Download Kongo Music

My specialization is on northern Angola, which is ethnically different from the rest of Angola.[1] The region occupies a privileged position in Kongo history as the site of Mbanza-Kongo, the seat of the manikongo [King of Kongo] and capital of the largest empire in Africa in its day. Though there has not been a Kongo king for decades, the lumbu, the traditional tribunal of twenty-one elders that has advised the king for over five hundred years, still meets [at Mbanza-Kongo], and in their deliberations, they still sing the proverbs that are law.

With the help of Dr. Brbaro Martnez-Ruiz, I was able to observe and document another Kongo court instrument, the lungoyi-ngoyi, a two-string fiddle that I have never seen described in any musicological literature. Though I don't know for certain, my guess is that it derives from one or more bowed instruments brought to Kongo in centuries past. It definitely qualifies as an endangered musical tradition.

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The manikongo's eager absorption of European patronage saw Kongo become catholicized in 1491, so that by the time the Bakongo began to be trafficked to the Americas in the transatlantic slave trade starting in the seventeenth century, the captives already partook in a Kongo-Catholic syncretism. This Kongo reinterpretation of Catholicism was transported up and down the western Atlantic for centuries, creating a kind of "wired" Kongo cultural unity throughout the Americas.[2] This deeply rooted fusion had all kinds of implications for music that scholars and musicians continue to explore.

Gabriel Kilongo: How did the popularity of Cuban-style music function as a bridging medium or a mode of passing for Congolese artists in terms of their integration into European and American vernacular cultures and adoption of Western values?

Ned Sublette: Traditional Kongo cosmology has been an inspiration to Cuban [and other] jazz musicians; for example, Chucho Valds' magnificent 1999 album Briyumba Palo Congo or Ricardo Lemvo's La Rumba Soyo, playing on the name of Soyo, a key province and former slave-exporting port near the mouth of the Congo River. Kikongo words and names are part of the common vocabulary of Cuban rumba; in Matanzas, they sing: "a, e, Paula, tienes mayombe," meaning "Paula, you got mayombe." The Cuban-derived style that in Congo is called rumba is in turn part of the common vocabulary of modern African music.

Perhaps the most striking twentieth-century adaptation in Congo was the embrace of the electric guitar, a North American innovation based on an Iberian instrument. Many of the most famous Afropop stars of the 1950s to 80s cut their teeth singing and playing Cuban-style music in various West and Central African countries. In the 1950s, a Congolese "rumba" style developed in the hands of musicians Franco, Dr. Nico, Tabu Ley Rochereau, and others, which later developed into soukous, a style marked by high-register, precisely articulated electric guitar leads that had not existed to any notable degree in Cuban music, where dance bands rarely have an electric guitar.

Ned Sublette: Brazzaville had a fifty-thousand-watt radio station as of 1943. It became a major diffuser of modern Congo music, which by then was very heavily Cuban-influenced. Both politically and musically, it is hard to overemphasize the importance of Cuba. Synonymous with world revolution following 1959, Che Guevara tried to revolutionize Congo and embarked on an exceptionally decisive intervention into Angola, not only preventing the installation of South African apartheid in Luanda, but also breaking the myth of white invincibility and bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa.[3] Orquesta Aragn, the major popularizers of the cha-cha-cha in fifties Cuba, concertized in seventies Congo, and recorded Franklin Bukaka's tune "Mwanga." This had political significance, as Bukaka was a leftist who was executed in 1972 for his role in a coup plot in Congo-Brazzaville.

Regarding lusophone Angola, Marissa Moorman's [Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times] is an indispensable work; a historian rather than an ethnomusicologist, she reads history in music. I produced a radio podcast episode for Afropop Worldwide Hip Deep, in collaboration with Dr. Moorman, that took on the question of music and political discourse in Angola.

Gabriel Kilongo: Is there a link between Congo communities' self-perception as a people, and the widespread popularity of Congolese rumba? Did this signature musical style play a role in constructing and communicating a desired Congolese identity in the era of independence?

Richard T. Rodrguez, UC Riverside professor of English and media and cultural studies, will host a joint reading and conversation with Kid Congo Powers, an author and musician widely known for being part of bands such as The Gun Club, The Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as for leading his own group, The Pink Monkey Birds.

People build different relationships and connections with music and artists, Rodrguez said. For Latinos in the 1980s, post-punk created a sense of identity and community in which those who grew up marginalized due to their sexuality, class, ethnicity, simply fit in, Rodrguez said.

Afro-Cuban rumba stormed West and Central African before and after World War II. It was quickly reappropriated by the Congolese who adapted the piano part for the guitar. Unlike Ghanaian highlife, Congolese music was less influenced by European taste and in many ways more African.

The forefathers of Congolese music include Feruzi, often credited with popularizing the rumba in the 1930s. The cross-border popularity of Congolese music was boosted by a number of practical factors. It was 'non-tribal', using the interethnic trading language, Lingala. The guitar style was an amalgam of influences from Central and West Africa. Finally, postwar Belgian Congo was booming and traders were taking advantage of the commercial potential including the sale of records. Early Congolese labels released a deluge of 78rpm recordings and in the early 1940s Radio Congo Belge started African music broadcasts.

The music scene really came alive in 1953 with the inauguration of African Jazz, the first full-time recording and performing orchestra. Three years later, 'Franco' Luambo Makiadi and colleagues formed OK Jazz. African Jazz created an international-sounding fusion whereas OK Jazz was rootsier and drew on traditional folklore rhythms and techniques. African Jazz, featuring guitarist Nicholas 'Dr Nico' Kasanda, ensured musical immortality with the 1960 release of 'Independance Cha Cha', which celebrated the end of colonial rule.

The 1950s and 60s saw constant movement of musicians between the Belgian and French colonies and a mood of optimism gave the region its good-time reputation. Hundreds of dance bands formed following independence in 1960, including the group Afrisa.

In the 1970s student groups, like Thu Zahina, started a new stream of pop music, picking up on the Western rock-group format. The new music was raw and energetic, with interactive guitars and almost no horns. It took elements from shanty-town music and wordplay, bringing an extra vitality to the music.

It was the group Zako Langa Langa that lead the way for the whole post-independence generation. Unlike other bands, Zako was not the personal property of one leader. It was a group of over twenty musicians. Other New Wave groups appeared in the 1970s, featuring a rough, sweaty feel while the singers compensated with honey-toned vocals.

Soukous really entered international markets during the 1980s when musicians began recording in Europe. Four Stars was an early success, although OK Jazz and Afrisa were still thriving and releasing international albums.

Overall, the Kinshasa music scene was suffering on account of socio-political upheavals in the 1990s. However, a showcase event in 1993 demonstrated that the music had not been silenced. A few subsequent festivals helped keep the momentum, but further upheavals in the mid- to late-1990s set Congolese music back.

In the absence of a vibrant music scene, many stars turned to religion. Other artists reverted to folklore, starting the neo-folklore music in 1989 beginning with Swede Swede. Other musicians unplugged and started the acoustic revival. Now, Congolese musicians perform for their own constituents, marking its move out of the limelight and transformation into an underground artform.

Twenty years after his untimely passing at the age of 51, Franco Luambo Makiadi continues to cast his larger-than-life shadow over African music. Franco was Africa's greatest, if not the sole, international pan-African music star. By the time of his death in 1989 his music was heard throughout Africa, all over Europe and in North America and the Caribbean as well. His band OK Jazz was arguably the best Africa ever produced, as well as one of the longest-running, with a continual influx and departure of musicians during a thirty-four-year history.

The sheer number of Franco's recordings is overwhelming in number and in stylistic variety, spanning the Cuban-inspired 1950s, the rumba lingala of the 1960s, the authenticit and acoustic recordings of the 1970s, and the expansive big bands and lengthy songs of the 1980s. His music reflected all the phases of Congolese pop music over four decades, creating and absorbing trends and influences, as well as establishing innovations and new directions.

This album brings together a host of Congolese talent to celebrate such a gargantuan musical legacy. Led by Syran Mbenza, best known for his involvement with Quatre Etoiles and Kekele and widely acknowledged as one of Africa's best guitarists, and saxophone supremo Jimmy Mvondo, this album celebrates Franco's body of work and commemorates the twentieth anniversary of his death.

Syran's unique and masterful style shapes this recording and I have long maintained that he is the greatest interpreter of Franco's guitar style. Not only does he reproduce the fingering and fever of the music, but he improves on it. It is as if Franco is speaking through him, channelling his energy and emotion. ff782bc1db