Nyboma

Nyboma Mwan'dido (or Muan'dido), often simply Nyboma (born 1952), a prominent Congolese soukous tenor vocalist, has been over a fifty-year span a leading member of several outstanding bands, including Orchestre Bella Bella, Orchestre Lipua Lipua, Orchestre Kamale, Les Quatre Étoiles, and Kékélé, in addition to performing and recording as a solo artist. He is widely recognized as one of the best singers in Congolese music. Nyboma was born on 24 December 1952 in Nioki, a river town 200 km northeast of the capital of what at the time was the Belgian Congo, later the Republic of the Congo and Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He learned to sing as a child in Nioki, in the church choir. He sang in the school chorus when his family moved to Kinshasa while he was still in primary school. Early bands that Nyboma joined were l'Orchestre Baby National and Orchestre Negro Succès, although sources differ on the order and his age when he joined them. According to one source, at the age of 16 he began singing with Negro Succès. According to other sources, he quit his job as apprentice electrician to join his first band, Baby National, as a professional singer in 1969 at the age of eighteen and he later moved to Negro Succès. He left the latter band when its co-leader, Bavon Marie-Marie, Franco's brother, died in 1970. He then signed with the Editions Veve record label owned by Verckys Kiamuangana Mateta (a soukous recording artist and producer/financier, composer, saxophonist, and band leader in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).