Ntama Journal of African Music and Popular Culture

Didier Mwenda playing his guitar

I was shocked when I received the terrible news of the sudden death of Didier Mwenda through an e-mail on June 3, 2009. Didier Kabobo Mwenda, the son of the famous Congolese musician, Mwenda Jean Bosco, also known as Mwenda wa Bayeke, was born in 1974 in Lubumbashi, Katanga, a province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was married and had three children. Didier died suddenly on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 23.40hr at the local hospital in Lubumbashi. He was buried on Thursday, June 4, 2009 at the cemetery of Gécamines (the large mining company) in Lubumbashi.

Ghanaba wil be buried on the 27th of March 2009 in Accra and his family has posted this “Home Call”-poster.

Arguably one of Ghana’s greatest, most genius, and without doubt most idiosyncratic musical artists, Ghanaba, formerly known as Guy Warren and Kofi Ghanaba, born on the 4^th of May 1923, and baptised as Gamaliel Kpakpo Akwei, died on the 22^nd of December 2008, aged 85 years, at the 37 Military Hospital, Accra/Ghana.

Ghanaba’s musical legacy does neither start nor end with his first album recorded in 1956 in Chicago with the Red Saunders Orchestra, “Africa Speaks, America Answers”, but this record started his international recognition. The album is said to have sold over one million copies and contains his probably best known composition Eyi Wala Dong (Ga for “Thanks to Him” (God)), renamed shortly after its first release to “That Happy Feeling”, a beautiful song that was covered by the German bandleader Bert Kaempfert, whose version sold even more than the original one (released on Kaempfert’s album Swingin’ Safari in 1963). It became one of the best known melodies worldwide.