Les Nouvelles Generations: Children always think they invented the sun

“The foulest act in Babylon was obligatory ritual sex between every woman with a stranger, at least once in her lifetime, in the Temple of Aphrodite.”

At the doorstep of adulthood, Congolese songster Mbubi Malanda lamented about my generation. He called us La Nouvelle Generation. We were the adolescent generation of the day, in the mid 1970s. A restless new demographic. Like all youth, we thought that we had invented the sun. In fact we thought that we had invented everything under the sun. We knew everything! And we disturbed people like Mbubi Malanda and his producer and saxophonist, Verckys Kiamwangana Mateta, also known as Vata Mombassa.

We were savouring the joys and pleasures of freedom, far from the sheltered and suffocating confines of home. Male and female alike, we operated on the fuel of youthful adrenaline. The girls were learning how to perfect feminine coquetry. The boys cherished their budding machismo. Our baldheads today were natural Afro wigs, in the style of James Brown, the King soul; and Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll.

Disco was the in-thing. We rocked. We rolled. We swaggered about the place in Levis and Lee jeans. We painted the place red with slim-fit tops. The girls stepped out boldly in long trousers, to the chagrin of many an elder. Others wore midi skirts and maxi skirts. The maxi and midi replaced the miniskirts of the Swinging Sixties. The boys displayed their pectoralis majora for all who cared to see. We swung in high-healed platform shoes and bellbottomed flares. We called ourselves “cool cats.” And we liked trendy and dressy role models. Kiamwangana Mateta Wanzela Mbongo was one of them. I often operated under the sobriquet of Mario Matadidi Mabele Bwana Kitoko, or simply the handsome boy.

This man Kiamwangana regaled us with one new hit after the other. His saxophone, immortalized in the beat Baluti, was something to die for. Having rebelled and defected from Lwambo Luanzo Makiadi’s All Powerful – Tout Puissant – Orchestre Kinshasa (TP OK) Jazz, in 1968, Verckys had gone on to constitute his own Orchestre Veve. Veve would presently begin giving TP OK Jazz a run for its artistic monies. Then came the production house, Editions Veve, the mother of such hits as Matoba, Engunduka, Lukani, Masua, Mombassa, Mfueni, Sekizengi – and numerous others, as we remember. We were happy to be young and yes, we thought we had invented the sun – and life was beautiful. Perhaps we should just have been frozen in the rolling ‘70s.

But while delighting us with great hits, Verckys and Mbubi left us breathless with Nouvelle Generation. Mbubi said that we were a generation whose ears towered above our heads; “Generation ya sika matoyi eleki moto oh-oh!” he sang. We were hard of hearing. We followed our whims and dreams. Boys and girls alike dropped out of school, to wallow in leisure. Some got into precipitate marriages. They had no idea what lay ahead of their ill-advised rushed nuptials. Mbula Malanda lamented about the short lived sweetness of our youthful blunders, “Libala oh, libala ya sika elengi mingi!”

The big irony of the day was the verve and gravitas with which we danced to the orchestra and the lyrics of Nouvelle Generation. Never mind that we were the dubitable focus. We danced at school and away. We danced on the roadside and in the alleys. We danced in social halls and, soon enough, we even sneaked our way into pubs. We danced! We secretly explored the mysteries of life. We discovered and sampled the mellowed meaning of fruits in forbidden spaces. We serenaded. We moulded. And so Orchestra Lipua Lipua thought they should do this number about us, la nouvelle generation of the rolling 1970s.

Yet la nouvelle generation is always there. It has always been, each new generation imagining – like the one before –  that it has invented the sun, life and the mechanisms that produce it. Does every new generation seek to take its youthful exploits several notches higher than all others before? If Mbubi Malanda thought that the youth of the ‘70s were rushing into early marriage, he should know that marriage is today increasingly anachronistic. Transient group binges are more like it. Invitations are sold in the open. They may read in part, “No rules, no regulations. The less dressed, the better. Bring your own high, even grass.” The orgies are recorded and sold abroad, the Kenya Film Classification Board told us so, not long ago! And the youth said, “Leave us alone to do our thing! You are old fashioned. Run after the thieves in Government!”

Yet can anything new really happen under the sun? We read of prurient and salacious orgies even in the ancient world, long before Christ. Mathias Schulz has written of Sex in Service of Aphrodite in the ancient world. The foulest act in Babylon was obligatory ritual sex between every woman with a stranger, at least once in her lifetime, in the Temple of Aphrodite – the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure. In the Holy Bible, we read of the Prophet Hosea (4: 9 – 19) raining against the practice of temple prostitution. In 2 Kings 23: 7 we read of male prostitutes in the Lord’s temple.

In the end, the new generation invents nothing. If sexual aberrations and orgies are the hallmarks of freshness and liberation, they bring nothing new. Indeed they take the parties back to the jungle where, in the words of say “Project X,” there would be no rules, no regulations. Accordingly, in the words of the philosopher Voltaire, our youth will crawl on four legs even as they serenade and mould. They will narrow the space between them and wildlife. Mbubi Malanda would say to them, “Sala la vie malembe, na-repete malembe!” Which is to say bite life wisely, I repeat wisely –  it is hot!

For their part, older generations need to ask where they went wrong, before they think the youth are wrong. If our ears once towered above our heads, we were only too eager to begin families. Where did we go wrong? Why is the product of our towering ears overwhelmed with prurient appetites that have absolutely no redeeming social value? They don’t want to make families. Just pure raw ravish escapades.

In the end, it cannot be just the youth. Have subsequent generations failed the test of parenthood? As I said, we danced at school in our time. Sometimes a girl’s school visited and we danced together. Today this is anathema. Do we bottle up the youth so much that when they get a little space away from school they don’t even know what to do with it? Or do they act out of frustration?

Do young people find life meaningless as a result of absence of opportunities? Are they overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness in countries whose leaders are forever quarreling, stealing and abusing one another? Are they looking for an escape route from daunting reality?