Missa Luba
/ Les Troubadours du roi Baudouin
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amazon.co.uk
él /Cherry Red Records ACMEM136CD
2008
℗ 1958
1. Dibwe Diambula Kabanda [3:05] Marriage Song
2. Lutuku & A Bene Kanyoka [2:50] Emergence From Grief
3. Ebu Awale Kemai [2:26] Marriage Ballad
4. Katumbu [1:45] Dance
5. Seya Wa Mama Ndalamba [2:24] Marital Celebration
6. Banaha [2:04] Soldiers Song
7. Twai Tshinaminai [1:05] Work Song
MISSA LUBA
An African Mass
8. Kyrie [2:05]
9. Gloria [2:42]
10. Credo [4:10]
11. Sanctus [1:39]
12. Benedictus [0:56]
13. Agnus Dei [1:56]
ON HEARING THE MISSA LUBA
... by Studs Terkel
The joyous voices of Congolese boys in praise of their grandfathers'
gods as well as the Christian God. Never has a mass been sung in this
manner. These young virtuosi feel so patently free. There is a reason.
The ways of their ancestors were respected by this stranger, the white
priest from Belgium. It is my understanding that Father Uudo Haazen
came to the Congo in the early Fifties. Unlike most missionaries, this
one came to learn as well as teach.
Thus, in gathering 45 young boys together, in forming Les Troubadours
du Roi Baudouin, he was teaching Christianity in the manner of The
Carpenter. In loving his teen-aged black neighbors as himself, he, in
effect, was saying: "I honor your ways and those of your fathers. If
you learn this Christian mass, please sing it in the manner of your
people, not my way but your way." (An assumption on my part, of course,
the rapport between this one shepherd and his flock. I can come to no
other conclusion on hearing this remarkable performance.)
There can be no mistaking the origins and traditions of these young
singers. Some less than Father Haazen might have envisioned a Vienna
Boys' Choir or Little Singers of Paris or Obernkirchen kids in dark
skin. He might have impelled European musical values upon the students
of Kamina Central School as a house painter whitewashes a wall,
obliterating whatever had been there before. Instead, he urged his
young proteges to remember the
Congolese rhythms and to freely improvise. The joy of being, the thrill
of living, was italicized by the accompaniment: Congolese drums.
Certainly, he recognized this music not as something "primitive," but
as highly advanced. (It is time to put at rest the hoary canard that
African music is primitive. A Nineteenth Century lie becomes a
Twentieth Century obscenity. Any half-way enlightened jazz fan
recognizes the complex nature of the rhythms that were brought to
America by the kidnapped Africans. It is apparent even to the most
tinny of ears attuned to this recording.)
In listening to this Missa Luba, I am reminded of another performance:
a Harlem congregation singing out "Joy To The World." It was the only
time I had heard this buoyant carol sung as it was meant to be sung
with joy.
I am reminded, too, of a particular Sunday morning in South Africa. I
was seated in one of the rear pews of the Anglican church in the
township of Sophiatown. The good Father Huddleston had preached here
and found himself in bad grace with the authorities. Yet, despite the
courage and Christian goodness of this enlightened priest, I felt a
vague sense of disappointment in the singing. The hymns were sung with
what sounded to me undue restraint - in the manner of a white middle
class congregation. True, there was a gentle swing: this could never be
lost among the South African black people. It was the juice of native
life that was missing.
Chief Albert John Luthuli, 1960's Nobel Peace Prize winner, has paid
tribute to the missionaries who taught him ways of another world. At
the same time, he criticized their lack of understanding the heritage
of his people. He was speaking not only for South Africa but for the
peoples of the whole throbbing continent.
I remember, too, Fela Sowande's reminiscences. Mr. Sowande is Nigeria's
oustanding composer. He recalled the good and the bad of missionaries'
impact on West Africa. He implored: "Respect the culture and the
religions of my people, too. Teach, if you will, but do not impose.
Even better, let us learn from one another."
The song, the South African song, "Wimoweh," has told us the lion is
sleeping. Events now tell us the lion has awakened. It is no longer for
the "white hunter" to decide the lion's fate. That terrible time has
past. Another time, equally terrible, may await - unless we begin to
understand. The Gun no longer works. Neither does the missionary's
Book. Father Haazen appears to have been one of those rare men of God,
who came equipped with more than The Book. Certainly not with
selfrighteousness. The young singers, whom he has guided, are uniquely
themselves: artists of the Congo. Truly, theirs is a religious
performance, not merely a "Christian" one.
THE MISSA LUBA
. . . by Ray Van Steen
The Missa Luba is pure Congolese. It is completely void of any modern,
western musical influences. The Kyrie, Gloria and Credo are performed
within the same framework as a kasala, which is existent today among
the Ngandanjika (Kasai). The Sanctus and Gloria are fashioned somewhat
after the feeling of a wonderful "Song of Farewell" in Kiluba. An
authentic dance rhythm of the Kasai is the basis of the Hosanna, while
the Agnus Dei is based on a song of Bens Lulua (Luluabourg). Most
remarkable is the fact that none of the Missa Luba is written. Certain
rhythms, harmonies and embellishments are spontaneous improvisations.
Father Haazen, recognizing the value to be gained from the retention of
this music form, assigned himself the task of restoring it to health.
He formed Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, a choir, with percussion
section, consisting of about 45 boys from 9 to 14 years old, and 15
teachers from the Kamina School.
In 1958, the Choir made a six months European Tour performing to
receptive audiences in Belgium, Holland and Germany... where Les
Troubadours sang with the famed Vienna Boy's Choir.
On June 30, 1960, after 75 years as a Belgian colony, the Congo became
independent. A political and economic upheaval ensued. Provinces
seceded announcing their individual independence. The whites fled
fearing massacre as Tribe fought Tribe. A United Nations Police Force,
at the Congo's request, was sent to the troubled area. The U.N. Force,
made up of troops from 18 nations, had their worst trouble in Katanga
Province, which wished to secede from the rest of the Congo.
Katanga had its own army, headed by foreigners, mostly Belgians. The
U.N. Security Council ordered these foreigners expelled from the
Katanga Army. Enforcement of the order caused much bloodshed on both
sides. And so... the Congo was catapulted into international headlines.
But headlines hardly tell the complete story of a nation or of its
people.
The Congo is a paradox. It is the land of tribal chiefs and witch
doctors, of the tsetse fly and the malaria carrying mosquito. But here,
too, modern cities lie not far from where near-naked tribesmen still
live under the most primitive jungle conditions. In the 905,381 square
miles of the Congo, many religions and ethnic groups can be found. Of
the 14,150,000 population (approx. 115,000 non Africans), there are
4,200,400 Roman Catholics, 812,600 Protestants and 150,000 Moslems.
Bantus, Sudanese, Nilotics and Hamites all occupy this strange land.
Each group lives within its own culture and holds to its own social
customs.
More changes for more people have occured more quickly in the Congo in recent years, than anywhere else in the world.
Two generations ago, the chief of a Uganda Tribe used to do away with
his enemies by tossing them into a crocodile-infested lake. Now, the
Uganda Chiefs British-educated grandson uses the lake as a swimming
pool.
Many hospitals have been completed and more are under construction.
Missionaries from Europe and America are aiding the training of natives
to staff these new institutions.
Increased transportation is also adding to the growth of the continent.
Roads and railways are being built through swamps and rainforests...
even across the Sahara Desert in the north.
Huge dams are beginning to control dangerous floods. Thousands of acres
are being irrigated for new farmland. Electrical power from the dam
sites are giving birth to new industries.
The Congo is a fertile land rich in natural resources. It is the world's most important source of Uranium.
Yet, such age old staples as gold, tin, zinc and diamonds (mainly industrial) are also listed as natural resources.
All these developments are forcing the African into a new society. A
society which he is building around himself. A world so new, that he is
being forced to abandon a great many of his old world ways. It would
seem that no people could accept such sweeping social and economic
changes without some adverse effects.
The young African seems to be caught between tribalism and democracy... and it is confusing to him, to say the least.
Other problems such as increasing population, food shortages and
poverty, add to the confusion. An estimated 90% of all Africans south
of the Sahara, an area which encompasses the Congo, cannot read or
write. The continent is so rich a prize, that communism could very well
prove to be the biggest danger of all.
Today, the Congo and its people stand at the doorway to a new life.
Plagued, or blessed (as the case may be), with Western civilization,
Africa, shaped roughly like a giant question mark, lies in the
equatorial sun ... waiting ... for tomorrow.
Anyone who saw Lindsay Anderson's if.... on its original release in
1968 will surely recall the visceral impact of the experience. It was
immediately apparent that there had never been a film quite like it
and, 40 years later, there still hasn't. Certainly, it's hard to recall
another British film that connected with such a vast audience without
making any concessions to accepted notions of what the great viewing
public supposedly wanted. And as Malcolm McDowell put it, it was as
though an H-bomb had gone off under the Establishment.
By any reckoning, if.... - and Anderson insisted on
those four dots - is an uncompromising and confrontational film ("Which
side will you be on?" read the posters) that defies categorisation. It
is a film devoid of conventional dramatic structure, stylistically
erratic and often confusing. It has homoerotic undertones and ends with
the wanton slaughter of the great and the good. By rights, having won
the Grand Prix at Cannes, it should have generated a handful of worthy
broadsheet reviews, made the rounds of a few arthouse cinemas, and been
quietly forgotten. Instead, it triggered massive cinema queues, made a
star of its leading man, was hailed by the likes of Stanley Kubrick as
"absolutely, one of the great films", and four decades later has lost
little of its power to astonish and provoke.
Like Patrick McGoohan's contemporaneous TV series The Prisoner (with
whom it shared film editor Ian Rakoff), if.... employed surrealism and
wit to demonstrate that beneath civilised society's reassuring surface
- its hallowed traditions, its business as usual, its level playing
fields - lurked forces hostile to those who dared to reject its
blandishments. Instead of The Village, however, the rebellion of
Lindsay Anderson's hero Mick Travis occurs in the metaphorical context
of one of England's top private schools - all cloisters, manimired
lawns, flowing gowns and sexual repression: the very nerve centre of
Britain's Establishment. And unlike The Prisoner, if.... climaxed in an
orgy of gunfire and slaughter that was all the more shocking for its
Englishness.
By the time he came to direct if.... in 1968, Anderson was already
established in a number of fields: as a highly respected theatre
director, documentary film-maker and critic. His one feature film, This
Sporting Life (1963), had been hailed a success, but its gritty
depiction of a miner turned professional rugby player seemed to have
established Anderson as a director of the naturalistic school - a
reputation that if.... promptly demolished. (In fact a short film
called The White Bus made in 1967, mostly in monochrome but with short
colour sequences, gave the few who saw it a clue onto what lay ahead).
A fiercely principled man not given to suffering fools gladly, Anderson
was none the less much loved by actors, to whom he was unfailingly
attentive and loyal.
In retrospect, it's surprising that the film even exists at all. It
began life as a script by two young writers called David Sherwin and
John Howlett under the title Crusaders. By his own admission, Sherwin
had been looking to break into Hollywood by scripting a cowboy movie,
before realising his emphatically English background had left him
ill-equipped to do so. Instead, he set about turning his own unhappy
experiences at public school into fiction.
Early responses from producers to the pair's work were less than
encouraging, with one telling Sherwin and Howlett that they deserved to
be horsewhipped and another that they had produced the most perverted
and evil script he had ever read. With its middle-class setting,
Crusaders also seemed to be bucking the current trend for gritty films
about no-nonsense, working-class northerners, while its sheer insular
Englishness would surely be a major deterrent for American audiences.
(Though, remarkably, the film was eventually financed entirely by
American money).
When the script finally fell into Anderson's hands, he promptly set
about rewriting it from top to bottom, and finding a new title - which
was eventually supplied by Albert Finney's secretary, Daphne Hunter.
Both he and co-producer Michael Medwin knew, however, that the success
or failure of the film would hinge on who they cast to play the leader
of the rebels, Mick Travis. A decision had all but been finalised, when
Anderson saw 24-year-old Malcolm McDowell in a stage production of
Twelfth Night and asked him to come for an audition. Their original
choice was promptly cast into oblivion.
The film marked the beginning of a long (if erratic) movie career for
McDowell, and there can be no doubt that his swaggering, gimlet-eyed
performance gave the film an electrical charge it might otherwise have
lacked. As the leader of the three pupils who rise up against their
school's ritualised bullying, McDowell is required to demonstrate a
precisely calculated blend of intelligence, irreverence and sheer
cockiness in such a way as to make Travis seem likeable without coming
across as some kind of irritating would-be Brando.
How well he did so can be gauged from the fact that it was his
performance in if.... that persuaded Stanley Kubrick to offer McDowell
his second iconic role, in A Clockwork Orange.
But without Anderson's presiding genius, if.... would clearly have been
a much more ordinary film - a film that might still have profited at
the box office from the current belief that revolution was sexy, but
one whose mystique would have long since faded. Just consider the
numerous ways in which it tore up the rulebook for mainstream success.
To begin with, it blurs genres. An ostensibly serious film dealing with
matters including violent insurrection, beatings and homosexuality,
if.... nevertheless contains many sequences of gentle comedy, with
delightfully understated cameos by such old stagers (and Anderson
mainstays) as Arthur Lowe, Graham Crowden and Mona Washbourne. Through
such scenes and characters, Anderson - a public school boy himself -
was able to express a deep affection for the institution he was
otherwise pillorying.
More unnervingly, many scenes establish a tone of almost documentary
realism, only for Anderson to pull the rug from under us with sudden,
jarring intrusions of dreamlike surrealism. In this, Anderson and
Sherwin were inspired by Jean Vigo's remarkable, though
little-seen,I933 film Zero de Conduite. When the three rebels are
summoned to the headmaster's study following the shooting of the padre,
for instance, even McDowell expressed surprise when he realised the
padre was to be produced, alive and well, from a cupboard drawer to
accept their apologies. Other scenes leave the viewer in some doubt as
to their status in reality; the animalistic lovemaking in the transport
cafe (is the unnamed Girl herself imaginary?), the theft of the
motorbike, the final shoot-out.
The structure of the film also deviates far from the narrative are
favoured by conventional British and American cinema, though it stops
well short of the free-form gimmickry that had been infecting movies
for many years (and by which the relatively ascetic Anderson was
appalled). Until the climactic beating of the three rebels, which
triggers the final uprising, the film is divided into self-contained
chapters - signalled by captions on a black background - which could be
shown in any order without affecting our understanding of events.
Anderson described his approach as "epic in the Brechtian way, where
one is less concerned to tell a story than to show a way of life ...
the concern of the film is much more to show what people are, what
things actually are, than to tie everything together in a specific
cause and effect".
And then, of course, comes the eternally vexed question of why the film
switches between colour and black-and-white for no obvious reason. Did
the differences represent, as many worthy academics theorised at
length, abstruse clues to be teased out and mined for significance in
the same way as certain Beatles lyrics. Or could they be more
prosaically explained as the result of unforeseen budgetary constraints?
In fact the truth lay somewhere in the middle. When it became clear
that lighting the interior of the school chapel for colour would prove
prohibitively expensive, Anderson opted to shoot the assembly scenes in
black-and-white. But having done so, and with the precedent of The
White Bus in mind, he decided to go a step further. As he wrote
himself: "The problem of the script seemed to be to arrive at a poetic
conclusion, from a naturalistic start. (Like any fairy-story or
folk-tale). We felt that variation in the visual surface of the film
would help create the necessary atmosphere of poetic licence, while
preserving a 'straight', quite classic shooting style, without tricks
or finger-pointing."
But he added, sinking a thousand theses in the process: "The important
thing to realise is that there is no symbolism involved in the choice
of sequences filmed in black and white, nothing expressionist or
schematic. Only such factors as intuition, pattern and convenience."
Throughout the shooting, Anderson insisted that if.... should be an
epic and poetic film whose import should not be localised by matters of
time or place. For that reason he decreed that there should be no
references in the script to current political events, or the appearance
of anything else that would make the film 'of its time' such as
fashion, cars or pop music. When Mick and his cohorts are relaxing in
their rooms, they couldn't therefore play rock records as they would
probably have done in reality. Instead, Mick listens intently to the
bewitching, other-worldly sound of Sanctus (a piece suggested by
McDowell) from the Missa Luba, a version of the Latin Mass based on
traditional Congolese songs recorded in 1958. In the film the music
serves a dual purpose, not just distancing the action from a specific
point in history, but somehow symbolizing the siren cry of a better
world, far removed from the spirit-sapping rituals and casual brutality
of the school.
As filming continued, all concerned became increasingly aware that
events in the script were being mirrored in the outside world.
Everywhere, it seemed, the status quo was under attack from the younger
generation. (And remember that 'freedom fighter' had yet to become a
synonym of convenience for 'terrorist). If.... may have benefited
commercially from the fact that revolution and the general questioning
of authority were in the air, but Anderson and his crew were as shocked
as anytme by the violent TV and newspaper pictures (some of which were
used to adorn the rebels' dormitory walls) they were seeing - though
happy to claim the artist's power of prophecy.
Nevertheless, when on the film's release it was accused in some
quarters of actively fomenting rebellion, Anderson demurred angrily. He
was a self-proclaimed anarchist, but rejected the common belief that
anarchism meant "wildly chucking bombs about . .. anarchy is a social
and political philosophy which puts the highest possible value on
responsibility". Travis, he added, is a hero in that he is "someone who
arrives at his own beliefs and stands up for those beliefs, if
necessarily against the world".
Anderson carried on his own heroic struggle against the world for
another 26 years, but only succeeded in completing a further three
feature films. O Lucky Man (1972) and Britannia Hospital (1982) found
him again working with his devoted friend Malcolm McDowell (again
playing Mick Travis) and many of the same supporting cast, though
neither found a large audience and the latter was critically savaged.
By the end of his life, with the notion of a sequel to if.... already
circling the plughole that had claimed so many abortive projects, the
self-described "loner against all systems" was largely resigned to the
fact that "my idea of a 'popular' film which can also carry a charge of
poetry and ideas is going to be proved illusory".
After a long period in the critical doldrums, when even the National
Film Theatre were unable to provide Anderson with a print to accompany
a speech, if... is now widely regarded as a masterpiece and frequently
appears in magazine lists of all-time greatest films. It was reissued
in a new print in 2002 and finally released on DVD in 2007, on both
occasions to a chorus of critical hosannas. Magnificently shot by the
great Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, the film's visual beauty
is now apparent as never before.
At a time when the pressure to conform, to surrender one's will to that
of the many, has never been greater, the spirit of Lindsay Anderson's
greatest film rings ever more urgently. It is a clarion call to throw
off the shackles of tradition, to dare to break with the past - and, if
not to take to the rooftops with sten guns, at least to venture into
the realists of possibility symbolised by those four dots....
Christopher Evans
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