Off - Record label: OUW007 : Helder Wasterlain / Code mémoire

Cover art by A.L. / Helder Wasterlain

OUW007 : Helder Wasterlain / Code mémoire - Racines de Matonge

Matonge (from the original named place in Kinshasa) is a neighborhood in Ixelles - Brussels where more than 40 African nationalities meet for an abundant lively place full of shops, restaurants, clubs, beauty salons...
This place brings also an awful lot of characters and strange people and still has a variety of old shops run by a non less interesting persons living there before the place became like a Kinshasa market zone.

Helder Wasterlain, a Portugese writer, painter, musician living in Brussels since some years now had the idea, after wandering for hours and observing the exciting life in Matonge, to do a street walking with QR codes giving access on any phones or tablets to a number of musical texts depicting some places or people that he had encountered during his long walkings.
Those texts are fictions but in most cases are based on existing places and people...
Time to close your eyes, follow the stories and walk in Matonge like it was you wandering in the most colourful place in Brussels!

One of the QR code that gives you access to one of the story, in this case 'The Dealer'

Stories	Actors	Musicians	Instruments
Le dealer	Gilles Van Bunnen	Benjamin Ramos	Contrebasse
Un cœur faible	Pascale Weinberg	Shabaaz Mystic	Sanza
Un rêve accompli	Didier Daras	Thomas Stadnicki	Guitare électrique
Le tunnel	Jan Debski	Rexhep Dany et Sébastiens Stroobans, du groupe Mind Echoes	Guitares électriques
Le carrefour des hommes transparents	Kiù	Helder Wasterlain	Toy Piano
Le Roi du TAM-TAM	Shabaaz Mystic	Marc Derbaix	Tam-Tam
I walk the line	Sarah Hennecart	Pierre Spataro	Saxophone

Produced, written and created by Helder Wasterlain
Pics by Helder Wasterlain
Musical direction by Benjamin Ramos
Recorded and mixed by Marc Derbaix at Cinéma Styx

Web programmation, mobile applications and APP by António Simões / Web contents management by Helder Wasterlain - António Simões

The stories in short and in French:

Le dealer

Badjoko est un dealer qui prend plaisir à faire son métier. Il le fait avec soin et professionnalisme. Il n'est pas là aux ordres de quelqu'un d'autre. C'est lui son propre patron. C’est lui le boss.

I walk the line

Au milieu de ces œuvres trône une affiche de grand format où on peut lire : <<Je suis un vieux peau-rouge qui ne marchera jamais dans une file indienne >>. La phrase est signée. Achille Chavée. J’éclate de rire : liberté et surréalisme belge dans toute leur puissance.

Le Roi du TAM-TAM

Ndingi Vunda a réparé le tam-tam. Après 3 jours, aucune nouvelle de l’inconnu. Il a attendu cinq jours, deux semaines, un mois. L'homme n'est jamais revenu. Ndingi Vunda continuait à fabriquer des tables, mais à chaque fois qu'il regardait le tam-tam rangé dans un coin de son atelier, il ressentait une attraction inexplicable. Une chaleur envahissante, un feu grandissant.

Le carrefour des hommes transparents

Il entre dans l'appartement, traverse le couloir, débouche dans une pièce sans meubles, s’approche de l’inconnue qui semble ne pas se soucier de la présence d'un étranger et regarde ce que la femme observe à travers la vitre. En bas dans la rue, il aperçoit Jan les yeux fixés sur la fenêtre. Jan observe Jan. Un des deux est devenu transparent.

Le tunnel

À l'âge de 11 ans, Fernando est devenu apprenti cordonnier, une activité quelque peu ironique, vu qu'il ne possédait pas de chaussures et qu'il marchait toujours pieds nus. C'est peut-être cette ironie qui lui a inspiré le désir de partir pour chercher fortune ailleurs. Son ami António, pour sa part, était devenu concepteur de tunnels professionnel.

Le cœur faible

Mon mari a fini par ouvrir une petite galerie d'art, la première consacrée à la peinture africaine en Belgique. Il n’y connaissait rien en art, mais son cœur l’aimait. L'art apaisait son cœur. Les couleurs lui faisaient du bien. Le Beau était bon pour lui.

Le rêve accompli

Drogo avait décidé de devenir professeur d'Histoire car il pensait qu’enseigner cette science sociale rendait les gens plus conscients et ainsi plus libres. Pour lui, la liberté était une valeur à vivre dans le présent, un combat quotidien, pour que l’on puisse la conserver dans l’avenir.

And English:

The dealer

Badjoko is a dealer who enjoys doing his job.Hedoes it with care and professionalism. He is not there under someone else's orders. He's his own boss. He's the boss.

I walk the line

In the middle of these works sits a large poster where one can read: "I am an old red-skinned man who will never walk in an Indian file". The sentence is signed. Achille Chavée. I burst out laughing: freedom and Belgian surrealism in all their power.

The King of TAM-TAM

Ndingi Vunda repaired the drum. After 3 days, no news of the unknown. He waited five days, two weeks, a month. The man never came back. Ndingi Vunda continued to make tables, but each time he looked at the tom-tom stored in a corner of his studio, he felt an inexplicable attraction. Overwhelming heat, growing fire.

The crossroads of transparent men

He enters the apartment, crosses the corridor, emerges in a room without furniture, approaches the stranger who seems not to care about the presence of a stranger and looks at what the woman observes through the glass. Down the street, he sees Jan staring at the window. Jan observes Jan. One of the two has become transparent.

The tunnel

At the age of 11, Fernando became an apprentice shoemaker, a somewhat ironic activity, since he did not have shoes and he was still walking barefoot. It is perhaps this irony which inspired him the desire to leave to seek fortune elsewhere. His friend António, for his part, had become a professional tunnel designer.

The weak heart

My husband ended up opening a small art gallery, the first devoted to African painting in Belgium. He didn't know anything about art, but his heart loved it. Art soothed his heart. The colors did him good. Beauty was good for him.

The dream fulfilled

Drogo had decided to become a history teacher because he believed that teaching this social science made people more aware and thus freer. For him, freedom was a value to live in the present, a daily struggle, so that we could keep it in the future.