When stars fall out of the sky

Diana Chemutai Chelele (inset) was killed in her house in Bomet [Photo: Gilbert Kimutai]

Papa Wemba, the great Congolese musical legend, collapsed and passed away on stage while performing at the FEMUA 2016 festival in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast. He was sixty-six years old but still swanky as the sapeur that he was.

When he died, he was dressed in a raspberry round hat, a white shirt crocheted with black musical notes and tinted glasses - and he died literally doing what he loved. With him came the end of a true musical and style pioneer, a man who enjoyed the jaunty title Le Pape le Sape and first spear-headed one dance-and-dress craze after another - three quarter length pants, the time for braces, the time when designer suits by Jean-Paul Gautlier were all the rage in Zaire.