Talk:Syran Mbenza

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[Untitled]

I added this page to fill a gap.

Full disclosure - I tried to add a shorter page on him in 2011, and it was rejected as "(Declining submission: subject appears to be a non-notable musical performer or work)". So this is a second try, 8 years later, with extra due diligence to show notability.

For the record, the page shows that he meets several of the notability criteria in WP:NMG:

subject of multiple, non-trivial, published works: article in The Standard (Kenya); profiles on Afrisson, African Musicans Profiles, and Musiques d'Afrique sites; Afropop interview; etc.
released two or more albums: seven, plus one with Bopol, plus one mis-issued under his name
a reasonably prominent member of two or more independently notable ensembles: Quatre Etoiles and Kekele (especially). Though an admission re the bootstrapping caveat - I added the Wikipedia page for Kekele & supplemented the page for 4 Etoiles.
non-trivial coverage in independent reliable sources of an international concert tour: NYT (one article cited, others not), Vancouver paper cited, The Standard cited, Wash Post (not cited, see Kekele Wiki page), etc.

The multiple evaluations of the high quality of his playing also indicate notability. Sullidav (talk) 12:36, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discography

Notes on this difficult part. Of course, please correct or supplement it.

I did not include a solo album title, Kelele, listed on one source (African Musicians Profiles), because it is not mentioned anywhere else and that appears to be an error.
It's hard to disentangle a) what records Sam Mangwana released, and b) who played on them. I chose conservatively which ones to list here, but there are surely others.
I'm not sure Mbenza plays on the Lovy du Zaire album listed here, but it's a good guess.

Sullidav (talk) 12:36, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]