Catalogue                 Group                                                 A side/B side                                                                  Year

Number

SOMA 2                Orch Lemba Lemba                   Lemba Lemba Pts 1 & 2

SOMA 3                Orch Lemba Lemba                   Wangare Pts 1 & 2

SOMA 004            Orch Moja One                          Angela Pts 1 & 2

SOMA 3 is from Doug Paterson’s collection and was the only record listed here for several years. Then, in October 2013, Alan Wheeler alerted me to the appearance of SOMA 2 on the CDandLP.com website and a single on the Hit Parade label by the same band surfaced on Fredrik Lavik’s Afro7.net website.

What links these three records are songwriting credits for Jim Monimambo, a man best known as leader of Orch Shika-Shika. The identity of the musicians he was working with, though, is unclear. Is it the same Orch Lemba Lemba, whose recordings appeared on the Pathe and African labels in Europe in the 1970s, or a band that as taken its name from the song Lemba Lemba, a hit for Orchestra Lipua Lipua?