Rumba (Congolese)

Many people think of rumba as quintessentially Cuban—and the drum-driven dance music played by groups like Los Muñequitos de Matanzas certainly is that—but rumba neither began in Cuba nor ended there. Debate about its origin persists in some quarters, but Africans assert that rumba came first from Africa and most Cubans agree. One theory posits that the word rumba derives from nkumba, which means "waist" in KiKongo, a Central African language, and refers also to a social dance that joins couples at the waist. According to this account, slaves from Central Africa carried the word, dance and its accompanying rhythms and songs to the Americas. The majority of Africans brought to Cuba during the four-century-long Atlantic slave trade did in fact come from the Congo. Rumba and other Cuban styles evince such strong Congolese characteristics that only obstinacy prevents some listeners from hearing the connections.

But what Congolese call rumba is different from nkumba and from what Cubans call rumba. Rumba Congo is indeed rooted in traditional Congolese music but it is distinctly modern, and while the Cuban influence is crucial it is far from absolute. Cuban music returned to the Congo via phonograph records, which became available in the region's cities in the 1930s. In the sounds emanating from those shellac grooves—the rhythms, the way singers called and choruses responded—Congolese listeners recognized their own music made new. Local musicians had already begun adapting imported instruments to indigenous forms, but records by Trio Matamoros, Sexteto Habanero, Septeto Nacional and other Cuban groups taught them how to combine the elements to make music that was at once modern, cosmopolitan and deeply familiar.

Congolese musicians started playing Cuban songs, mimicking the Spanish lyrics or replacing them with verses in their own languages and composing original songs in Cuban styles. Records produced in Léopoldville (the Belgian Congo) and Brazzaville (the French Congo) in the 40s and 50s confirm, however, that the early stars of rumba Congo never merely imitated Cuban music. Paul Kamba, Antoine Wendo, Henri Bowane, Kallé Kabasele and other artists of their generation created a new sound. They called it rumba but used a variety of rhythms and song structures, some recognizably Latin, some not. Their melodies followed the tones and accents of Lingala and other local languages instead of Spanish. They favored clarinets or saxophones over flutes and trumpets, and above all they featured guitars. In Congolese rumba, guitars—usually in pairs or threes—covered all the parts that the guitar, the trés, the violins and the piano played in Cuban music. And when innovative guitarists such as Franco, Dr. Nico and Papa Noel took up electric guitars in the mid-'50s, Congolese rumba further distinguished itself from its Cuban antecedent.

Yet Cuban music—and music from Puerto Rico, Haiti and Latin New York, too—influenced Congolese musicians for decades. On the cusp of 1960 (the year that both the Belgian Congo and the French Congo became independent), Kallé Kabasele and his Orchestre African Jazz summed up the sound and the spirit of the times in the title of their famous "Indépendence Cha Cha." They based their theme song, "African Jazz Mokili Mobimba," on an old Cuban son done up mambo-style, with Dr. Nico and his brother Dechaud playing the flute, violin and piano montuno parts on their electric guitars. Tabu Ley Rochereau wrote and sang many of his early songs in pseudo-Spanish. Les Bantous de la Capitale recorded Moises Simons' "El Manicero" (renaming it "Mayeya"), Franco and his O.K. Jazz recorded Eddie Palmieri's "Café," and both bands performed original mambos, cha-cha-chas, boleros and pachangas through the '60s. Sam Mangwana (the only notable Congolese singer who could actually speak some Spanish) imbued his vocal style with the accents and phrasings of Cuban singers like Beny Moré and New Yorkers like Tito Rodriguez.

In the '70s, while the People's Republic of Congo (formerly the French Congo) strengthened ties with Fidel Castro's Cuba, the anti-Communist Mobutu regime in Zaire (as Mobutu renamed the former Belgian Congo) banned Cuban imports, including records, and decreed that only Zairean music could be aired on radio and television. But politics notwithstanding, it is the nature of musical styles to change over time, and so the popular music of Kinshasa (once Léopoldville) and Brazzaville progressed in new directions, away from Havana. Musicians still mined Congolese traditions for raw material, but now the models for their finished product were more often American rock and funk than Cuban music. The generic term rumba gave way to the names of dances too numerous and ephemeral to recount.

However, Latin influences never faded altogether. Every musician had to be familiar with Cuban music if he was to make contemporary Congolese/Zairean music with the right savor. Rising stars such as Nyboma and Papa Wemba were ardent fans of Latin music while established figures like Tabu Ley and Sam Mangwana continued to compose rumba as well as new inventions. But rumba was considered old-fashioned, and so, apparently, were some of its qualities. A succession of brash new sounds kept Kinshasa nightlife bustling through the '70s and '80s, but few could sustain much lasting engagement. The soukous that Congolese and Zairean musicians produced in Paris studios in the '80s and '90s sported an urbane sophistication but rarely achieved the casual elegance of older rumba.