I have since I first heard Congolese music in the late sixties been a devout follower and an staunch advocate of this music. The health and joy it is bringing in my life and the good influence it has had on many of my fellow co-travellers lead me even to talk of the benifactions emanating from this music. It makes me healthy! Body and Soul! I feel vigour and purpose with existence and I can easily say that when many other things has failed to do so, it, and it only, has restores my faith in mankind. I first heard this music by a lucky coincidence when a friend wanted to introduce me to something new. At the time I did not know that what I was hearing was Ntesa Dalienst & Maquisards, Grand Kalle & African Jazz and at the time above all, Franco Luambo Makiadi and the Tout Puissant Orchestre Kinois Jazz.

My taste has since grown to include very many different groups, all to many to even attempt to list here, and I have even gone looking for lingala rumba and its influences outside of the Congos, like in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria etc.

I have one son named Olivier Luambo and another that listens to Oscar Malembe that both sing along to many lingala hits and Luambo heard OK jazz playing even before he was breathing air. My home is mostly full of music and for the love of this music I always wanted to try to give something back. You may say that these web-pages are one attempt of doing so. Hopefully they shall be of some use for musiclovers, musicians and musicology researchers.

My sole purpose for doing this volontary, non-commercial and although in many ways rewarding but totally unpaid work with the discographies, articles and other information about music and is just an expression of my love for Congolese music (also expressed in the name of the domain bolingo.org) I certainly do have a large private collection but it is beyond my reach these days to try to purchase many costly items that are now expensive collectibles, so I depend on your kind help for this work to succeed! To be able to do this in my freetime (mostly late nights early mornings) and still have some "plantains, fufu" and some "pondu" , I do, since thirty plus years, have a full time job as a research librarian.

Since I first published these web-based discographies in the early nineties, they have finally last year moved to their own domain, bolingo.org. Althoug significant amounts of material has accumulated over the years I must admit that I have made much less progress than at first I anticipated. This kind of nitpicking resembling embroidery in "Petit point" takes significantly more time than one at first imagines.

These pages now and then admittedly feels a bit messy, but I try to devote as much time as I can to making them better and more easy to navigate. Given this and the qualified guess that the future will not look much different with regards to how much freetime one has on hand, it has become evident that some kind of log available to all visitors, to more easily see what ongoing work and additions that were done here without snooping around for hours in the wrong places, I finally gave in and opened this document.

http://bolingo.org/audio/africa/disco/log.htm

I am terribly aware of the many shortcomings and the many loose links and will be most happy to receive your guidance and instructions to amend and make the pages better.

Finally...

One, just one slightly "grumpy" note. It is not that bad but I cannot refrain to comment a little on this!

I get some seemingly irritated mail containing urges like "Why don't you have any music that we can listen to!" and "Send me all the Kiam and Lipua Lipua you have!" And for copyright reasons and respect for the Congolese musicians I have not wanted to include any material that I do not have the rights to. I am hoping to find some way also for this and am constantly thinking of various ways but have not come up with a good solution yet. I will relate in another document on these pages my thoughts on that as soon as I have a better draft than I have at the moment. Until then there will be no music to listen to here unless someone submits material which is not copyprotected or of which they have the copyright of. I am quite willing to house recordings and movies as long as the legal aspects are wrinkled out and clear!

I also sometimes "loose my cool" with the people that does not bother to read more than finding the title they are looking for and "blam!" sends me a mail with contents like "I want to order all the Dr. Nico CD's, tell me the shipping charges" and although my immediate reaction is why don't they send some information for me to update the discographies with instead!

Sometimes mails like that makes me wonder why I am doing this for no material reward whatsoever, then I realize that they just want what I want, to hear more good music!

So much said, I have to in all honesty say that most of the mails I receive are helpful and kind and come from knowledgable and wellinformed people with the best intents and some have become my good friends that I have visited in their homes in various countries, and thinking of this overwhelmes those few inconveniences, so I am happy again.

Earlier this year I got one rather short mail with the curt message "Could you please update your site so that we could make use of it!"

I had to think a bit before I finally got "a round tuit". but then I lightened up a bit and, behold... That is just what I did! And more and more...

Hope it is useful to somebody!

Now will you please do your part, and send all the information we are missing here, so we can make a better site! /LF 2005.06.20

For those of you waiting for more vinyl to appear in the discographies, I can only say that it will, and any information you send me I will add to the existing discographies as soon as it feasible, but the main work right now is on large catalogues like Pathé, African, Fiesta, Ngoma, and Sonafric. I will start with some other catalogues like 78 rpm and more of the Congolese labels soon so don't hesitate to send me any material you have. To avoid double work however it is prudent to contact me first to see if I have maybe recently received material that from looking at the discographies appears as wanted or missing. I say this as it takes a long time to scan and take photos and I do not want you to waste time but to concentrate on the things that needs to be done.

If you have read all this, I apologize for taking soo much of your time.

Lars Fredriksson (aka Mr Fung)