PAM followed Jupiter & Okwess this summer during their American tour including… Coachella, one of the most prestigious music festivals in the United States. A trip to Uncle Sam’s country commented on by the Congolese cowboy, and told in images by director Florent de La Tullaye.
Jupiter in the city of Angels
It was at 5 a.m. on April 14, 2023 that Jupiter and his four scene partners (Montana, Yendé, Eric, Richard) arrived in Los Angeles. Here they are again on an American tour, which includes Coachella, one of the biggest – if not the biggest festival in the world, with its more than 200,000 spectators who wander, over two weekends, on the 33 hectares of the Empire Polo Club. Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Rosalia, Blackpink… the big stars of American and world pop all parade here. All that was missing was Jupiter, one of the stars of the Congo who tours the most abroad, and who does not play the rumba, unlike the stars of his country. Barely out of the plane, here he is with his staff in a mini-bus crossing the Californian landscapes. After three hours, like a mirage in the middle of the Californian desert, a gigantic silhouette appears: it is that of the festival’s emblematic Ferris wheel. Coachella.
Jupiter is not impressed: a few months ago, he didn’t know about Coachella. But he understood the magnitude of it when everyone started calling him when they saw his name in the lineup. Before him, Konono N°1 (with Björk) in 2007 and the group Mbongwana Star seven years later had already planted the Congolese flag in this desert which comes back to life with the festival. On his arrival, he is put in a golf cart to take him to the Gobi stage where he must perform that same day, also the following week, at the difficult time when the sun is the hottest and where many festival-goers seek shade and rest. But at 1:20 p.m., when Jupiter bursts onto stage, the sound of Okwess brings together the festival-goers: here, very few people know him, but his electric trances inspired by traditional Mongo rhythms hit the mark. Who doubted it?
A Congolese cowboy
We should not be surprised to see Jupiter as a cowboy: his outfit forms the link between the Congo and the USA. As he explains in the film, the image of the United States has since the 1950s been conveyed by the western films with which the Congolese, as elsewhere in Africa, were immersed. To the point of contributing to the lifestyle of part of the youth of Kinshasa, who liked to pose in front of the lens dressed as a cowboy. Street slang during the 1960s was also called Hindu-bill, because it drew on the culture of Bollywood films as well as “Bill” films (in reference to Buffalo Bill), c ‘that is to say westerns. Jupiter, the general of the Kinshasa commune of Lemba, has kept traces of them and they are in full play here, in the land of cowboys and the American dream. So much so that at Coachella, he was quickly given the nickname “Django di Kongo” (in reference to the cowboy from the film Django, released in 1966). But the singer is not fooled: dressed as a cowboy, his sympathy goes to the Indians. In the film, we see him jubilant while attending the rehearsals of an indigenous group from the Cahuilla Nation. He is convinced: they too have African ancestors