Pierre Kwenders

Born José Louis Modabi, the Afro-Canadian performer Pierre Kwenders works as a vocalist, composer, producer, and DJ. His sound merges broad appeal with daring experimentation, folding Congolese rhumba together with R&B, pop, rock, gospel, and further elements beneath one expansive stylistic canopy. The stage name originates with his maternal grandfather, a man he never knew because the elder died when Kwenders’ mother was twelve; the figure nonetheless exerted strong influence through household stories passed down by the women in his family. Offstage he answers to his given name.

In 2001 he moved from Kinshasa to Montreal with his mother at age sixteen. After settling in Quebec he joined a Congolese Catholic Church choir, an experience he has described as formative for the depth and dimension that later appeared in his recordings. Kwenders sings and raps in English, French, Lingala, and Tshilub, sometimes switching languages inside a single track. Music soon became his central pursuit. He contributed to the 2012 album Havre de Grace by the French-Acadian hip-hop collective Radio Radio, after which he decided to pursue his own material. His stated aim was to close the distance between Africa and the wider world; to that end he absorbed every genre he encountered while remaining grounded in the rhumba rhythms and melodies of 1940s Congo, also known as Rumba Lingala, the soundtrack of his grandfather’s generation.

Two well-received EPs, Whiskey & Tea and African Dream, appeared in 2013. Though built largely on laptop productions, the tracks demonstrated his skill at weaving disparate sources into elaborate, maze-like arrangements that established a personal sonic signature. His debut album, Le Dernier Empereur Bantou, arrived in 2014 on Bonsound. Working with a team of producers that included Nom de Plume, Radio Radio’s Alexandre Bilodeau, he crafted an Afro-electronic sound that drew heated praise from Canadian critics and audiences alike, earning a Juno Award shortlist and a Polaris Prize longlist. He assembled a live band, toured Canada and several U.S. cities, and consistently played to sold-out, fervently responsive crowds. During these travels he met Tendai Maraire of Shabazz Palaces, an American born to Zimbabwean émigré parents, and the two began exchanging music while discussing Africa’s rising presence in global culture. In 2016 Kwenders traveled to Seattle three times to record at Maraire’s studio with a roster of local musicians, some of African heritage and others drawn from the city’s own scene.

The video single “Sexus-Plexus-Nexus,” issued in June 2017, interlaces strings, Congolese rhumba, hip-hop, soul, contemporary jazz, and pop/rock; its title references Henry Miller’s Rosy Crucifixion trilogy. The follow-up full-length, Makanda at the End of Space, The Beginning of Time, was released that September.