Late in the last century, Belgium's King Léopold established a particularly cruel colonial government to rule over this vast central region of the African continent. The Belgian Congo lasted until 1959 when violence forced the Belgians to relinquish power. Patrice Lumumba became prime minister, only to be murdered in a coup a few months later. General anarchy and inter-ethnic warfare followed, sending many refugees, including musicians, into Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, among other places. Then in 1965, Mobutu Sese Seko took over, and despite massive corruption, desperate economic failure, and the attempted military uprising of 1991, he held on until the eve of his death in 1997, when the current president, Laurent Kabila. Kabila inherited a nearly ungovernable shell of a nation. He renamed it the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but he could not erase the ruinous effects of the Belgian and Mobutu legacies, and the country is now in a state of chronic civil war. Mobutu instilled a deep fear of dissent and sadly failed to develop his country's vast resources. But the walls he built around his people and his attempts to boost cultural and national pride certainly contributed to the environment that bred Africa's most influential pop music. Call it soukous, rumba, Zairois, Congo music, or kwassa-kwassa, the pop sound emanating from Kinshasa has shaped modern African culture more profoundly than any other.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre