Baloji [Kinshasa-Bryssel] Returns. Nakuenda in Swahili. This is both the theme and title of the Belgian-Congolese word artist Baloji’s latest album. An album that is a return, a search, and maybe even a way to escape: away from Belgium’s poverty, the Flemish part, away from the cement complexes and the growing, European, immigration hostilities, away from the expected. Baloji’s last record ”Hotel Impala” involved his huge breakthrough in Europe. With hard cooked yet playful rap he painted pictures of an existence between worlds, between identities, between continents. ”Nakuenda” is recorded in Kinshasa, during a trip when Baloji had his computer, sound card, microphone, a lunch box and sound technician Cyril Harrison as well as bassist Didier Likeng – the latter known for his genius arrangements of billowing Cameroonian choir music. On the record sounds home – sewn, bagpipe like instruments, distant guitars, song and rap in French, Lingala, Swahili and Flemish. The orchestra La Katuba, named after the very ghetto Lubumbashi in Kinshasa where Baloji’s mother still lives, rattles off jazz rhythms, rumba rhythms, ska, and reggae beats. “Hotel Impala” finishes with the promise: “I’m goin’ home”, and in Nakuenda, whose fantastic play-list Baloji now tours the world with, shows he has fulfilled one of these promises involving a return: he traveled back to the future. Nakuenda.
