Missa Luba: Philips Connoisseur Collection 1965 U.S. Release

by G. Jack Urso 

Front and back covers of Missa Luba (author’s collection). Links to the full album and individual tracks are available at the end of this article from the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.

Never has a mass been sung in this manner. These young vertuosi feel so patently free. There is a reason. The ways of their ancestors were respected by this stranger, the white priest from Belgium . . . Unlike most missionaries, this one came to learn as well as teach. 

                                                               — Studs Terkel, liner notes to Missa Luba

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There are some pieces of music that serve as cornerstones in a person’s taste in music, as well as revealing a bit about the listener’s personality. For me, Missa Luba: A Mass Sung in Pure Congolese Style and Native Songs of the Congo Sung by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, the Philips Connoisseur Collection 1965 U.S. release, is one of those works. The entire album is provided below along with links to individual tracks from the Ae13U Sounds YouTube channel.

Missa Luba is divided into two parts with native Congolese songs followed by the eponymous Catholic mass with traditional verses in Greek and Latin set to Congolese music. My parents acquired the album sometime in the late 1960s and I grew up completely enamored with the tranquil music, native African instrumentation, and vocal performances. I didn't understand a word of it, but I didn't need to. The spirituality of the music is evident no matter which language you speak.

The work has its origins dating back to September 1953 when Father Guido Haazen, O.F.M., was appointed Director of Kamina Central School in the then-Belgian Congo. Shortly after his appointment, Father Haazen gathered approximately fifty schoolboys, ages 9 to 14, into a choral group to sing traditional songs. In 1955, Father Haazen presented an album of the group’s work to King Baudouin of Belgium, who in 1956 permitted the group to call themselves Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin (King Baudoin's Troubadours). Missa Luba was composed and arranged in 1957 and likely first performed in public in 1958 (McDaniel 1-2). 

Congolese design from inside front cover of Missa Luba: A Mass Sung in Pure Congolese Style and Native Songs of the Congo Sung by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin.

In 1958, Philips Records released the album to the European market, followed by the U.S. release in 1965. Music from the album has been featured in several films. Notably, the “Sanctus” was featured in the 1968 film If . . . starring Malcom McDowell, who also walks by the album in a scene in A Clockwork Orange (1971). Ironically, it is the movie If . . . , a film with a notoriously violent ending, that inspired many young people at the time to discover the peaceful album for themselves.

African melodies can be defined as pathogenic and logogenic. Pathogenic, or “passion-born,” has a melodic contour that consistently descends until the end of the phrase or melodic range when the instrumentalist or singer skips an ascending interval in order to pick it up again at the top of the melodic range (McDaniel 5). Pathogenic melody could be an evolution of primitive “scream-singing” dating back to the Paleolithic era (Sachs 51).

Logogenic, or “word born,” melodies are common among the Bantu family of languages, or “tone languages” in which the meaning of a word changes depending on how the pitch of the vocalization varies. This effect is achieved with either voice or instrument and with as many as nine pitch levels in some Bantu languages, a myriad of meanings can be quite layered indeed (McDaniel 5).

The combination of pathogenic and logogenic melodies are what marks African music its western counterpart. These melodic mechanisms are combined with the complex African asymmetrical hemiola rhythmic style that incorporates “addictive rhythm” (McDaniel 13). In short — the melodies draw us into the music, and the rhythm keeps us there. 

Artwork of Father Haazen with two troubadours and Congolese ritual masks,
from a booklet enclosed with the album.

Today, the Congo and its people stand at the doorway to a new life. Plagued, or blessed (as the case may be), with Western civilization, Africa, shaped roughly like a question mark, lies in the equatorial Sun . . . waiting . . . for tomorrow.                                         — Ray Van Steen, liner notes to Missa Luba

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Missa Luba arrives at a time during the twilight of European colonialism on the African continent. Two years after the mass debuted, the Belgian Congo achieved its independence in 1960. In this way, Missa Luba is a manifestation of burgeoning African nationalism and the album introduced Western audiences to the inherent beauty of the culture.

Since then, however, as with many nations in the Central African region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been racked by forces competing for control of its rich natural resources. It is easy to objectify the Congolese people as just faceless victims in a situation beyond our control, but whenever I listen to Missa Luba I am reminded of the transcendent power of music and saddened that it its transcendence is as intangible as its sound.

I still have that original copy of Missa Luba which has been in my possession for forty years at the time of this writing. While, yes, there are pristine recordings of the album on CD, which is the version you hear below, I still often turn to the album I have listened to for nearly half a century — albeit now transferred to a digital file. Listening to the exact sounds of the album from the same copy of the recording that has been in my possession for nearly half a century, it becomes, in a way, almost a religious relic for me. 

Listening to Missa Luba brings layers of nostalgia — both for my youth and for a Congo that perhaps exists now only on record albums. Yet, if the music can help bridge cultures, its worth goes beyond simple nostalgia. The album is presented in its entirety below, and with links to individual tracks, from the Ae13U Sounds YouTube channel.

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Missa Luba: A Mass Sung in Pure Congolese Style and Native Songs of the Congo Sung by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, from the Ae13U Sounds YouTube Channel. The entire album is provided above with links to individual links below.

Track List Side A: Congolese Songs 1. Dibwe Diambula Kabanda [Marriage Song] (3:02) 2. Lutuku y a Bene Kanyoka [Emergence from Grief] (2:48) 3. Ebu Bwale Kemai [Marriage Ballad] (2:22) 4. Katumbo [Dance] (1:42) 5. Seya Wa Mama Ndalamba [Marital Celebration] (2:21) 6. Banana [Soldiers' Song] (2:01) 7. Twai Tshinaminai [Work Song] (1:01)

Side B: Missa Luba 1. Kyrie (2:03) 2. Gloria (2:39) 3. Credo (4:06) 4. Sanctus (1:36) 5. Benedictus (0:52) 6. Agnus Dei (1:52)

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Interior Art and Liner Notes by Studs Turkel and Ray Van Steen

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Works Cited

McDaniel, Doria Anna. Analysis of the Miss Luba. TS. Eastman
      School of Music of the University of Rochester. 8 Jan. 1973.

Missa Luba: A Mass Sung in Pure Congolese Style and Native Songs 
      of the Congo Sung by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin. Per. 
      Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin. Phillips, 1965.LP.

Sachs, Curt. The Wellsprings of Music. New York: McGraw-Hill, 
      Inc., 1965. Print.

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