According
to legend, Antoine Kolosoy—who'd later change his name to Papa
Wendo—was working as a boat-mechanic on the Congo when he picked up a
guitar and invented the music that came to be known as rumba. It's an
insinuating sound, rumba. A typical number starts with some circular picking, then
adds percussion, horns, thumb piano, and vocals, piece by piece, until the song
develops a kind of inexorability. Papa Wendo's buoyant, transcendent style
became an instant sensation, though it tended to unnerve the region's ruling
classes, who distrusted the peasant language Wendo used, the stirring rhythms
he concocted, and—worst of all—the way the rumba made the masses
feel united and powerful.
Documentarian
Jacques Sarin covers Papa Wendo in On The Rumba River much the way he covered Mali pop
legend Kar Kar in the 2003 film I'll Sing For You. Sarin isn't interested in straight
biography; he'd rather weave stark depictions of third world poverty between
musical vignettes, talking-head anecdotes, and scenes of a legend in his
twilight years. Anyone expecting to leave On The Rumba River with even a rudimentary sense of
Wendo's life story and the tumult of Central African politics should scale
those expectations back a bit.
But Sarin
does record some remarkable stories, from Wendo's wife weepily recalling their
dead children to one of his band members describing how he learned to play
along with Wendo without any formal training. Sarin captures some stunning
images too, contrasting the dusty natural beauty of the Congo with the way much
of its populace is clad in cast-off American t-shirts. Mostly On The Rumba
River works best
when it sticks to the musical performances, which Sarin films in lengthy scenes
built from extreme close-ups of lips, fingers and sweaty skin. The genius of
the rumba is that the audience can see and hear a song begin, then get so lost
in the flow that long stretches can slip by, unremembered, like so much muddy
water beneath the hull of a puttering boat.