We reached Congolese guitar veteran Syran Mbenza at his Paris home, on the eve of Kékélés spring, 2004, U.S. tour. Kekele's two albums, Rumba Congo and Congo Life, are part of a larger back-to-roots movement in Congo music. Kekele is not alone in asserting that acoustic music and rumba don't have to go away, just because a new generation is mad about high-tech "ndombolo," or whatever name the latest Kinshasa music and dance craze is going by. Kekele is, however, making their first U.S. tour, and with due respect to Sam Mangwana's mostly acoustic tour a few years back, this is a rare opportunity for Americans to experience the sweetness of the ongoing rumba revival, live! Vocalists Wuta-Mayi, Nyboma, Bumba Massa, and Loko Massengo, and guitarist Ringo Starr was also on the live bill for the 2004 tour. Here's Banning Eyre's telephone interview with Syran.

Banning Eyre: Syran, what was the inspiration for forming Kekele?

Syran Mbenza: What I can say is that our music was really out of breath. In what the young groups were playing, there was a real deformation of our music, in the dance, in the rhythms. There were no more songs, no more melodies. We thought about this and decided we had to get back to the rumba, what we played in the past. We were born into rumba; it's like a culture for us. Our music was becoming decadent. We had to wake it up again.

I called together my friends, the musicians I wanted to work with. We did our first record, Rumba Congo, to see if this was going to work, and people in the record business saw it as the coming of new breath. They said, "Voila, that's the music. You can hear the words. You can hear the melody. It's all there." Afterwards we did our second album, Congo Life, and people were even more interested. We had to return to the source. Because, like I say, rumba for us is a complete culture. Since the time of our old musicians--Kabasele, Franco, Bowane, Wendo--rumba had a great place, a great value. We had to see that music brought back and restored on the world scene.

B.E.: One thing I like about your albums is the fact that you don't just redo the old stuff. You have your Grand Kalle medley and your Franco medley. But most of these songs are new compositions that pay tribute, but don't just repeat, the old styles.

Syran: We wanted to modernize the music also. There was the old rumba, but this is our era. We had to do it our own way in order to interest people, white, black, yellow, all nationalities. So we are doing acoustic music, but arranged in a modern, contemporary way.

B.E.: In your song "Delali," and a few others, you are using accordion. Talk about that.

Syran: The accordion was there in the past. It's not new. Franco used it. We said we'd prefer to put this instrument in our rumba to give a little spice. The accordion was not going to denature the music, like a synthesizer, or even a piano. We preferred the accordion. It's an instrument that's sweet to listen to.

B.E.: It really compliments the acoustic guitars nicely. And speaking of that, this album has the best-sounding Congolese acoustic guitar I've ever heard.

Syran: When I personally started playing guitar, I started with an acoustic guitar. I was about eleven. My friends who played guitar, if they played acoustic guitar, they played rhythm. Now, we wanted to say, you can also play the solo on acoustic, and it's even better. Because the acoustic guitar is beautiful to listen to. So we play rhythm or solo guitar with an acoustic--even the bass. On the first album, the bass was also acoustic.

B.E.: The technology for recording and amplifying acoustic guitars has improved a lot since the old rumba days. That helps, doesn't it?

Syran: Oh yes. I can say that there are so many ways to get the sound of an acoustic guitar. On my electro-acoustic, I no longer use the jack and pickup. I put two microphones, a directional microphone aimed at the strings, and another to catch the overall sound. With this technique, even when you play the solo, it makes a great sound. This is why we really needed to record in a studio that was used to recording acoustic music. We used an engineer who really knew acoustic guitars. It was also important not to have too many instruments. If you have too many, it disturbs the sound of the acoustic.

B.E.: So how is Kekele's music going down in Kinshasa?

Syran: Nyboma has just come from Kinshasa last week. He went on television to do promotion for Congo Life, and Rumba Congo, the two records. I can tell you that all of Kinshasa is thanking us for this. They have said, 'Thank you for bringing us this music. We were missing this.' Musicians said, 'We have wanted to do this but we were afraid that people wouldn't like it.' Right now, these records are doing well in Kinshasa. Also in France. In fact, all the young musicians now want to play like Kekele. You watch. In years to come, you are going to see a lot of young groups making records that sound like Kekele.

B.E.: Now, I understand that even you guys needed some convincing that this acoustic rumba thing was going to succeed. People like Ken Braun at Stern's and C.C. Smith at The Beat magazine have been begging for this for years.

Syran: It's true. It's true. We thought it wouldn't work because it wasn't ndombolo, that music that just makes you dance all the time. It took courage to record this rumba and see if it was going to work. And now we are seeing the fruits.

B.E.: Thanks, Syran. See you in New York.

See: Kékélé's  2006 Tour Dates

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