Kolinga (FR)

The French group Kolinga originally was just a two-person act, a joint venture of guitarist Arnaud Estor and singer-songwriter Rébecca M’Boungou. After hundred and fifty duo concerts, four years and one album, the group began to take shape as a ‘real’ live band of six musicians that is planning to release its second album in January next year. On Kolinga’s first visit to Finland, the audiences may hear a few tasters from the album, possibly at least the slow and sensitive Te laisser partir, which was already released as a single. However, it is likely that the concert will be built around the band’s first joint album Legacy, which ended up on the official world music list four years ago.

It is now bolstered by Rébecca M’Boungou‘s French and English stories, in which the experience of being a French person between cultures often runs as a personal thread. M’Boungou was born and raised by her ballet dancer mother in the Basque Country in the southwest corner of France, which is itself bi-cultural and partly bilingual. For most of M’Boungou’s childhood, her Congolese father largely was the absent Mister Unknown, as revealed by the opening track of the Legacy album.

But we should not draw too many conclusions from it, or from the next song, Mama, which mostly sways in reggae style. Consequently, we should not take quite literally M’Boungou claim that she is not from this world, as she sings in the multi-part song Je ne suis pas de ce monde. Nothing like it, or at least she is from many musical worlds and means business.

This is probably also what the band’s name wants to get across.

‘Kolinga’ is a word in Lingala, a language spoken in Congo in Central Africa, and it means ‘to want’, ‘to love’ or ‘to crave’. However, with an accent on the letter ‘i’ – kolínga – its meaning becomes even more appropriate: to surround, to connect. And this is how the band’s name has been printed on the album cover: Kolínga.