Mowoso (in the Lingala language, “a rustling of leaves in the wind”) finds its roots in a project born in Kinshasa in the mid-1990s and which lasted ten years: Collectif GHETTO KOTA OKOLA (“Ghetto Enter Grow”). Founded by composer-musician-multimedia artist Bebson Elemba (BEBSON DE LA RUE) and his brother musician and film-maker DICOCO BOKETSHU, the leader of Mowoso, the Ghetto was a highly successful, grassroots experimental undertaking located in a family compound at the heart of Kinshasa’s toughest neighborhood, Ngbaka. It was a space of learning, exchange, confrontation and diffusion centered around forms of expression (music, dance, visual arts) born of a heady mix of multiple local, borrowed, reworked and ramped-up hip hop cultures. While it is based in the central neighborhood of Lingwala, like Ghetto Kota Okala Mowoso focuses most of its work in and around Ngbaka, a part of the city where “parralel” economic actors and deal-makers rub shoulders with gang members, shegue (homeless children), prostitutes and refugees hailing from other parts of the continent, the country and the city, who have been forced out of their homes by wars local and global that have affected DRC and a host of central and east African nations.
Current Mowoso undertakings include close work with emergent DRC-based musicians and composers whose work reflects multiple translocal influences and, in tandem with nomadic artist ELEONORE HELLIO (a founding member of the collective), a wide range of experimental projects that explore phenomena associated with global digital networks and praxis. The association has developped collaborations with different partners such as the Paris based collectives ETERNAL NETWORK and alternative experimental architecture collective EXYZT, the South African based collective SPARCK.

Current Mowoso undertakings include close work with emergent DRC-based musicians and composers whose work reflects multiple translocal influences and, in tandem with nomadic artist ELEONORE HELLIO (a founding member of the collective), a wide range of experimental projects that explore phenomena associated with global digital networks and praxis. The association has developped collaborations with different partners such as the Paris based collectives ETERNAL NETWORK and alternative experimental architecture collective EXYZT, the South African based collective SPARCK.