'Kinshasa en Polyphonie'  (podcast)

An invitation to discover Kinshasa in a different way: 

not just through its difficulties, but through the creative and human resources it conceals.

This podcast (in French) gives a voice to five musicians from Kinshasa involved in social-artistic projects born of the street, exclusion or precariousness. Mando, Nathalie, Esther, Giresse and Claudel give sensitive accounts of their lives, the place of music in their lives, and the strategies they have developed to cope and pass on.

The podcast is made up of 3 themed episodes, in which their voices intersect to build a polyphonic narrative of discreet resistance, dignity and creativity. Each of them is neither hero nor victim, but actor in a form of vitality both fragile and powerful.

These audio portraits, featuring intimate interviews and real-life moments, plunge listeners into the world of two flagship initiatives:

• Beta Mbonda: a percussion group made up of former kuluna (urban gang members) who have turned their lives around by mastering traditional Congolese music.
• Espace Masolo: community center for street children, known as "witch-children", where music-making is taught - in particular through a brass band called Les Jeunes Talents.

Through these stories, a singular form of practical wisdom emerges, which we might call the art of positive fatalism: an art of living lucidly in a brutal reality, without resigning oneself. This attitude, far from being a simple acceptance of fate, testifies to an ability to deal with the possible - to create freedom at the very heart of constraint. Through music, each of these young people articulates this tension between what has been endured and what can still be transformed.

Several facilitators of Espace Masolo and of Beta Mbonda are also being interviewed during this podcast, as well as musicologist Manda Tchebwa and musician Felix Wazekwa.

Anthropologist Bambi Ceuppens and Lukas Pairon introduce and discuss what is being told during the interviews.

The three episodes of this podcast will first be broadcast between January and April 2026 on Radio Okapi (UN-Monusco), and then made freely available online.  Here you can listen to an interview on this project, which was broadcast on Radio Okapi on 7th June 2025. 

This podcast can be found on different podcast directories (Deezer, Apple, Google...), or click here.