Sister Pili + 2

While visiting my brother in Nairobi in 1983, we went to a nightclub and heard Batamba Wenda Morris (aka Moreno). He had a voice that would haunt me for decades. Like many other musicians of that time and place, Moreno was of Congolese origin and came east in search of work, finding a ready audience in the clubs of Entebbe, Dar Es Salaam, Mombasa and Nairobi. Here he found a network of fellow expatriates. At the heart of the movement was a group called Shika Shika that featured Moreno, with Lovy Longomba and Jimi Monimambo. Moreno’s bass voice and Lovy’s high tenor created the perfect harmonic balance.

Moreno started Moja-One, switched to singing in Kiswahili, and was instantly popular. His big hit ‘Sister Pili’, from 1983 is included here. It was a love song to his girlfriend, a Tanzanian fashion model. His hit ‘Vidonge Sitaki, released in 1993, was still in the charts a year later when he died at age 38. Though most of his music was released on cassette, ‘Sister Pili’ came out on an album in France. To augment that album, reissued here, producer Doug Paterson has found two singles from 1977 by a truly obscure group, Bana Nzadi, that featured Moreno. The musicians are superb, their familiarity and confidence shows when the bassist takes the lead for a couple of bars and one or other of the guitarists answers. There’s that heat of the moment joy and recognition that suggests these are probably first takes. It seems Moreno will get the break he deserves and his music will be enjoyed by a global audience.