Studio Kabako

CHIMURENGA LIBRARY – WHO KILLED KABILA

Every Wednesday evening we broadcast a piece from our sound library that relates to ongoing or previous research. This week we re-play a performance of Faustin Linyekula and Studio Kabako’s “More More More… Future”.

In 1997 Antoine Vumilia abandoned his theatre studies to join the revolution sweeping through Zaire, the Fanonian-Sankarist AFDL army marching to Kinshasa to dislodge Mobutu from power. He became an intelligence officer in the new regime of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, in the country renamed DRC. Then the revolution started to eat its children, and in January 2001 Kabila was assassinated. Vumilia and 84 other members of the security apparatus were pseudo-tried and convicted of involvement in the assassination – he ended up at Makala Central Prison with a life sentence.

From Makala Prison, Vumilia smuggled notes, poems and even videos – the videos became footage for Arnaud Zajtman’s documentary on the assassination of Kabila. The poems, however, provided material for a new composition by Vumilia’s childhood friend, the choreographer Faustin Linyekula, a piece titled “More More More… Future”.

Infusing the hybrid rhythms of ndombolo, the irreverent child of the Congolese rumba, with hefty doses of punk rage and cosmic energy, Linyekula and his collective Studio Kabako delivered a space travelogue that flew in the face of fatalist perception of Africa, merging dance and experimental theatre, mysticism and militancy, riddle and confrontation. He entrusted the musical direction to then-Werrason guitarist and one of Kinshasa finest instrumentalists, Flamme Kapaya. Costumes were by Xuly Bët. We presented the piece as the opening show of the PASS festival at Cape Town’s City Hall in 2010 – this is a recording of that epic performance.

Studio Kabako’s “More More More…Future” opened up our own multi-year research and publishing project on the theme “Who Killed Kabila”, an ongoing reflection on territorialities and exploration of a planetary equatorial sensibility of which the Congolese rumba is a modern articulation – to think of Africa in the world not only through history but geography too. Navigating the density of the equatorial belt as, perhaps, a way out of continentalism. We keep on!

Wednesday, 31 March 2026 from 7pm
Live on the Pan African Space Station
Tune in!