Remote encounter with Angèle Assélé

Angèle Assélé - Au hasard des rencontres


I was looking for some African love for V Day when I found this dramatic nugget on youtube. It’s about thunder at first sight and its consequences on a young girl’s mind. Angèle Assélé was 17 in 84 and sang the wanderings of passion with the smoothest voice. Her song is dedicated to the mysterious “Being” (“Etre” in French) whose gaze “shook her sentimental strings” during some hazardous encounter. The orchestration of Les Diablotins, and the final intervention of the backing singer really put her metaphysical quest to the next level (Jesus, E.T. ?).


Here is the beginning of it

“I met a Being that I am loving
Without knowing why
And without realizing
But I'm afraid of this Being
Which for me is like the wind
This Being which is everything and nothing
Which leads me to the cruelty
Being who are you ?
Being where are you ?
Being what’s your name ?
Being why are you ? ”
X 2

Behind « Esperancia », the first album of Angèle Assélé, stood two monsters of the Gabonese show business. Her aunt, the diva Patience Dabany, wife of President Omar Bongo then, now exiled in L.A., and her father, General Jean-Boniface Assélé who directed the first recording studio in Libreville, a controversial politician who still leads the Circle of Liberal Reformers.



Between 84 and 86, Studio Mademba released three other angelic albums : « Amour sans Frontières », « Angèle Assélé et Les Diablotins », and « Papi ». They invest not only in music but also in humanitarian causes and Angèle becomes an artist-ambassador for the United Nations. Then she retired from singing for ten years and entered the direction of Cultural Affairs.
She finally made another album, « Feeling Love », in 1998.
She still performs today.