Koffi_Olomide_USA

Koffi Olomide & Quartier Latin

USA Tour 2003

Live Report from:

New York City and Worcester, MA

Congolese star Koffi Olomide and his band, Quartier Latin, returned to the USA for a series of Summer concerts. The ambitious tour is to take Olomide and entourage throughout much of the United States over a series of 6 weeks from early June to mid-July, 2003. AfricaSounds.com attended two of the initial USA shows in New York City and Worcester, Massachusetts with the goal of providing our readers with a photo gallery of the two events. Photographers include New York based William Farrington and our Massachusetts based contributor, Ethan Bloomberg, who last brought you the excellent feature of JB M'Piana & Wenge BCBG Live in Canada. The New York concert notes are by Hortense Fuller of AfricaSounds.com We hope that you enjoy this latest feature on AfricaSounds.com and welcome your comments at webmaster@africasounds.com

Koffi Olomide's Concert at The Supper Club, New York, NY

Photos by William Farrington, Text by Hortense Fuller

At The Supper Club event, Koffi Olomide deftly shifted between Well, the New York Koffi Olomide show happened and it was pretty good for New York standards. The band was there, as promised, with six vocalists and four dancers. A good turnout of fans, factoring in the rain and the original rescheduling of this concert. The club was comfortably full with ample room to move around towards the rear of the club, attendance estimates approximately 800 people. With monitors set up and the huge crowd of adoring fans that quickly pressed to the front of the stage to greet Quartier Latin first notes, due to the Supper Club's low stage and the crowd of adoring fans pressed up to the front to admire Koffi Olomide and Quartier Latin, it was difficult for many in the orchestra to see under the musicians shoulders, thus appreciation of dance moves was difficult. A better view could be had from the balcony which was reserved for VIP ticket holders.

Koffi Olomide

Bouro Mpela

Brigade

Fofo Collegien on guitar

Titina

The band played hits from both its latest albums and earlier ones, including several slower rumba selections. The songs were, on average, quite long (many 20+ minutes in duration) which allowed the musicians to stretch out and solo, both vocalists and guitarists. Songs from albums including Magie, Ultimatum, La Loi, Effrakata and Affaire d'Etat made up the majority of the music but there were some earlier numbers as well. Koffi did a couple of solo songs with the band, towards the end of each QL would enter the stage and lend its harmonies. Koffi seemed quite animated and has clearly improved his English skills as he explained the lyrics to several songs and towards the end of the show started taking requests from the screaming women at the front of the stage. This concert, Koffi actually danced quite a bit more than we had seen him do in the past, either live or on video.

Koffi Olomide and Dancers

Montana

Olomide and Dancers

The dancers thrilled the crowd with the latest moves from Kinshasa

Near the show's end, Koffi vanished and Quartier Latin continued to play on for another 25 minutes or so. We were expecting for Koffi Olomide to return to the stage for an encore as the crowd was responding quite loudly for such, but the encore did not happen. We met up with Montana afterwards who was in great spirits and pleased to be back in the big apple (remember he had spent some time here with Defao in the Big Stars orchestra a couple years back). Montana said that to their impression the Los Angeles show had been a success and that the band was happy to have finally played the west coast. They were also happy to have returned to the United States two years after their triumphant debut at the Lincoln Center Festival 2001.