Rumba Roots

Most of the great Afropop styles have grown out of a joining of urban and rural ideas, of indigenous roots and foreign borrowings. The story of Congolese pop music provides a complex and powerful example. By the closing years of the Belgian Congo, the city of Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) was a place where city boys plucked out highlife songs on box guitars, phonographs and radios played the latest mambo and son hits from Cuba, and people from deep in the Congo's remote, culturally rich interior came to seek opportunity. Pop bands mainly existed to entertain the white elite, and played imitations of foreign music. The Cuban music, with African (including Congolese) rhythmic ideas at its heart, was naturally familiar and attractive to local musicians and listeners. So when musicians in Leopoldville began to make electric pop music for themselves, that music provided an obvious starting point.

Greek-run record labels--Ngoma, Olympia, and Opika--were the first to produce local records during the 1940s. But by the time African labels, Loningisa, and later Veve, entered the game, something had happened to the music. The Cuban piano parts had been adapted to guitars, and in the process, the cycling, polyrhythmic qualities of traditional Congo music, especially that of the sanza hand piano, had changed the color of the guitar parts. Gradually, guitar would emerge as the dominant melodic and harmonic instrument in Congo bands. The biggest bands in the 1970s and 80s would typically feature three guitars, and sometimes as many as five, all playing different, interlocking parts.

Vocalists sang in Lingala, a composite language developed during the years when the Belgians used laborers of diverse ethnicities to build a cross-continental railroad. The language had a warm, liquid flow, and the singers were excellent soloists and harmonists. When the Belgian Congo became an independent, nation in 1960, the new capital, Kinshasa, was alive with a beautiful, new hybrid sound unlike anything else in the world.

Joseph Kabasele (a.k.a. Le Grand Kalle) and his band African Jazz heralded independence with the song "Independence Cha Cha." Kalle had a sweet, pure solo voice that inspired many imitators. But major credit for the band's massive popularity also goes to guitarist Nicolas "Dr Nico" Kasanda, a descendent of the Luba people of central Zaire like many of Congolese music's great contributors. A mere boy in when he started in 1957, Nico rose to stardom playing with Kalle, and then formed his own band African Fiesta after splitting off from Kalle in the early '60s. Nico had a lyrical touch on guitar, playing circular patterns during singing passages, and soloing with sensual eloquence. The best-known soukous guitarist of the 1990s, Diblo Dibala calls Nico "the school of Zairean guitar." Nico's late '60s work also displays heartthrob performances by vocalist Sangana. As other bands rose during the '60s and '70s, Nico fell into obscurity. He made his final recordings in Togo, not long before he died in a Brussels hospital in 1985.

In a competitive and highly fluid environment where bands formed and dispersed constantly, Franco (a.k.a. Luambo Makiadi) kept his group OK Jazz together for 33 years. It grew from the tidy six-piece outfit to the 20- or 30-piece megaband that survived him when he died at age 51 in 1989. Franco's biggest competition during the 1970s came from singer and composer Tabu Ley Rochereau, who left African Jazz to become hugely popular singing with Dr. Nico's African Fiesta. After recording many classic songs, Rochereau formed his own band Afrisa International, which went on to blaze the trail for the European soukous invasion.

Clan Langa-Langa

With the worldwide spread of rock-and-roll in the late '60s, younger Congolese musicians looked for ways to strip rumba music down and rev it into a higher gear. Leading the way, a band of relatively well-to-do students calling themselves Zaiko Langa Langa came together in 1969 and turned the scene upside down. The band spawned a virtual clan of spin-off groups and shaped Congo music for most of the next two decades. The high energy of the music, and the high-fashion sense of its singers and dancers--the so-called "Sapeurs" inspired by founding Zaiko vocalist Papa Wemba--can be seen as channeled expressions of free spirits in an environment of political oppression and relentless conformity. During three decades of iron-fisted rule, President Mobutu, who renamed the country Zaire from 1974 until his fall in 1997, stifled all criticism of his government, and even enforced a national dress code for bureaucrats and businessmen. But as long as they stayed out of politics--and for the most part, they did--Congo's lively and well-heeled musicians were allowed to thrive.

Other greats of the Zaiko generation include female singers M'Pongo Love and Tshala Muana-queen of the rootsy mutuashi style. A long list of popular bands includes Choc Stars and their split-off rivals Anti-Choc-as in an electric shock-as well as Bella Bella, Victoria Eleison and Empire Bakuba fronted by the sweet-voiced Pepe Kalle, who at 300-plus pounds, rivaled Franco's girthy majesty on stage. Kalle remained a superstar until his sudden death in 1998. The success of mutuashi, which avoids rumba and explores the 6/8 rhythms of central Zaire's Luba people, has led to other non-soukous developments. The rowdy urban folklore of Swede Swede uses mostly percussion, and also substitutes harmonica and accordion for soukous's guitars. These days though Wenge Musica, a student band much in the Zaiko Langa Langa mold, tops the Kinshasa scene.

As the competitive music scene in Kinshasa swelled after 1960, singers and players moved on to become bigger fish in smaller ponds. Franco's protégé, lead guitarist Mose Se "Fan Fan," left Kinshasa to work in Kenya and Tanzania before settling in London in the '80s with his band Somo Somo. In 1993, Fan Fan joined Brussels-based OK Jazz alumni to launch one of many post-Franco spin-off groups, Bana OK. An inveterate wanderer, "Le Pigeon Voyageur" Sam Mangwana started out in Kinshasa as one of the few singers to work with both Franco and Tabu Ley. Sam then moved to Abidjan in 1976 where he launched his widely acclaimed group the African All Stars, and embarked on a rambling international career that continues today.

Soukous Goes International

In the 1980s, soukous took hold in Paris and other European culture centers. Many musicians relocated to record and build careers away from home. Some recorded for the Zaire market, but others abandoned the demands of a fussy Kinshasa public and set out in new directions. Composer Ray Lema ventured into arty rock formulations and world music collaborations with, among others, a female Bulgarian choir. Few talk about Ray back home anymore, but other musicians have walked a finer line, managing to branch out without losing their base audience. Paris-based Papa Wemba maintains two bands, Viva la Musica for soukous, and a group including French session players for his international pop.

Among the soukous loyalists, Les Quatre Etoiles (Four Stars) united veterans of the Kinshasa scene, guitarists Syran M'Benza and Bopol, and singers Wuta Mayi and Nyboma, whose creamy tenor shines, even from the ranks of Zairean vocalists. The first Paris supergroup, Les Quatre Etoiles played soukous preened and polished for a European audience, and they remain popular. Another Paris success story, singer Kanda Bongo Man created a new model for soukous. By eliminating the slow rumba section from the long Zaiko song form and going straight for the seben, Kanda pioneered short, dance tracks suitable for play on disco dance floors everywhere. Groups like Loketo and Soukous Stars followed suit. Soon Paris became home to a loose federation of talented studio players who recorded in ever-shifting configurations, supporting singers on records for the African and Caribbean markets and filling out bands for occasional tours.

The cherubic Kanda, a graduate of the smooth Kinshasa band Bella Bella, brought sunny showmanship and a high degree of professionalism to the music. At first, his neat sound held limited appeal in Kinshasa, but as his hit-making credentials built steadily, he began touring Africa in the early '90s, becoming one of the top-selling artists across the continent and even earning approval in his old hometown. One of the newest groups to emerge from the Paris scene, the immensely popular Nouvelle Generation spun off from Papa Wemba's Viva la Musica in 1992.

Soukous guitarists can earn cult followings, and Kanda's first guitarist Diblo Dibala garnered one of the most fanatical. Having played briefly with OK Jazz and then with Bella Bella and other groups back home, Diblo came to Paris and rose with Kanda, gracing his records with quick, stylish and elegantly precise seben solos. Diblo went on to work with Pepe Kalle and others before joining affable Congolese vocalist Aurlus Mabele to form the group Loketo in 1986. Loketo's early US tours helped to introduce soukous in America. Diblo and Aurlus parted ways in 1991, but Loketo forges on with an aggressive tour schedule, as does Diblo's new group Matchatcha, named for a flower that makes you itch--"to dance" says Diblo. Other pillars of the Paris soukous guitar stable include Nene Tchakou, Lokassa Ya Mbongo, Dally Kimoko and Bamundele Virigo (Rigo Star).

Some lovers of the old Kinshasa sounds complain about the Paris soukous machine. They say that the well-oiled studio system lets producers crank out records programmed on auto pilot using a handful of session players. Seen as signs of modernity by many in Africa, the keyboards and drum machines so prevalent in Paris soukous can turn off western listeners who are attracted to African pop for its human feel and intimacy. In general, though, the complaint makes little sense to Zairean pop musicians who partially base their continued popularity on staying abreast of new developments in pop sound technology.

Hard Times in Congo

Meanwhile, back in Kinshasa, elements in the Zairean army rebelled against President Mobutu in 1991 creating a political and economic crisis from which the country has yet to emerge. The clubs of Matonge, which had supported hundreds of bands, hunkered down for hard times. Since that watershed year, Congolese musicians have continued to emigrate to East Africa and recently, South Africa as well, the one African country where soukous was not previously heard due to the cultural restrictions accompanying apartheid. Many Congo musicians have also gone to London, Paris, Brussels and other European cities. With competition fierce in Europe, some find their way to the US. Tabu Ley relocated to California in 1994 for a two year stay, and soukous bands run by Zairean expatriates now carry on the tradition in San Diego, North Carolina, Boston and New York. Mobutu's fall in 1997 held the promise for a revitalization of the local scene in Kinshasa, but Mobutu's successor Laurent Kabila has failed to rescue the nation from its downward spiral. Long smoldering ethnic tensions, a devastated infrastructure, and Kabila's on and then off alliance with dubious forces in neighboring Rawanda and Uganda have led to civil war. The music goes on in Kinshasa. Groups like Zaiko Langa Langa still record and perform there. But it will be a long time before the city regains its glory.