His grandfather, João Mantantu Dundulu N'lemvo, was a Baptist pastor who worked with British missionaries in the 1880s, and was the first Angolan to translate the English-language Bible into Kikongo.

[4] Kinshasa is where Lemvo first encountered and enjoyed Cuban music; taking advantage of a cousin's large record collection, he would listen to Orquesta Aragón, Arsenio Rodríguez, Sonora Matancera and Abelardo Barroso.

[4] He also credited his musical interest to the fact that his parents' house in Kinshasa was next to a bar, which would loudly play Congolese and Cuban rumba, as well as New York salsa, at all hours.

He graduated from Lawndale High School[5] and later from California State University, Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree in Political Science.

[17] In addition to regularly playing Los Angeles clubs,[18] Lemvo has toured widely, and has performed at prestigious festivals throughout Europe, the Americas and Australia.

"[31] A Boston Globe profile notes how Lemvo's music brings to life the idea, championed by scholars including Robert Farris Thompson and Paul Gilroy, of the Black Atlantic, "the centuries-old exchange of rhythm and culture that began with the Middle Passage, when slaves brought their sounds to Cuba and Haiti.