Congolese rumba, also known as African rumba, is a dance music genre originating from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and the Republic of the Congo (formerly French Congo). With its rhythms, melodies, and lyrics, Congolese rumba has gained global recognition and remains an integral part of African music heritage. In December 2021, it was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.

Emerging in the mid-20th century in the urban centers of Kinshasa and Brazzaville during the colonial era, Congolese rumba originated from a fusion of various musical influences, including traditional Kongolese rhythms and Cuban rumba. Congolese rumba customarily features lively guitar melodies, groovy basslines, catchy rhythms, and danceable beats. The genre's roots can be traced to the 1930s, when African musicians, particularly those from the Congo Basin, incorporated guitar, bottles, and ikembe to perform songs in traditional forms combined with Cuban rumba and son. This gave rise to soukous, a genre characterized by its lively rhythms, intricate high-pitched guitar melodies, and large brass and polyrhythmic percussion sections.

The style has gained widespread popularity in Africa, reaching countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Sudan, Senegal, Burundi, Malawi, and Namibia. Additionally, it has found a following in Europe, particularly in France, Belgium, Germany, and the UK, as well as the US, as a result of touring by Congolese musicians, who have performed at various festivals internationally. Musicians such as Henri Bowane, Wendo Kolosoy, Franco Luambo Makiadi, Le Grand Kallé, Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley Rochereau, Sam Mangwana, Papa Noel Nedule, Vicky Longomba, and Papa Wemba have made significant contributions to the genre, pushing its boundaries and incorporating modern musical elements.

History

Origins
A proposed etymology for the term "rumba" is that it derives from the Kikongo word nkumba, meaning "belly button", denoting the native dance practiced within the former Kingdom of Congo, encompassing parts of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, and Angola. Its rhythmic foundation draws from Bantu traditions, notably the Palo Kongo religion, which traces back to the Kongo people who were unceremoniously transported to Cuba by Spanish settlers in the 16th century. According to Miguel Ángel Barnet Lanza's On Congo Cults of Bantu Origin in Cuba, the majority of African slaves brought to Cuba were of Bantu origin, although later, the Yoruba from Nigeria became the primary group of slaves in Cuba. Despite the tribulations endured by enslaved Africans, their musical traditions, dance forms, and spiritual practices from were covertly preserved across generations within regions characterized by significant populations of enslaved Africans. Musical instruments like the conga, makuta, catá, yambu, claves, güiro, and cajón de rumba were used to craft a musical dialogue that engaged in call-and-response with ancestral spirits and the deceased. Notable figures like Arsenio Rodríguez blended traditional Bakongo sounds with Cuban son.

Late 1930s–1950s

In the 1930s and 1940s, the music of Cuban son groups, such as Septeto Habanero, Trio Matamoros, and Los Guaracheros de Oriente, was played on Radio Congo Belge in Léopoldville, gaining popularity in the country during the following decades. Once local bands tried to emulate this sound—referred to as "rumba" in Africa, although it is unrelated to Cuban rumba)—their music became known as "soukous", a derivative of the French word "secouer" (literally, "to shake"). By the late 1960s, soukous was an established genre in most of Central Africa, and it would also impact the music of West and East Africa.

Congolese bands started doing Cuban covers, singing the Spanish lyrics phonetically. Eventually, they created original compositions with lyrics in French or Lingala, a lingua franca of the western Congo region, and adapted Cuban guajeos to guitars. Antoine Kolosoy, also known as Papa Wendo, became the first star of African rumba, touring Europe and North America in the 1940s and 1950s with his regular band, Victoria Bakolo Miziki, or Victoria Kin. Kolosoy was inspired by Paul Kamba's band, Victoria Brazza. Before Kamba, a Martinican man named Jean Réal had formed the band Congo Rumba in Brazzaville.

By the 1950s, big bands had become the preferred format, using acoustic bass guitars, multiple electric guitars, conga drums, maracas, scrapers, flutes, or clarinets, saxophones, and trumpets. Grand Kalle et l'African Jazz (also known as African Jazz), led by Joseph Kabasele Tshamala, and OK Jazz, later renamed TPOK Jazz, led by Franco Luambo, became the leading bands. One of the musical innovations of Franco's band was the mi-solo (meaning "half solo") guitarist, playing arpeggio patterns and filling a role between the lead and rhythm guitars.

1960s–1970s

In the 1950s and 1960s, some artists who had performed in the bands of Franco Luambo and Grand Kalle formed their own groups. Tabu Ley Rochereau and Nico Kasanda created African Fiesta and transformed their music further by fusing Congolese folk with soul, as well as Caribbean and Latin beats and instrumentation. They were joined by Papa Wemba and Sam Mangwana, and classics like "Afrika Mokili Mobimba" made them one of Africa's most prominent bands. Other greats of this period include Koffi Olomide, Tshala Muana, and Wenge Musica.

While the rumba influenced bands such as Lipua-Lipua, Veve, TPOK Jazz, and Bella Bella, younger Congolese musicians looked for ways to reduce that influence and play a faster-paced soukous. A group of students called Zaiko Langa Langa came together in 1969 around founding vocalist Papa Wemba. Pepe Kalle, a protégé of Grand Kalle, created the band Empire Bakuba together with Papy Tex, and they too became popular.

East Africa in the 1970s
Soukous now spread across Africa and became an influence on virtually all the styles of modern African popular music, including highlife, palm-wine music, taarab, and makossa. As political conditions in Zaire, as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was then known, deteriorated in the 1970s, some groups made their way to Tanzania and Kenya. By the mid-1970s, several Congolese groups were playing soukous at Kenyan nightclubs. The lively cavacha, a dance craze that swept East and Central Africa during the 1970s, was popularized through recordings of bands such as Zaïko Langa Langa and Orchestra Shama Shama, influencing Kenyan musicians. This rhythm, played on the snare drum or hi-hat, briskly became a hallmark of the Congolese sound in Nairobi and was frequently used by regional bands. Several of Nairobi's renowned Swahili rumba bands formed around Tanzanian groups like Simba Wanyika and their offshoots, Les Wanyika and Super Wanyika Stars.

In the late 1970s, Virgin Records produced albums from the Tanzanian–Congolese Orchestra Makassy and the Kenya-based Super Mazembe, with the Swahili song "Shauri Yako" becoming a hit in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Les Mangelepa was another influential Congolese group that moved to Kenya and became popular throughout East Africa. Around this same time, the Nairobi-based Congolese vocalist Samba Mapangala and his band, Orchestra Virunga, issued the album Malako, which became one of the pioneering releases of the newly emerging world music scene in Europe. The musical style of the East Africa-based Congolese bands gradually incorporated new elements, including Kenyan benga music, and spawned what is sometimes called the "Swahili sound" or "Congolese sound".

21st century
In December 2021, Congolese rumba was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Musical examples
The following example is from the Congolese rumba "Passi ya boloko" by Franco (Luambo Makiadi) and O.K. Jazz (c. mid-1950s). The bass is playing a tresillo-based tumbao, typical of son montuno. The rhythm guitar plays all of the offbeats, the exact pattern of the rhythm guitar in Cuban son. According to the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, the lead guitar part "recalls the blue-tinged guitar solos heard in bluegrass and rockabilly music of the 1950s, with its characteristic insistence on the opposition of the major-third and minor-third degrees of the scale."

Banning Eyre distills down the Congolese guitar style to this skeletal figure, where the guide-pattern clave is sounded by the bass notes (notated with downward stems).

In a densely textured seben section of a soukous song (below), the three interlocking guitar parts are reminiscent of the contrapuntal structure of Cuban music, with its layered guajeos.

Influence

Colombian champeta

African music has been popular in Colombia since the 1970s and has had a significant impact on the local musical genre known as champeta. In the mid-1970s, a group of sailors introduced records from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria to Colombia, including a plate-numbered 45 RPM titled El Mambote by Congo's l'Orchestre Veve, which gained popularity when played by DJ Victor Conde. Record labels proactively dispatched producers to find African records that would resonate with DJs and audiences. The music gained traction, especially in economically underprivileged urban areas, predominantly inhabited by Afro-Colombian communities, where it was incorporated into sound systems at parties across cities such as Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Palenque de San Basilio.

The emergence of champeta involved replicating musical arrangements by Congolese artists like Nicolas Kasanda wa Mikalay, Tabu Ley Rochereau, M'bilia Bel, Syran Mbenza, Lokassa Ya M'Bongo, Pépé Kallé, Rémy Sahlomon, and Kanda Bongo Man. Local artists such as Viviano Torres, Luis Towers, and Charles King, all from Palenque de San Basilio, started composing their own songs and producing unique musical arrangements, while still maintaining the Congolese soukous influence, a derivative of Congolese rumba. They composed and sang in their native language, Palenquero, a creole mix of Spanish and Bantu languages like Kikongo and Lingala.

Champeta's sound is intimately intertwined with Congolese rumba, particularly the soukous style, sharing the same rhythmic foundation. The guitar and the use of the Casio brand synthesizer for sound effects are instrumental in shaping champeta's distinct sound.

During the Super Bowl LIV halftime show on 2 February 2020, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, Shakira danced to the song "Icha" by the Congolese artist Syran Mbenza, accompanied by several dancers. The track is colloquially known as "El Sebastián" in Colombia. Shakira's performance inspired the #ChampetaChallenge on various social media platforms.

Ivorian coupé-décalé

The Congolese rumba dance called ndombolo has significantly impacted coupé-décalé dance music with the incorporation of atalaku, a term referencing animators or hype men who enhance the rhythm and interactivity of performances, into its songs. The first Congolese band to employ atalaku was Zaïko Langa Langa, in the 1980s. In one of their early compositions featuring these animators, the repeated chant "Atalaku! Tala! Atalaku mama, Zekete" (Look at me! Look! Look at me, mama! Zekete!) echoed, commanding attention. As coupé-décalé emerged, the Congolese rumba influence remained conspicuous. Notably, with the release of "Sagacité", Douk Saga's debut hit, the explicit imprint of atalaku was apparent. In an RFI interview, DJ Arafat, an Ivorian musician, acknowledged atalaku's influence on his artistic approach. The term has transcended its origins, becoming embedded in the lexicon of Ivory Coast and neighboring countries, though it now signifies "flattery".

French hip hop

With the emergence of satellite television across Africa in the early 1990s, coupled with the subsequent development and expansion of the internet across the continent in the subsequent decades, French hip hop flourished within the African francophone market. Originating in the United States, the genre rapidly gained popularity among youth of African descent in France and various other European nations. Initially molded by American hip hop, the French variant has since developed a distinct identity and sound, drawing influences from the African musical heritage shared by many French rappers. 

By the late 1990s, Bisso Na Bisso, a collective of French rappers from the Republic of the Congo, pioneered the infusion of Congolese rumba rhythms into French rap. Their album Racines melds hip hop, Congolese rumba, soukous, and zouk rhythms, featuring collaborations with African artists like Koffi Olomidé, Papa Wemba, Ismaël Lô, Lokua Kanza, and Manu Dibango, alongside the French-Caribbean zouk group Kassav'. Nearly all their thematic elements revolve around a reconnection with their roots, evident through samples sourced directly from Congolese rumba and soukous. In the early 2000s, the lingua franca of many French rap tracks was Lingala, accompanied by resonant rumba guitar riffs. Mokobé Traoré, a Malian–French rapper, further accentuated this influence on the album Mon Afrique, where he featured artists like Fally Ipupa on the soukous-inspired track "Malembe". The far-reaching impact of "Congolization" transcends hip hop, permeating other genres like French R&B and religious music, all while concurrently gaining traction across Europe and francophone Africa. Prominent artists include Youssoupha, Maître Gims, Dadju, Niska, Singuila, Damso, KeBlack, Naza, Zola, Kalash Criminel, Ninho, Kaysha, Franglish, Gradur, Shay, Bramsito, Baloji, Tiakola, and Ya Levis Dalwear—all descendants of Congolese musical lineage.

See also
 Music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
 Musicians from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

References

Bibliography

External links
 
 The Sound of Sunshine: How soukous saved my life

Democratic Republic of the Congo music
Dance music genres