The founder of the popular Cavacha Music style, Veve Verckys is no more, passing away a few hours after the world commemorated the death of his mentor, Lwambo Makiadi Franco.
Verckys, whose real name is Kiamuangana Mateta, was born on May 19, 1944, and died October 13,2022.
His mentor, Franco, on the other hand, died on October 12, 1989.
Verckys was primarily a musician, mostly playing saxophone, but was also a composer, band leader, record producer, and music-label owner.
He defected from TP Ok Jazz in 1969 after falling out with the band leader, Lwambo Luanzo Makiadi (Franco) and formed his first band, Orchestra Veve.
Mateta is the brains behind ‘Cavacha,’ a faster paced and funkier Acoustic drum driven, African dance Beat usually laden with trumpets and saxophone sounds as well.
During its heydays, Cavacha was in contrast to Rhumba, a heavy bass driven, slower beat with melodious lyrics.
Many years later, his style would transform into the slightly paler sound of ‘Soukous.’
As it happens, ‘Soukous,’ is essentially Cavacha but without the brass (wind) instruments.
Veve Verkys, is the one who brought other popular musicians like Vata Mombasa, Pepe Kale and Nyboma Mwandido into the limelight, through a series of music groups founded under his label, Edition Veve.
Dar-es-salaam based singers such as Tshimanga Assosa and Kikumbi Mwanza Mpango (King Kiki) also passed through Verckys bands before moving to Tanzania
Kiamuangana Mateta started out as saxophonist for the TP Ok Jazz of Lwambo Luanzo Makiadi before leaving the group in 1968, forming his own ensemble.
Verckys founded Orchestra Veve and Orchestra Kiam, under his own names (Veve and Kiam-anguana) then went on to manage other popular bands like Orchestra Lipua Lipua, Grand Piza and Les Kamale.
His bands produced series of fire hits such as Zonga Andowe, Mikolo Mileki Mingi, Nono, Temperature, Ngali, Mombasa, Lemba-Lemba and Aydjo.
Verckys angered the Catholic Church in Zaire in 1971 with the song ‘Nakomitunaka’ which questions Christianity’s injustice against Africans.
In the song Veve asks why everything good is depicted as white and the bad as black. Adam and Eve were white, Jesus is white, God is white, thus, he wonders, what is the origin of the black skin?
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