FRANCO & T.P.O.K. JAZZ - Salima

 (JS)

François Luambo Luanzo Makiadi and his band TPOK Jazz released this song in 1975. This is from his mid period, having started playing guitar in 1955 and continuing until 1989. According to his biographer he produced over 80 albums and he is credited with inventing the Congolese Rumba which this is a classic example. In the West music is structured around the pattern of the bass and drum parts, with guitar offering rhythmic emphasis and melodic counterpoint. Rumba reverses this. The guitars form the bed of generally a two part piece, a slower toast followed by a faster section. Drum, brass and vocals are the leaves on the tree of the trunk of the guitar. In the last section of the piece the guitar master syncopates a surprise melody  within the structure imposed by the companion guitarist. I encountered Franco initially on the recommendation of Rise Kagona of the Bhundu Boys who explained to me after a gig he had performed in Whalley Bridge Civic Hall, that if a white man was ever going to understand African Music I should seek out the music of Franco. I initially couldn’t get past my colonialist processing and interpreted the music as backing music from a James Bond Carribean adventure. Youtube allowed me to deepen my exposure. The song is about a woman called Salima but also a celebration of Franco poaching a rival guitarist from the band Afrisa who were beginning to eat into Franco’s sales. This song was written by Michelino Mavatiku Visi ( the one with the big Afro). He performs the first solo and Franco performs the second. The three part vocal harmony is traditional and was performed by Josky Kiambukuta, Ndombe Opetum and Wuta Mayi. The music is always interesting and the guitar rhythm is difficult to imitate because it leads the song. Music should offer the listener a familiar territory and a surprise and Congolese rumba reminds us it always important to listen to the end even if it is just to see who comes to the party and we discover what wonders they bring.

(MS)

 

Africa speaks and I listen. This band hit a very intoxicating groove on this tune, which actually seems a lot shorter than it’s 9 mins or so. The repetitive guitar picking floods into the sub-conscious and the choral vocals immerse you trance-like. It’s a big band sound with trumpet fills familiar across the musical diaspora, I hear the Caribbean, I hear Gilberto Gil’s Bahia tropicalia, there’s a lot of Mexicana in those horns too, almost Herb Alpert tooting away on the Andy Williams Show at times. The little saxophone fills remind me of Sonny Rollins calypso “St Thomas”. Overall it’s a fairly easy listening experience (not a bad thing I hasten to add) but the guitar picking keeps it interesting. On the live version I love the descending riff at 8.05 which makes me think they’re about to tackle “Corn Rigs” from the opening Wicker Man credits. I admit I find it more exotic than essential and would need to study the genre a little more to really appreciate what I’m actually listening to. I mean is this a good example of this music  or a very good example? Repeated listens reveal the layers and changes but ultimately my immersion into the ambience doesn’t pull too hard on my obsessively Western-centred thoughts.

 

(CG)

Franco, or to give him his full name, François Luambo Makiadi, was one of the giants of African music creating a brand of Zairean (the nation known as Zaire between 1971-1997 but now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) music which conquered the continent and then captivated the remainder of the world. Franco, born in 1938, started out as a local musician at 15 years old in what is now Kinshasa, the capital of the nation. In 1956 he became part of the O K Orchestra, transforming into Franco and the OK orchestra and then adding the additional initials T P Tout Puissant (all powerful) to the O K as its profile massively expanded. It was one of a handful of new innovative bands drawing on musical forms that had travelled to the new world and back multiple times throughout the twentieth century. Rumba music with its Afro Cuban roots had become very popular in the USA and South America from the 1930s onwards and this form was taken up as part of the insurgent modernism of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This accompanied the approach of decolonisation from the long and heavy history of Belgian occupation, firstly as a fiefdom of Emperor Leopald II known as the Congo Free state and then in 1908 taken over by the Belgian nation state in order to mitigate, but not desist, the massive and brutal extraction of resources, including rubber, from the Free State. This extraction led to the genocide of local populations to such a scale that even other European colonial governments considered the Free State of the Congo to compromise the entire colonial project.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the rumba as a joyous global form that drew on Africa and the new world was taken up and developed within Congo contexts as an innovative shift in urban music. Indeed it became a popular musical form along the Atlantic coast of Africa from the Congo to Senegal and articulated the new possibilities that the prospect of decolonisation heralded. Moreover it moved away from the musical forms of French and British domination as an alternative  that chimed with the longstanding ideas of Pan-Africanism and the Negritude movement (that emerged in Paris in the 1930s onwards where African and Carribbean intellectuals and artists wrestled with the shared commonalities of colonial domination, discrimination and racism).

The relatively tight melodic structure of the rumba was taken up by Franco and other bands in the DRC but were stretched out, especially in live performance to an appreciative audience in the clubs of Kinshasa. The tight melodic patterns were repeated to generate rhythmic pulses that linked to local traditions and modes of drumming and whose tempo could build up through a song. Counterpoint rhythmic patterns could be woven in to finesse the tune while layered horns added to the mix. As Franco’s profile developed in Kinshasa, they were also sung in local languages with a resurgent confidence. 

It was a new music that heralded the modernity of postcolonial DRC and Kinshasa, although the new nation state emerged with high costs such as the usurpation of its first democratically elected prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu Seko, commonly known as Mobutu, was the head of staff of the army who took power after having Lumumba executed supported by an intervention by Belgian troops and the UN who were responding to the dictates of the then cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union and seeking to retain political influence over the DRC and its mineral resources. Mobutu held power until 1997 as a dictator organising the DRC as kleptocracy for his personal benefit. Franco as the celebrity musician, who dominated all others, had an ambiguous relationship with Mobutu, offering occasional critiques but also paeans of praise to him in his songs. However many commented on everyday life and its difficulties and struggles for those trying to make a daily living. A celebratory aspect of this was the attention paid in some songs to romance and the joys of the clubs where music featured. Salima is one such classic song by Franco which starts as a conventional rumba in the attention given to the lyrics which seem to determine its progression at the outset. However this transitions to a masterful interlocking of different elements underpinned by the rhythmic melodic patterns of the guitars which play out counterpoints to the main structure with the horns having the last say. A masterpiece!

(PS)

A few bars into this beautiful song and I'm no longer in a small Kent village on an overcast autumn day: I'm on a small boat setting out from Cuba 20-odd years ago, going to a tiny nearby island for the day. Part of our ticket includes fruit, free flowing Havana Club rum and a small band of musicians who play rhumbas for us on the way there and back. It's magical, the close harmony singing melts my heart (probably aided by the copious amounts of rum) and my love for the music is cemented. 

Here the vocals come in and the wonderful close harmonies are there in perfect unison, but of course this being a Congolese rhumba it's not Spanish - I assume it's Lingala? Forgive my ignorance if I'm mistaken. 

There's another difference, the rhythm seems more fluid here: although it's constant, there's less of an accent on the syncopated beat as with the Cuban version, its more of a suggestion and you have to find your own 1,2,3&4. And vocals come in on the 4th or the 2-and-a-halfth beat, so the effortless feel of a flowing current keeps you moving downstream... Left guitar overlapping with right guitar, beautiful clean tones and rolling motifs with the bass just bobbing along softly... 

Then the tempo seems to change from a strolling 4/4 to a much more upbeat 2/4, although the bass hardly wavers - this feels to me more like a Cuban rhumba for the rest of the song. Now it reminds me of the open air nightclub we went to down the road from our hotel, where beautiful, elastic-spined locals twirled each other with ease while we sunburnt stiffs looked on in envy and soused our egos with endless rum. Glorious.