The Legendary African Musician Wendo Kolosoy in “On the Rumba River”

(May 2, 2008) Jacques Sarasin’s On the Rumba River is a musical tribute to the African musician Wendo. Featuring stunning images and unforgettable music and interviews, the film honors the Congolese people who have been sustained by his music, despite desperate poverty, a history of oppression and an ongoing civil war that has killed nearly 4 million people.

Traveling up and down the majestic Congo River on a disheveled boat, the young orphan Antoine Kolosoy composed his first songs on a beat up old guitar. As he gained renown, the young “Wendo,” as he came to be known, was persecuted by the church and his music banned by the Belgian colonial authorities who feared his joyful rhythms would stir unrest. Wendo became a professional boxer for a time, but he never put down his guitar for long, and when his first album was released in 1948 he became the first superstar of Congolese Rumba.
In the 1960s, his songs expressed the hopes of a newly independent nation, when all dreams seemed like they could become reality. As the country suffered for nearly three decades under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, his music remained a manifestation of the joyous spirit of the Congolese people that could not be taken away.

After having been reduced to a street beggar, Wendo was rediscovered in 1997 and has made a comeback under the new regime.

Filmmaker Jacques Sarasin is a world-class yachtsman who co-founded an arts organization and a foundation dedicated to creating habitat in Africa and Latin America. After starting the production company Les Productions Faire Bleu in 1996, Sarasin produced a number of films before directing his first documentary feature in 2003, I’ll Sing for You, which was produced by Jonathan Demme and featured at more than 35 festivals worldwide. In 2006 he made a five-part series entitled Where Is The World Going, Mr. Stiglitz? featuring former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prize laureate, Joseph Stiglitz.

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