The last survivor of the musicians who created the legendary Congolese rumba piece “Independence Cha Cha” in 1960, the former percussionist “Petit Pierre” died this weekend in Kinshasa, we learned from his family on Monday.
Pierre Yantula Bobina Elengesa died Saturday of a heart attack, at age 83, on the eve of the June 30 celebration of the 64th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“He was in good shape, he died suddenly,” his son Bruno Yantula told AFP, adding that a meeting was planned for Tuesday at the Ministry of Culture to discuss the organization of the funeral.
In January 1960, negotiations on the independence of the Belgian Congo were held in Brussels. Accompanying the Congolese delegation, the African Jazz orchestra of Joseph Kabasele, alias “Grand Kallé”, would compose “Independence Cha Cha”, which would become the anthem of the emancipation of African countries.
“Petit Pierre”, barely 18 years old at the time, is the drummer and the youngest of the seven musicians of African Jazz.
AFP last met him in 2022, when he was over 80 years old and was still a neighborhood chief in Lingwala, one of Kinshasa’s 24 communes. He explained that he had stopped playing music after a serious car accident in 1963, when he had a leg amputated.
