Kinshasa, September 3rd, 2025 (CPA)- Four hit songs by musician Jean-Baptiste Mubiala Emeneya from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been revisited in a new musical compilation launched by his colleague Serge Mabiala as a tribute to the illustrious departed, the CPA learnt on Wednesday in an interview with the singer.
“This musical compilation was produced to show Victorians (fanatics) that the lessons received by correspondence from the founder of the ‘Victoria Eleision’ clan, Jean Mubiala Emeneya ‘King Kester’, have been well assimilated. Nzinzi‘, “Noni”, ’My Baby‘ and ’Nzila Velele‘ are the four songs covered to pay tribute to his eloquent contribution to Congolese Rumba’, has declared Serge Mabiala, the project’s singer-songwriter.
He added: « I’d like to thank the head of the Yamatia Prod label, which made this project possible to please music fans and bring back memories of King Kester’s work. It’s been available since last month on my YouTube channel and on all the other download platforms« .
Talking about the choice of tracks from Emeneya’s rich repertoire, Serge Mabiala ‘Fumu ya bandinga’ explained: ‘Nzinzi’ and “Noni”, released in 1987 and 2000 respectively, are among the classics that have left their mark on the musical ecosystem of DRC and Africa ».
The late singer King Kester Emeneya, founder of the Victoria Eleison orchestra. ‘For me, it was a fitting way to pay tribute to the memory of a timeless icon, a unique voice, an exceptional artist who had a profound impact on the Congolese music scene’, he has said.
The song, ‘Nzinzi’, taken from the album of the same name, is a call to men to take care of their wives and love them in marriage, instead of coveting the wives of others.
Noni‘ is a love song from the first volume of the album ’Longue histoire », produced with the help of a team of musicians recruited from Victoria Eleison after the generation of singers such as Bipoli na Fulu, Bengali, Makolin and guitarist Huit Kilos.
It is worth noting that in 2021, during the Covid-19 confinement, Serge Mabiala had already performed some of Emeneya’s best-known hits, notably ‘La Rue’, in acoustic mode. Emeneya Mubiala, who died in France in 2014 at the age of 57, was a singer, composer, fashion enthusiast and founder of the Victoria Eleison orchestra. His name ranks among the prolific songwriters who have surpassed the five hundred-song mark in the history of Congolese music classics. Vocally, he succeeded in imposing his baritone voice and distinguished himself by the way he placed it as an intermediate voice between tenors and bass it was an exceptional contribution to his identity and artistic uniqueness that making him a school of Congolese Rumba singer’s whose disciples Serge Mabiala and so many other vocalists have emulated through his vocal chords.