Ray Lema's 75th birthday!
Audio 51:26
Ray Lema at RFI (March 2021).
© Joe Farmer / RFI
By: Joe Farmer Follow
56 mins
Congolese pianist Ray Lema will celebrate his 75th birthday on March 30, 2021. Composer, arranger, conductor, he is a key figure in “L'Épopée des musiques noire” whose works draw on very diverse cultural sources.
A demanding and rigorous creator, he is also a virtuoso attached to the exchange and sharing of knowledge.
His appearances around the world are always moments of sincere musical fervor.
Let's celebrate the spirit of harmony and openness of an accomplished instrumentalist, a fascinating storyteller, a man of heart, an artist of integrity!
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Ray Lema's artistic development alone explains the character's eclecticism.
His early academic training, his first steps as a classical pianist, could have directed his inspiration to the great European composers.
African independence will get the better of this very marked path and will push it towards other musical convolutions.
Although his harmonic skills accelerated his appointment as musical director of the Zairian National Ballet, the sound environment of the time managed to arouse his insatiable curiosity.
Congolese rhythms and idioms fuel his quest for diversity, the expressive force of which he wants to exploit for his major educational and cultural mission.
The challenge finds its limits when it opposes a categorical "no" to the idea, guided by the authorities, of writing a work to the glory of President Mobutu.
His refusal to flatter the dreams of greatness of an omnipotent leader will earn him the wrath of the authorities, but will decide him to try his luck elsewhere.
We are in 1979, he flies to the United States, at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation.
He will stay there for three years.
Ray Lema in concert, during the Jazz Festival in Montreux (Switzerland), July 10, 2009. © Lionel FLUSIN / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
His arrival in Paris in 1982 once again transformed his multicolored landscape.
African music is on the rise in François Mitterrand's France.
The City of Light is a global sound system that inspires Ray Lema.
He multiplies the meetings, the projects.
Complicities are born, friendships take root.
For 30 years, he combines his enthusiasms in the plural and exports his repertoire from China to Brazil.
It was not until 2012 that the Congo welcomed it again.
The country has changed.
Ray Lema struggles to find the images of his native land engraved in his memory.
This return to the source will be one of the major stages of its existence.
Ray Lema and his musicians in Kinshasa (June 2019).
Thomas Freighter
At 75, Ray Lema is true to his convictions.
He does not intend to betray his thoughts in order to please the greatest number.
His comrades salute his intellectual honesty in unison and give him unwavering confidence.
This sincere communion is palpable on stage when the fervor of fellow musicians springs up.
It is also amusing to hear all these instrumentalists, partners of Ray Lema, evoke their relationship with the Maestro.
Admiration and respect often trump everyday anecdotes.
"
Let us know how to listen and be inspired",
they seem to say… This invitation to honor their venerable chaperone is a mark of affection that we share!
Happy birthday, Ray Lema!
Ray Lema taken aback by the surprise we have in store for him for his birthday!
© Joe Farmer / RFI
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Ray Lema's website
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