Rumba Chronicles

DIEUDOS DUKI MAKWANZI

March 23, 2025 - 05:20 AM DIEUDOS DUKI MAKWANZI, the Soloist of Le Noir, Passes Away. Dieudos Duki Makwanzi, the renowned soloist of Le Noir, passed away on March 20 in Brussels, Belgium, where he had been residing. In the early 1970s, he performed with Le Noir in Nairobi, Kenya. The band was led by veteran musician Chuza Kabaselle and was among the few Congolese bands that returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) intact, unlike many others that either remained abroad, disbanded, or disintegrated. In addition to Chuza Kabaselle, who played the congas, Le Noir featured other notable musicians, including Neg...

WHO IS GOOD ENOUGH TO REPLACE A GUITAR GOD?

February 28, 2025 - 06:08 PM Who is Good Enough to Replace a Guitar god? This was likely the question that troubled many Tabu Ley fans upon learning that the singing superstar, son of Bagata, had parted ways with Dr. Nico in the short-lived band, African Fiesta. The band emerged in 1963 following a significant split within Grand Kalle's African Jazz, resulting in a mass exodus. The new group was led by both Dr. Nico and Tabu Ley. However, Dr. Nico was musically more experienced and, therefore, more prominent than Tabu Ley. While Tabu Ley was a talented singer, he was considered comparable to other singers of the time, unlike Dr. Nico, whose guitar virtuosity was undisputed. Thus, when Ley and Nico separated due to......

THE LAST MAN STANDING

February 17, 2025 - 07:53 PM “There was a woman fan of our band in the late 1970s. She frequented our shows and seemed to have been craving the attention of bassist Atia Joe, who apparently was reluctant to yield to her gestures. This lady, in typical determination, became more aggressive and began sending anyone willing to play an emissary role to Atia,” Bua Mangala, aka Loboko Passie, told Jabulani. “The habit became so often that Atia’s colleagues in the band began chiding him frequently with the phrase ‘mama anakuita,’ which after some time became his sobriquet, hence the many times you hear the line dropped in Mazembe songs.” This is the shot that darted the bull’s......

BOUKAKA, THE MUSICIAN WHO ALSO WORE AN ACTIVISM CAP

February 06, 2025 - 08:47 AM Sporadic sounds of gunfire pierced through the tranquil night of Brazzaville on 22nd February 1972, with noise gaining crescendo with every passing minute as dawn approached. When morning finally came reluctantly, the information had already spread that there had been an attempted coup d’etat against the government of Marien Ngouabi, who had been Republic of Congo president since 1968.However, forces loyal to the incumbent thwarted the attempt, with the military capturing the dissidents. Among those listed as arrested was Franklin Boukaka, a musician who had made a name for himself both in Brazzaville and Kinshasa and was one of the musical superstars of the time. In a strange twist......

A GLIMPSE OF PAPA NOEL'S MUSICAL JOURNEY

January 23, 2025 - 09:00 AM "Simplify it," Franco suggested persuasively."We have a long list of songs to rehearse," The late Grand Maitre Luambo had descended a floor down the Un-Deux-Trois building, from the UMUZA office to the ground floor where the band was practising, to intervene. At the time, Grand Maitre Luambo headed UMUZA, the musician's association, as such it was headquartered at his club, Un-Deux-Trois, which housed his orchestra, OK Jazz.From his offices one floor up, he had heard the band guitarists mark time, struggling to master some jazz chords that had been introduced to them by Papa Noel, who insisted that they had to master.Franco, himself being an astute guitarist who manoeuvered the......

WHAT CHANGED THE ORIGINAL CONGOLESE MUSIC STYLE.

January 08, 2025 - 09:00 PM WHAT CHANGED THE ORIGINAL CONGOLESE MUSIC STYLE. The recent trend of increasingly programmed music over live instrumentation is because it's cheaper to record and release. Half the battle of making music today is done when you can program percussions, horn sections, and synths on the keyboard. Where back in the day, you had to factor in whether live horns would sync well with the guitars, keyboards, and drums. This means that music composition was the foundation of song creation, as opposed to improvising melodies on a keyboard or guitar partition and then stretching them out into songs. In order to conserve cost, rehearsals were constant and music compositions of some of our......

THE "African Fiesta National" UNSUNG HERO

January 07, 2025 - 05:21 PM By JEROME OGOLA Dead men tell no tales, and this reality offers authors a license to skew history in a manner that hoists them as heroic status than they really are in reality. Writing while every other player is dead, inspires the writer to make statements that may be untrue as he is sure to get away with. In his book, Les Couilises De La Musique Congolaise, writer Faugus Izeidi, has been accused by pundits of trying to gobble more limelight through his writings, than he really worked for, as a musician. The bone of contention has largely been about the innovation of the mi-solo guitar, which he claims to be his creation. This position as presented in his narrations, could......

THE FAKE COUP

January 06, 2025 - 04:00 PM COLONEL BANGALA This is Leopoldville Governor Alphonse Bangala , immortalized in Franco's 1966 song 'Colonel Bangala' which has superb sax by Verckys, equally superb soloing by Franco and Franco himself sings as he is backed by Mujos and Boyibanda. President Mobutu faked a coup to gauge who was loyal and who was not, among his top government officials. The fake coupe was headed by Bangala who recruited and sought the support of several cabinet ministers, politicians, military guys, and other state officials. Those who fell for the trick were executed among them former Prime Minister Evariste Kimba, together with three cabinet members, Jerome Anany (Defence Minister), Emanuel Bamba......

THE MUTUASHI QUEEN'S REIGN EXTENDS BEYOND HER DEATH

December 10, 2024 - 10:15 AM It has been two years since the Queen of Mutuashi, Tshala Muana, breathed her last in a hospital in Kinshasa, where she had been admitted. Her death marked the end of an illustrious career that lasted three decades and saw her become a celebrity not just in her home country, the DRC, but across the continent. Although DRC has had a galaxy of women musicians, from the days of Pauline Lisanga at Loningisa studios in 1952 to the era of Marcel Ebibya, Lucy Eyenga, and the generation of Mbilia Bell, and even those who came after her, like Cindy Le Coeur, Tshala Muana's contribution to Congolese music stands out for several reasons. She is the face of Mutwashi. She did not invent the dance, but......

KASONGO TRENDS

December 07, 2024 - 01:23 PM Do you want your son to become a musician? Name him, KASONGO. It is a musician's name. 1. ANTOINE KASONGO is the first generation who recorded at Ngoma in the 50s. His peers were Paul Mwanga, Camile Feruzi, Leon Bukassa, Wendo Nkolosoy, Henri Bowane, my favorite musician Henrique Tinapa, etc. Franco, Grand Kale, Tabuley, Bavon, etc. are second generation, and Lipua Lipua, Bela Bela, Zaiko, Kamale, etc, are third generation. 2. RONDOT KASONGO WA KASONGO, the bald head OKJ sax player. Kasongo, who joined in 1969, replacing Verckys, died of lung cancer in the 90s. He was a consistent figure in OKJ songs, and you'd easily mistake him for part of the band's sound system, which is comprised......

Rumba Chronicles