What is Better than Viewing Total Eclipse with Your Favorite Music and Brew?

Pepe Kalle

Bio: Pepe Kalle, 1951-1998 Is another of Congo's great.

Unheralded Soukous Queen in Abeti Maskini

Dates are mixed in the bio of this Soukous Queen. You read the sources and come to your own conclusion:
1. abeti-masikini.html
2. Abeti Maskinie.
What you want is the music this gal of Congo gave to the world, not so? You won't be disappointed. Enjoy!

Miscellaneous

On the Soukous Trip

Two versions of Soukous: Yondo Sister can send you yonder with her fast paced dance sound, and Koffi Olomide can then bring you gracefully down with his alluring bedroom sotto voce. Enjoy! Also Soukous name that may be rare outside Congo is that of Abeti Maskini.

Yondo Sister

                                                                  Photo Source

Koffi Olomide

                                        Photo Source

Antoine Christophe Agbepa Mumba, aka Koffi Olomide, was born July 13, 1956 in Kinsangani, DRC. His mother's father was a Sierra Leonian married to a Congolese...

Sex in the City, Nollywood Style

Break Time:

All Are Invited to the 2013 Soukous Mardi Gras

You may be in some far away time zone, work some unforgiving graveyard shift, or lost somewhere, but you will still be in time. We don't believe in Ambassador Mugume's silly edict. We are Afrikans, my foot--time is when we arrive! So, brothas and sistas, come at your own time and get into the soukous groove. Today we treat you to the incredible duo: Loketo and Kanda Bongo man, the masters of soukous. We then, for good measure, go retro to throttle it down a notch with the one and only Johnny Bokelo to bring you down easy!

Kanda Bongo Man: Bio & Discography

Kanda Bongo Man Biography
"Soukous, the dance music of Zaire, was updated by Paris-based vocalist and bandleader Konda Bongo Man. With his high tenor vocals alternating between lyrics in Lingala and French, Bongo Man and his band, which has included influential guitarists Diblo Dibala in the 1980s and Rigo Star in the 1990s, has sparked dancing in audiences around the globe. The New York Times wrote, "Zairean soukous is a lilting, rippling, dance groove that seems to smile from every register, with melody and rhythm inseparable. Kanda Bongo Man himself sings melodies that curl through the patterns like vines on a trellis." Option magazine took a similar view, writing, "Kanda Bongo Man sure knows how to have fun. This is some of the most joyous music I've ever heard, heavy on both melody and rhythm." While rooted in the soukous tradition, Bongo Man has incorporated an eclectic range of influences. M. Doughty of alt-rock band Soul Coughing explained, "You can infer all sorts of stuff in that loping beat and those guitars soaked in digital delay: flamenco, surf music, the wacked-out chops of a master oud player, steel guitar of the Hawaiian and Nashvillian varieties. The combined effect feels something like a distillation of sunshine and spring's bloom rhythm."...

Loketo: Bio & Discography

Dioblo Dibala, often known as Diblo, is a Congolese soukous musician, known as "Machine Gun" for his speed and skill on the guitar. He was born in 1954 in Kisangani. He moved to Kinshasha as a child, and [at] age 15 won a talent competition which let him playing guitar with Franco's TPOK"....

Johnny Bokelo: Bio & Discography

"Jean 'Johnny' Bokelo Isenge was born in the (late) 1930s in then Congo Belge outside Leopoldville as a younger brother of Paul 'Dewayon' Isengo. Bokelo died in 1995 ^[1]." ...

M'pongo Love: Bio & Discography

"...Aimee Fransoise Mpongo Lanu was born in 1956 in Boma, when Zaire was still The Belgian Congo. It seems only natural that The Voice of the Bas-Zaire woman be born at the mouth of the Congo River. Poetic in a way. At four years old she was given a penicillin shot for polio. An allergic reaction rendered her paralyzed. About two years later she regained use of her legs (although they were deformed) and she started school at Notre Dame de Boma where she joined the chorus..."

Tshala Muana: Bio & Discography

                                                     Tshala Muana the Queen of Mutuashi
"...Born Elizabeth Tshala Muana on March 13, 1958, in the Kasai section of the Congo the 2nd of 10 children. As a child she was very much into dance and the music of her native Kasai. Once she completed secondary school her love for music and dance grew and she dreamed of bringing the unique sounds of Kananga (her native village) called MUTUASHI to other parts of the Congo and eventually the world."...

M'bilia Bel: Bio & Discography

Born in 1959, M'bilia Bel is the All-Time Reigning Queen of the Congolese Rumba

I Am A Virgin

Get a break with a Nollywood movie.

I Am Virgin 2 I Am A Virgin 2

Zaiko Langa Langa: Bio & Discography

Source: myfreesound

The beginning of the 1970s was an important milestone in the cultural history of the country then known as Congo-Kinshasa. Exactly a decade had passed since independence from Belgium - a turbulent period in which the vast fledgling state had endured civil war, international intrigue, coups and assassinations. Parallel with the images of confusion and horror, however, Kinshasa had established an identity as a city of joy and delight, Kin Kiesse, and was recognised throughout Africa as the capital of Congolese rumba.

Sam Mangwana: Bio & Discography

            Born February 21st 1945 to Zimbabwean immigrant father and an Angolan mother.
Sam Mangwana is one of the last of the great Zairean rumba (soukous) vocalists. A former member of such seminal groups as Tabu ley Rocherau's Africa Fiesta and Franco's TPOK Jazz, Mangwana has steered soukous from the hard-edged sounds of his predecessors. According the Washington Post, "While his former employers were masters of the relentless, springy, soukous music of Central Africa, Mangwana employs a lighter, more acoustic, more Carribean sound." In a review of Mangwana's 1999 concert in New York, the New York Times took a similar view, writing, "I was gentle-spirited music, perfect for dancers moving through the soupy summer air:... 

Kekele: Background & Discography

Members : Loko Massengo, Wuta Mayi, Nyboma Mwan Dido, Syran Mbenza, Bumba Massa

Kekele - aka the roving ambassadors of authentic Congolese rumba - are a group of five singers from the D.R.C. and Congo Brazzaville. The five rumba veterans have revived the flagging fortunes of a sound which, without them, may well have disappeared from the face of the earth altogether.

The group Kekele was the brainchild of Ibrahima Sylla, a Senegalese producer who has been responsible for overseeing the careers of numerous African artists over the last three decades. Around the year 2000, Sylla came up with the idea of reviving Congolese rumba, a sound which had once packed out dancefloors across Africa, but in later years had been superseded by new crazes such assoukouss and ndombolo. Sylla who, a few years earlier, had revived the fortunes of African salsa creating the group Africando, started casting about for artists to form a rumba group based in Paris. He started out auditioning over twenty singers and musicians and finally whittled his original list down to five to form Kékélé (the group’s name means "tropical creeper" in Lingala). ...

Wendo Kolosoy: Bio & Discography

Wendo Kolosoy (b. April 25 ,1925 - Died July 28, 2008) "Papa Wendo" was born in Mushie in the North West of the actual Democratic republic of Congo. He is claimed to be the father of modern Congolese music and the danse called the "Rhumba Kinoise". He was also a boxer. Ex communicated by Belgian priests for his subversive writing, he knew success, prison, solitude and misery. Nevertheless the "Monument" as he was called by his partisans; he never strayed from his destiny, as the image of the river which criss crosses the country. A self taught guitar player, he was the first to mix traditional rhythm (Zebola), latin music (the Cuban Rhumba) and the West Indies (Martinique) and gave it the name of the Zairoise Rumba (or Congolese Rumba). Wendo Kolosoy's music is a subtle mixture of ingrediants drawn from Africa, his voice formed by years of exericise in the creation of his special sound.

Franco: Bio & Discography

The father of modern Congolese music, the pope of rumba who was taken from us by illness at the age of fifty one, left a legacy of 150 albums behind him. "I am the only African musician to have lived out my career for thirty years without ever leaving the orchestra that I created or the style that was the trademark of the group. I am proud and I thank the Lord for having given me such a full life" he declared. After Franco's death on October 12th, 1989, an immense page was turned in modern African music from the African continent.

Papa Wemba: Bio & Discography

In the fifties, the famous Congolese rumba dominated the continent. Half a century later, it has lost nothing of its youth even if, in the meantime, it has undergone numerous, radical face-lifts. Among the most inspired surgeons is Papa Wemba. The man has everything you love in the new Congolese, ex-Zairians, ex-Congolese (you will understand as you read on): vivacity, humour, intelligence, talent. And Kinshasa is a temple of intelligence where the French language is the most image laden in the French-speaking world.

Assorted NonStop Classic 1

Tabu Ley Rochereau: Bio & Discography (Died 11/30/2013)

Tabu Ley Rochereau (Pascal Tabu, Bandundu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1940) is bandleader of Orchestre Afrisa International and one of Africa’s most influential vocalists and prolific songwriters.

Along with guitarist Dr Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley pioneered soukous, the music that has delighted Africans for four decades. He internationalized his music by fusing elements of Congolese folk music with Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American rhumba. In 1954 at the age of fourteen, Tabu Ley wrote his first song Bessama Muchacha which he recorded with Joseph “Grand Kalle” Kabasele’s band, African Jazz. After finishing high school he joined the band as a full time musician. Tabu Ley sang the pan-African hit Independence cha cha which was composed by Grand Kalle when Congo was declared an independent nation in 1960, propelling him to instant fame...

Dr. Nico: Bio & Discography

biography

[-]by Rovi

b. Nicholas Kasanda Wa Mikalay, 1939, Luluaborg, Zaire, d. 1985, Kinshasa, Zaire. A member of Le Grande Kalle’s African Jazz in the early 60s, expert guitarist and composer Nico went on to be a founder member, with Rochereau, of African Fiesta, one of the most popular and influential Zairean bands of the mid and late 60s. He was born into a musical family, but later attended the Leopold II Institute, graduating as a technical teacher in 1957.