PAM Meets Jupiter & Okwess at Coachella

PAM followed Jupiter & Okwess on their American tour this summer, which included a stop at Coachella, one of the most prestigious music festivals in the USA. A trip to Uncle Sam’s country narrated by the Congolese cowboy and shown in images by director Florent de La Tullaye.

Jupiter in the City of Angels

At 5 am on April 14, 2023, Jupiter and his four stage partners (Montana, Yendé, Eric, Richard) arrive in Los Angeles.  They’re off on an American tour, which includes Coachella, one of the biggest – if not the biggest – festival in the world, with over 200,000 spectators strolling the 33-hectare Empire Polo Club for two weekends. Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Rosalia, Blackpink… the great stars of American and world pop all parade here. The only thing missing was Jupiter, one of the Congo’s biggest touring stars, who doesn’t play rumba, unlike his other compatriots. No sooner had he stepped off the plane than he and his staff were on a mini-bus driving through the Californian countryside. After three hours, like a mirage in the middle of the Californian desert, a gigantic silhouette appears: it’s 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 its scope when everyone started calling him when they saw his name on 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 that comes alive every year with the festival. When he arrived, he was loaded onto a golf cart and taken to the Gobi stage, where he was due to perform that day and the following week, at the difficult hour when the sun is at its hottest and many festival-goers are seeking shade and rest. But at 1.20pm, when Jupiter took to the stage, the sound of Okwess brought festival-goers to their feet: very few people here know him, but his electric trances inspired by traditional Mongo rhythms hit the spot. Who could’ve doubted it?

The Congolese cowboy

Don’t be surprised to see Jupiter dressed as a cowboy: his outfit is a long, little-known link between the Congo and the USA. As he explains in the film, since the 50s, the image of the United States has been conveyed by Western films, which the Congolese, as elsewhere in Africa, consumed with delight. It got to the point of contributing to the lifestyle of some of Kinshasa’s youth, who liked to pose for the camera dressed as cowboys. In the 60s, street slang was called “hindou-bill”, because it drew on the culture of Bollywood films as well as “Bill’s” films (in reference to Buffalo Bill), i.e. westerns. Jupiter, the general of the Kinshasa commune of Lemba, has retained traces of this culture, and it’s at work here in the land of cowboys and the American dream. So much so that at Coachella, he was quickly dubbed “Django di Kongo” (in reference to the cowboy in the 1966 film Django). But the singer is no fool: dressed as a cowboy, his sympathies lie with the Native Americans. In the film, we see him revelling as he attends the rehearsals of a native band from the Cahuilla Nation. He’s convinced: they too have African ancestors!