This collection isn't about snazzy soloing, either – though on Nganga's "Liwa Ya Nkoko" we hear future legend Franco chopping away at an axe that becomes embarrassingly detuned after vigorous strumming. Nico to Rigo Star, you'll have to go strum a rubber band for a while.
And what about electric guitar? If you associate the essential Kinshasa sound with manic arpeggios, from Dr. Vocals are pretty rough and tumble and emphasize unison rather than solo performances. If you value the great vocalists of classic Congolese music, the smooth, soaring voices of Nyboma or Madilu, and can't conceive of rumba without them, you're barking up the wrong branches of the tree. Proof of my savant abilities lies in the two-disc anthology The Roots of Rumba Rock – Congo Classics 1953-1955, which presents an early wave of Congolese pop from1951-53 just before it became recognizable as the African-Cuban fusion that would conquer the continent.īut let's get this out of the way, right away. Somehow behind my bib I instinctively understood that in contrast to this demeaning ditty, real Congolese pop music of might and power was being hatched even as I contemplated a loud and prolonged howl. Bingo, bangle, bungle, I'm so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go."Īlready an impassioned critic, I halted my mother's rendition of the 1947 hit record "Civilization" by the Andrews Sisters with Danny Kaye (written by Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman) by flinging my strained beets to the floor. But I did experience my mom singing, as she washed the dishes, "Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no. I was too busy kicking the legs of my highchair.
In the early 1950s, I was too young to experience the Congolese music of the day.
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