now match TP.OK Jazz in popularity and notoriety, thanks to the arrival of this new sensation who was now being referred to as " The Cleopatra of Congolese music".

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Wikipedia