Congo music: Lessons Kenyans can learn

With many genres and musicians coming up, Kenyans still need to do more in the industry writes Abenea Ndago

This year has seen the untimely deaths of two of the world’s most important cultural ambassadors. The Congolese rumba composer and TPOK Jazz singer Pepe Ndombe Opetum passed on around the same time we lost the late Prof George Saitoti,  Orwa Ojode, Nancy Gituanja, Luke Oyugi, Joshua Tunkei, and Thomas Murimi.

Moreover, it is barely a week since we lost the Indian virtuoso and sitar player Pandit Ravi Shankar. It is important to assess the two deaths in terms of their relevance to our efforts aimed at carving a niche for an authentic national music in Kenya.

In the African continent, the easiest example one can give with regard to musical success is the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the country that has known very little peace ever since the arrival of King Leopold of Belgium who made it his personal property. Even before then, the Portuguese used to raid the region for slaves who were then shipped to the Americas, specifically to Brazil and the Caribbean.

Today, the Democratic Republic of Congo is haunted by rebel unrest.  But the country remains home to one of the most musically prolific people on earth. Is it by accident that this troubled region is synonymous with music? Yes and no. I know of only two animals that nature gave exclusively to that part of the African continent. The gorilla of Virunga Hills and the diminutive antelope called okapi are native to Congo.

Gift of Molimo

As for music, there has been more of work than luck.  What we learn from the anthropologist Colin Turnbull’s book The Forest People (1961) is that nature gave the gift of molimo (soul or spirit) to the Congolese. An abundance of the molimo gift mainly expresses itself through song and dance, and this explains the admirable ease with which the Congolese sing.

We used to hear the presence of molimo in the moving voice of the late Madilu Bialu. Today, I do not doubt that this rare gift is easily recognisable in the sorrowful tone of the young Congolese virtuoso called (no, not Fally Ipupa), Herve Gola Bataringe, otherwise simply known as Ferre Gola from Kintambo municipality in Lukunga District of Kinshasa. But Congolese music does not thrive on natural talent alone.

There is a case for the proposition that music and misery are two sides of the same coin. As we learn from the late Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, the world’s most gifted singers rarely had the happiest lives.  It may hence be possible that, like the African-Americans and the South Africans, music became an emotional outlet for years of neglect and grinding oppression that has defined Congo for whole centuries.

Moreover, the effects of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade enriched (and continue to enrich) Congolese rumba. Central Africa still maintains very beneficial cultural contact with Brazil and the Caribbean, regions inhabited by descendants of slaves from The Congo.

The Cuban blend in Tabu Ley’s music is easily recognisable, and that is why it does not surprise me to hear that Kofi Olomide borrows his rhythm from Mexico, a region that has historically been associated with an African presence. Closely related to the issue of slavery and slave trade is that, due to their country’s instability, many Congolese singers have emigrated abroad (especially to the West in Paris and Brussels) where they continue to enrich and popularise their music.

It would be fraudulent not to acknowledge that Congolese music owes a big debt to Mubutu Sese Seko’s ideology of cultural authenticity, which propelled Franco to rapid prominence. This is what Graeme Ewens tells us in his Congo Colossus: The Life and Legacy of Franco & OK Jazz (1994).

In East Africa, the dictator who seemed to care about national music was Idi Amin. Uganda’s Afrigo Band owed its existence to the burly tin-god. In State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin (1977), Henry Kyemba tells us that the despot would sit and serenade one of his wives on an accordion. Ugandan music today has a distinctively lonely tone reminiscent of the traditional Bagandan kadongo kamu. I have yet to hear an East African singer referred to in as emotional terms as we do the late Ugandan Philly Lutaaya.

The other group of Africa’s cultural ideologues who influenced their national music comprises Julius Nyerere, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Cheikh Anta Diop and Kwame Nkrumah. Indeed, the three West Africans envisaged one country, which would have swallowed Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Gambia.

This cultural effort is instructive because there has not been an African fusion band, which competes for pride of place with Ghana’s former band Osibisa. Mali and Senegal both boast galaxies of singers, and two of our continent’s top artistes: Salif Keita and Youssou N’Dour respectively.

The Gambia is the origin of arguably Africa’s best-known stringed instrument – the kora. What is in it for Kenyan music? If nature did not give you the molimo gift, then you must know that building a national musical culture requires hard work and systematic effort.  I do not wish that Kenyans be taken away to the Americas as slaves.  My point is only that national music or culture is often rapidly realised if people like the late Joseph Murumbi lead from the top.  

The writer teaches Literature at Bondo University college