Pierre Kwenders | Love Never Dies on the Dance Floor

Hidden Track

Jose Louis Modabi is the given name of Colgolese-Canadian artist Pierre Kwenders, the exceptionally innovative music-maker behind the Polaris Music Prize-winning album, Jose Louis and the Paradox of Love.

Bridging the gaps between musical worlds, the traditional and the future-leaning, his hometowns of Kinshasa and Montreal, and between the profoundly personal and the universally human, Pierre Kwenders is a one-of-a-kind musical visionary. Drawing on jazz, Congolese rhumba, pop, electronica and disco, and singing or rapping in five languages -- Lingala, Kikikongo, Tshiluba, French, English – he constructs a whole sonic universe on his latest album. There are meditations on love, lust, spirituality, home, family, freedom, culture, and music; all of it deeply centred in his unique, highly personal aesthetic. The expanded Deluxe Edition of Jose Louis and the Paradox of Love released June 30,2023, further deepening the album’s artistic sweep of styles, textures and perspectives with bonus tracks and re-works.

In this episode of the Hidden Track Podcast, Pierre Kwenders tells us about his musical background: from growing up singing in church choirs as a kid in the Congo, to discovering the underground music scene in Montreal, where he moved as a teenager. He discusses the formative influence of Congolese musical heroes like Lokua Kanza and Papa Wemba, the importance of matriarchs on his life and how he takes his artistic moniker from his grandfather’s name. We'll discover more about Pierre Kwenders' birth city of Kinshasa, which “vibrates with music”, plus his personal vision for a globe-spanning, era-mashing Black futurism and his guiding philosophy that “love never dies on the dance floor.”

Producer: Scott Zielsdorf | Host: Grant Stovel | Graphics: Shaun Friesen | Music: Doug Hoyer