“By Mari-Djata Amadi kwaa Atsiaya”
—- mari_djyata@yahoo.com
Of the most famous musicians that continental Africa has produced, DRC’s Luambo Luanzo Makiadi Franco has etched himself an eternal place. In just a few weeks to come, rumba music enthusiasts all over the world will commemorate with great nostalgia, the October 12th 1989 demise of the Grand Master of Zairean (as the DRC was known for quite some time during Franco’s life) Music.
As the excitement steadily mounts in various quarters to remember this fallen musical titan, my mind jogs to a few years ago when listening to one such commemoration on radio. A reporter was interviewing some residents of Kinshasa, and one man made a remark that made me get interested in Franco than ever before. Of course his recognition as the foremost DRC musician is something I have always reserved for him. Yet, this remark by this rather dismissive Kinshasa resident was overly unsettling. The man went in typical Kingwana (the Swahili dialect spoken in the DRC): “Franco; yeye alikuwa anaimbaka tu mambo ya upuzi upuzi tu. Ile nzembo yake ambayo mimi iko naona iko na maana ni ile nasema ‘mwana mama, ee mwana maa ee, nabangi liwa ee nabangi liwa…” The interviewee was insistent that in his opinion, Franco was a facile and parochial musician and the only song by Franco that moved him was this one where Franco talks about his fear for death. Many accounts of Franco describe him as having considered death as a great injustice. Right from the death of his own dad when in Franco’s childhood, to the latter day in 1970 death of his younger brother Bavon Marie Marie, Franco’s view of death was quite depressive. This could be the ethos that this man on radio was imbibing from the song he quoted. Before this settled, an encounter with a lady from the DRC obviously led to conversation about Franco and his music, and her conclusion was quite simple: Franco was just about women and cheating lovers.
In my opinion, sentiments by the two who in those years of Franco would aptly be referred to as Zairois mpe Zairoise tended to present a simplistic view of the personage whom writer Graeme Ewens calls the Congo Colossus. Franco had been part of our upbringing, his songs serenading us from childhood, through our teenage, and up to now, those of us who appreciate rumba still have Franco as an indispensable part of the African rumba menu. To those who are in their late thirties and above, school days entertainment was not complete without a number by the Tout Puissant O. K. Jazz, which Franco headed for the longest time the band was alive. Franco was and still is a hero to many who greatly admired him during his life, for the kind of following he commanded not only in his home Zaire, but in Africa and the world in general. As an artist, Franco was one of the most successful of our time, yet the comments by the lady and gentleman from Kinshasa cannot be warded off just like a fly being whisked off one’s face.
As a symbol of success, Franco was a typical man who rose from humble and doubt filled origins to come to stamp his will and influence on his community. He is one of the pioneer professional musicians of Congo. Although there were his predecessors in the likes of Wendo Kolosoy, who had recorded music as early as the late 1940s, and Franco’s own mentor; Ebengo Dewayon; not to forget the likes of Bowane; Franco prospered on his own to eclipse many who started before him, and others who started at the same time as him. Of the Congolese music movements that emerged in the 1950s, one can distinctly be attributed to Franco who formed such a vital tributary in Congolese music, which has continually produced world class musicians such as Antoine Nedule Monswet ‘Papa Noel’, Dalinst Ntesa, Jean Madilu Bialu ‘System’, ‘Prince’ Youlou Mabiala among others.
Like any society in the world, the Congolese society was and still is symptomatic of inequalities in terms of access to education. Many factors contribute to these inequalities and economists and sociologists have addressed these inequalities in many a fora and publications. It is instructive to note that Franco emerged from the leeward side of the economic fence. His own mother, Mama Makiese, working as a vendor in an open air market in Kinshasa, and his railway employed father dying when Franco was still a little boy. This in itself sets a young Franco into a world where abundance is not part of nature. Educationally, all accounts about the famed musician point to very modest academic credentials. At best, he was a primary school dropout, who found more fun in playing football and playing with improvised guitars from sardine tins than burying himself in books. At the time he entered into the music world, Franco represented the artiste who is down on the ground.
On the other side of the musical divide was a band formed at about the same time as Franco’s O.K Jazz, and this was Joseph Kabaselleh’s African Jazz. This is a band that boasted some of the cream of Kinshasa. Joseph (aka Grand Kalle) Kabaselle Tshamala was a high school graduate. Along with him were equally highly educated folks like Dechaud, Tino Barosa and later Pascal Emmanuel Sinamoyi ‘Tabu Ley’ (Le Marechal Rochereau) and Decteur Nico Kasanda wa Mikalayi. This spelt the first two heights from which volleys of rivalry were to be fired for many years in Congolese music, even though Franco was to later on play this down in a great show of modesty after the death of Grand Kalle in 1983, when he exuberantly talked of his admiration of the Grand Kalle, who was eight years his senior. Kalle came from a well to do family and his choice of music as a career at that point in time was quite revolutionary. For some years, Kalle was to lead the elite troupe of troubadours, while Franco led a pack of people whose muscle lay more in their skill. Later though, Franco also enlisted some elite musicians in his ranks, but up till his death, he never shed his image as the voice of the ‘commoner’.
Still with our two friends, we may appreciate Luambo Makiadi as a total ordinary person despite his extraordinary gift in music which made the Congolese press to baptize him as the sorcerer of the guitar. The two must have been commenting from the point of view expressed by people like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who have got a socialist approach to art. Accordingly, art is supposed to serve the society in a positive way. Art is not supposed to fulfill what Marx doomed religion with- to serve as an opiate of the people. From a socialist point of view, (or the perspective that demands that the artist as a social worker is morally bound to address the burning concerns of his times) then Franco may come into the picture as a man whose performance could be given the kind of verdict that Oby Obyerodhyambo’s review of Njenga Karume’s Biography – Beyond Expectation-gave the book: Below expectation.
Franco was a naturally charismatic individual. Having started playing the guitar at a very tender age, and at times playing a guitar almost double his size with the dexterity of a wizard (no wonder he was given the appellation ‘sorcerer of the guitar’ by the fourth estate in Congo), he was such a rallying force in the late 1950s when he was arrested for a traffic offence and the populace shored their support behind him. Later, when he was incarcerated on charges of recording music replete with lewd lyrics, the same people stood by him till he was released.
As Franco’s band O.K Jazz suffered early defections starting with Jean Serge Essous (the man who is reputed to have actually assembled the initial group of musicians who later called themselves O.K Jazz) who departed in less than four years since the founding of the band, and then Vicky Longomba in 1960 when the band was only in its fifth year, his bitter rivals African Jazz were riding their ever highest crest. This was the year of the Table Ronde in Brussels (the equivalent of Kenya’s Lancaster Conference). African Jazz was the band that was chosen to go and entertain and urge the delegation on as independence negotiations were going on between the Congolese political representatives, and their Belgian colonizers; the result of which was the declaration of independence later in the year, and as the country erupted in the ecstasy of self governance, it was the African Jazz number ‘Independence Chacha’ which became the anthem not only of Congo but of the whole of Africa as many African states went on to gain their own independence from direct colonial rule. The limelight is something that every artiste craves for, and at this time when the limelight had been hogged by African Jazz, Franco was busy firing his iron.
As the Congolese slowly settled into independence (if they ever did), schisms had already formed in the great band of the Grand Kalle- African Jazz. Tabu Ley Rochereau, who had gained fame for doing the vocals on the eternal song ‘Independence Chacha’ as a twenty year old lad, and who was a gem among the fine lads of Kinshasa who spoke French with an accent; teamed up with young Nico Kasanda wa Mikalayi (the latter, a young man boasting a technical college diploma), leaving African Jazz, only three years after the Independence Chacha fame. They formed their own outfit known as African Fiesta, which is the band that was to produce the evergreen ‘Mokolo Nakokufa’ (The Day I Die), and which some people claim was the stroke that would break the camel’s back in their case to send the once promising African Fiesta into the Tabu Ley Led African Fiesta National (or African Fiesta Flash) and Decteur Nico’s Africa Fiesta Sukisa. The latter did ‘Na Mokili ya Nzambe, Mandonna, Mwasi Abandaka, among others, while Tabu Ley’s faction which gained fame for their forever hit ‘Africa Mokili Mobimba’ (Africa and the Whole World) went on to cap it with a gig at the prestigious and much coveted Olympia hall in France in 1970, from whence he changed his band’s name to Afrisa International.
As African Jazz was splintering into many factions, O.K Jazz was consolidating its forces. More important is what ‘Independence chacha’ turned out to be. Earlier in the day, Franco had composed a song among the very first to be recorded by the young O.K Jazz, which talked with so much expectation about independence. The song ‘Merengue’, probably a celebration of the meringue beat which was an influence from Latin America as Congolese music of that time showed tendency toward Latin America and Cuba, the song could pass off as a feel good dancehall number. Played in typical meringue beat, Franco sings saying a number of things, but a keen ear will pick out the lyrics: ‘Tongo na tongo mokili ekobaluka’. What this could mean is that a day is coming when things are going to change. This is an allusion to independence by young Franco. By stretching the imagination in the reasoning by the two people who form the reference point here, it seems this is the kind of Franco that they needed to see more of.
Barely seven months after the much awaited independence, Congo’s most legitimate leader, Patrice Lumumba was brutally murdered in conditions that had seen a fractious country approach independence as a collection of groups pulling apart. On his part, Lumumba had made a grave mistake by doing what Kenyan former secular musician turned gospel sensation –Mr. Googz- urges his Christian compatriots to do: “tell them straight; stop entertaining!” he quips in one of his songs. Lumumba told the Belgian King on his face that the Congolese were no longer their monkeys. Indeed, Lumumba was the kind of leader who was for real and total independence, but he was bludgeoned, and later shot, dismembered, buried, exhumed and doused in sulfuric acid by the same colonial powers that purported to mean good to the newly independent country. This happening, at a time when Luambo’s influence was at a very high point.
Like any other artiste, there is no day that an independent mind will earn only friends, especially from the establishment. Franco had his own brushes with the establishment leading to a few stints behind bars as a guest of the state, but a critical glance shows Franco as an artiste who was more in bed with what the one time Kenyan Vice President Wamalwa Kijana would have described as ‘the miasma of deceit and corruption’; the sleaze and conspiracy that helped postpone and entrench the problems that bedevil the DRC up to the present. Franco was one of the staunchest supporters of Mobutu Sese Seko, the former army officer who benefited from the chaos that erupted from the colonial machinations that ensured that Congo‘s independence remained stillborn; the very man who like a vulture on a carcass strewn battlefield gobbled his fill. While artistes such as Franklin Boukaka questioned the meaning of such sham independence through songs like La Boucheron, Luambo was worshiping at Mobutu’s alter which venerated the goddess of merry making. Boukaka wondered in song: ‘Nakomituna mondele akende, lipanda tozuaki mpo ya nani Africa, Basusu oyo toponaka bawela bokonzi na ma voiture’ (I ask myself, when the white man departed and we got independence, for whom was it; Africa? Others that we elected are only interested in big posts and flashy limos). He went on to declare : ‘Bapasi oyo ya boye, ngai na bana mawa nakoka te’ ( I and the children can no longer take all this suffering).
Mobutu’s philosophy was that happy are a people who sing and dance. Franco heeded to this call by making people do just that, sing and dance. Even younger musicians like Georges Kiamwangana (aka Verkys) dared question the powers that be through songs such as ‘Nakomitunaka’ (I ask myself), which is a stinging criticism of the wholesale adoption of foreign ways of life and belief systems in the post colony. In this song, Verkys would like to know why anything to do with our African forefathers and our own is looked down upon, while anything from across the ocean is accepted as holy; including that which keeps us in perpetual slavery. No wonder, the Catholic church was up in arms against him probably when he referred to the veneration of white idols (and praying with rosaries in our hands) while black idols are associated with Satanism. This was a good attempt by Kiamwangana, which eventually disappeared into thin air. One would attribute this to a mere jibe at a religious rival by someone who belonged to a different denomination.
Some sources indicate that Kiamuangana Mateta started off as a Catholic, before going ‘into the world’. An account by Congolese author Arizona Baongoli associates Kiamuangana with the Kimbangu ‘sect’. This is one of the independent churches of the DRC and which were instrumental in fighting for independence, just as was the case in Kenya. There has always been a rivalry between the African independent churches and the mainstream churches, with the latter finding it very easy to refer to the former as sects. Given that Kiamuangana did not show much consistency in his advocacy for justice and real independence in Congo, one would easily believe that the Catholic church’s concern with his reference to ‘white idols, rosaries in our hands, Jesus the son of God is a white man, Adam and Eve are all white, all angels are white, all saints white…’ could have been an indirect attack on his Christian rivals rather than a major launch pad for serious social commitment, questioning the social structure that put colonial injustice in the same basket with God.
The early years of false independence sowed the seeds of the Congolese conflict that has been festering, and the solution to which seems distant. This was a time when the African strongman was being firmly entrenched in the person who had converted from Joseph Desire Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa Zambanga; the invincible cockerel who moves from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake! Under his policy of recourse a l’authenticite, the former Joseph Desire Mobutu had decreed that people should go back to their African roots by doing away with their foreign names and instead using authentic African names, and he led the way with a mouth filling appellation to himself. Kenyan writer David Imbuga in his Betrayal in the City makes fun of this where he has Boss (the ruler) dwell so much on this subject of changing names as if it is the most important agenda for a leader; or if the change does not go beyond a positive change of spirit. Mobutu also advocated for the adoption of African attire in place of Western apparel. On the surface, all this was good because it exalted Africaness especially in a post colony. Secondly, it promoted local industry by insisting on the wearing of local dresses. At another level, this was simply a hoodwink to the Congolese, for no one can see the spirit of Africa in the repression and heartless kleptocracy presided over by the grand cockerel himself, and the looting in the Congo perpetrated by foreign companies enjoying patronage from state house.
Rather than reduce Franco to the two factors that the catalysts of this article simplified him to, Franco would rather be considered as an artiste who lived during a time that would have granted him real greatness but who let the chance slip through his large fingers. Franco was a keen observer, and one of his pet subjects was the womenfolk, as rightly pointed out by the lady from Kinshasa. What he chose to see in the lady of his interest is what left bitterness in the mouth of our male reference point. Franco saw his woman as a victim of herself, a victim of her lover, but never as the two being victims of the circumstances visited upon them by a political situation that was symptomatic of entertainment aboard the sinking MV Titanic. However, Franco was many things at the same time. He was a social commentator, pillar of the status quo, and even a billboard or bullhorn for commercial enterprises both at home and abroad. He is a subject that is so large a single doctoral thesis cannot adequately address. No wonder Baongoli laments that in spite of so much potential study material, no serious research has been conducted by any Congolese academy in this area.
Let us then try to unravel Franco through a random selection of a few of his popular numbers:
Mario, the most celebrated number by Franco in Kenya is one song that Franco composed as a form of social commentary about the relationship between men and women. This one concerns a young university graduate known as Mario, who has put up with an older woman, and who is now bothering her. The woman is tired and wants Mario out of her house. She complains that she is fed up with Mario’s ill behaviour and his incessant battering of her. This, from a socialist perspective, is an opportunity for a committed artiste to question why such talent and knowledge as possessed by Mario, should go to waste. Franco did not address the causes of unemployment by the likes of Mario. In one of the few revised versions of Mario, Franco says that Mario indeed has five university degrees from reputable international universities. Rather, Franco stopped at the level of this push and pull between a woman and a man, the latter whom desperation has pushed to take refuge in an old woman’s house. He did not even interrogate domestic violence and its correlation with social conditions that are so stifling to Mario’s kind. Franco does not question the political system that produces such a state of affairs. Remember that Congo is one of the richest countries on earth, yet, from the times of Franco, Congolese people have been flocking foreign capitals (such as Brussels the capital of their former colonial master Belgium), which has been celebrated by Franco and other musicians. Later on his compatriot Angela Chibalonza was to counsel the Congolese in her song ‘Jubilee’ that they should not put their hope in abodes abroad but invest it in building their country Congo.
True to the observation by the lady from Kinshasa, Franco composed a lot of songs about the relationship between women and fellow women, and between men and women. As Mario was raising so much dust in dance halls across East and Central Africa in the eighties, in Kinshasa, the song that was most warmly received was Mamou. This one is a conversation between a divorcee and her married friend- Mamou. Franco goes on to enumerate all the gossip and bad mouthing going on between the two. Yes, Franco is talking about an important human relationship – that between a man and a woman, and between friends. Again, questions are left to linger: What conditions bring about such a state of affairs, that a family should be so separated? In the song, there is a rich musical dramatic dialogue between Deca Mpudi one of the T.P.O.K Jazz guitarist and Franco, playing out the telephone conversation between Mamou’s husband and the wife (the latter played by Deca), and the topic being discussed borders on sheer triviality. Nothing of substance is achieved in this juiciest part of the song, imploring one to believe that the song was not meant to address social issues at a deep level. To those who don’t understand the lyrics, it is a lot of empty drama, or what the man from Kinshasa summarized as ‘mambo ya upuzi upzi tu’.In one of the reworked versions of the song, Franco makes an attempt of cleaning up this part to have a real conversation between a man and woman who are out to build their marriage.
Franco did not just comment on female-male relations, but also focused on other issues like the things that the youth do in the name of studying abroad. Franco talks about such experiences in a song such as ‘Makambo Ezali Boreaur’, which talks about this youngster leaving for some foreign capital for studies but then in Franco’s estimation, this is a mournful happening, owing to the kind of things that he has witnessed in places like America, Paris and Brussels. This, he says is tearful and indeed ‘Makambo ezali minene’ (It is a big deal) because many of these people take other people’s money promising to bring them goodies from abroad, only to drain it in the hovels of those cold cities. Considered keenly, here Franco was masquerading as a commoner yet the kind of people he was singing for were the high flying society; the like who could afford to send their spouses and children abroad!
He also had opportunity to criticize unbecoming social behavior, as evident in the number ‘Tres Impoli’ (Very Impolite). In this song, Franco takes time to enumerate the many things that amount to irritation and deficiency in social etiquette, ranging from those people who go foraging other people’s fridges, reading other people’s letters in the offices they visit, combing their hair without regard to however could be eating his food from nearby…One would expect Franco to grab such an opportunity to throw salvos at the larger misbehavior by the bigwigs, or in the former song, to discuss the struggles of an African student in a foreign country. Another wasted opportunity presents itself in the song ‘Iluse’, which is a complaint by a woman to a fellow woman who borrows stuff from her but fails to return; even at times lending them over or treating them negligently. What a fertile opportunity for the singer to expand the picture! He never saw any misbehavior beyond the womenfolk, or the man who is unrefined. The political class was to him behaving quite well.
Franco also addresses the issue of immorality in quite a number of his songs. An example is the song Layile, which is a lament by a cuckolded wife, who seems to belong to the upper class that can afford trips abroad, but while she is supposed to enjoy her trips abroad, she suffers infidelity from the husband who takes such opportunities to even entertain lechers of ‘Avenir Kasavubu’ (Kinshasa’s equivalent of K-Street in Nairobi at twilight). How Luambo Makiadi could see such immorality and lament about it but fail to raise to the macrocosm to see the systemic sociological breeding grounds for this kind of lechery and heartless betrayal is baffling.
Franco was a politician in his own right. Just like all normal politicians, he had a large following of people from all walks of life, and he was quite a powerhouse in the DRC and beyond. As a politician, he seemed to be together with the people, showing ardent support for his favorite soccer side Club Vita, and also enjoying fanatical support from the women who had coalesced around this club, and talking the language of the common person. He was to even recruit into his band, former Vita player Freddy Mayaula Mayoni; the man who composed ‘Nabali Misere’ (I have married misery) .Just like a politician, Franco lived the double life of a person who understands what is happening, yet chooses to let celebration drown everything. Franco talked about hard life and survival but never talked about what was needed to tackle these ills; neither what the real cause of this suffering was. Instead, he showed such a typical politician styled approach to patriotism when he chose to support the exploitative Mobutu regime to the hilt. In the campaign anthem for the re-election of Mobutu in the elections of 1980 when Mobutu stood against himself but still got glowing support from Franco through the beautiful number Candidat na Biso Mobutu (Our Candidate Mobutu), Franco gave one of his finest. This is a song that is typical of sycophancy at its best. It is symptomatic of the naïve interpretation of patriotism in the 1980s, when even in Kenya, many songs were sung in praise of the then president Moi, at the height of repression by the Moi regime. Reputable bands like Them Mushrooms joined the bandwagon and composed Hongera Rais Moi, as Kelly Brown, another Kenyan who for a long time had coveted James Brown, reinvented himself with ‘Sisi kwa Sisi’ which was another beautiful ballad about how beautiful a land Kenya was, and ‘all praise be to president Moi, the love filled leader, and may God protect you, to live a long life’, as church hymns were being reworked to have lyrics that mentioned Moi by name and how much of God’s servant he was, in a country where the civil service was fast disappearing and being replaced by gangs of robbers, with Nyayo House underground chambers echoing with the groans of torture victims!
There are those who say that Franco like the cat was wily and that in the fashion of a keen student of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, he had kept his fangs and talons concealed, but was not lucky enough to have opportunity to put them to use; just as befalls the enemy surrounded by good spies. Sultan Skassy Kasambula, band leader of the Wana Mitwango ya Jiji gives a very glaring picture of Franco the politician. In an interview with the defunct Radio Simba, Skassy maintains that Franco’s death was in fact an assassination, the execution of which ranks it with the killing of the likes of Lwanda Magere, Samson and Fumo Liyongo. All these are legends whose murder was organized to involve their inner circle. What makes Luambo’s particularly political, according to Skassy Kasambula’s account is the rumor that leaked to the effect that Franco had composed more than forty songs to oppose Mobutu, and that the songs were going to be his campaign tool come election time. The suspicion that followed Franco’s ailment and eventual demise sent disruptive shockwaves in the social fabric of the band that he led, eventually leading to a break-up that gave birth to Bana O.K under Franco’s long time deputy Simaro Lutumba. Sadly, this is not the Franco who is seen in his music, where at times he is just overly sensual and quite liberal in his address of issues to do with love between a man and a woman; as he does in ‘Ba Scousci ya Weekend’ (The troubles of the weekend) where he wonders loudly how come Dede, the lady he is addressing has forgotten about ‘the affair of the night, when we called each other mummy and daddy’ In fact at one time, Franco and his band found themselves on the wrong side of the law when the then Attorney General Leon Kengo wa Dondo found the lyrics to two of his songs Helene and Jacky to be particularly obnoxious and potentially detrimental to social morality. One would believe Skassy Kasambula’s take on Franco the politician, especially given the way Franco took a retaliatory stand against Kengo wa Dondo and threw a snide his way by way of the hit song ‘Tailleur’ in which he scorns the sacked Kengo wa Dondo telling him that the owner of the needle had taken back his needle, so the tailor’s machine was a worthless item to the owner. This indeed is the craft of a skilled social commentator who would ably couch his message in well calculated proverbs, in spite of the recklessness he showed in Jacky and Helene, and even the fate that befell Freddy Mayaula Mayoni’s ‘Cherie Bondowe’, (Darling Bondowe) which was also judged rather harshly on account of bordering on explicit lyrics –even though in the latter case, one could smell a speck of Puritanism.
Apart from politics, Franco was also much of a billboard and a loudhailer for various business enterprises. He could be reputed as one of the people who belted out the longest jingles in the history of advertisement. Franco was a gun for hire by those who wanted a voice to their businesses. Franco did not stop to question the practice of business and in whose favour it was, especially the bigger picture of the kind of business that was being carried out both within the Congo and between Congo and major players on the business frontier. From advertising Fabrice, an apparel store in Brussels; which he immortalized with three songs at various times, Franco was also signed to Bralima, a beer company that produced the popular beer Primus. The song La Bralima is all about business promotion. This is a practice that quite a number of later musicians came to adopt, including JB Mpiana, who is also signed with Bralima, and Tabu Ley’s Afrisa International, which was signed to Bracongo which is the producer of the SKOL brand which Tabu Ley and Mbilia Bel sang about in the song ‘Tonton Skol’. While promoting the Fabrice garment store though, Franco was really specific about the ‘abacos’, the Chinese styled shirts that were popularized by the likes of Chou En Lai, Kenneth Kaunda and Mwalimu Nyerere; and which Mobutu also fancied both for himself and his citizens, apart from the leopard skin cap for himself and an equally prestigious walking stick. The likes of Papa Wemba in the spirit of SAPE, blatantly belted out praises for foreign clothing lines like Ralph Laurent, Giorgio Armani, as they boasted about their visits to the most prestigious garment stores abroad. Later in his song Kaukokorobo, Papa Wemba quips “Je suis manique, tu est manique, vous estes manique…” He says that basically, everybody is a mannequin, to display beautiful clothes, quite in the footsteps of Luambo and his praise for Fabrice.
Luambo even talked about drinking joints, the places where he could catch up with friends and have one for the road, as he danced to music. Such is the message in the song ‘Peunch Del Sol’, a joint somewhere in Brussels, which is the convergence point for Congolese. He spews praises for the establishment, which he calls ‘esika serioux’ (A serious joint) where friends meet for a dance and drink.
In view of the foregoing therefore, one would find it difficult to take the views of the lady and gentleman of Congolese origin there before referred to from the face value, but rather from a critical perspective. What the man referred to as ‘mambo ya upuzi upuzi’ was Franco’s failure to stand up to be counted at a time when his country needed him most owing to the artistic gift he had. One would say that Franco was cautionary. If the Nyayo era and the way it treated opposition to the system of governance is anything to go by, then Franco’s would as well be a case of discretion being the better part of valour. Rather, the case refuses to go without throwing an arm, for there are Franco’s compatriots like Tabu Ley, who stood up against Mobutu and continued plying their trade in exile. Writer Graeme Ewens in his Congo Colossus describes how the news on TV would always have the signature of the image of Mobutu descending from the clouds, as if happening on the nation from up in the heavens. Could be this is what inspired Franco to remark in ‘Candidat na Biso Mobutu’ “Nzambe atinda yo….Nani akoki kosunga ekolo, soki Mobutu te nani Mosusu?” (You were sent by God…Who can really build this nation, if not Mobutu, who else?). This could have been the political chorus then, and Kenyans are not lost to it. It took people of exceptional character and humanity to sing a different tune. Franco was not in this minority. He was overwhelmed by the flying Mobutu; the man whom countryman Arizona Baongoli in his book Translation of Classic Lingala Songs Volume One, describes as a man who was given to carefree leisure, living a king size life, with a luxury yacht (aka the Kamanyola) afloat River Congo, which was big enough to afford landing and takeoff for the presidential helicopter, and which was a popular entertainment venue for the big man’s visitors .
Accounts of Gbadolite in Mobutu’s regard are a far cry from the scanty mention that Mosese Fan Fan (another musician who sang with Franco for years and was one of the last to see him alive) offers in his song Dje Mbelasi, the sleepy town from which the persona in the song got a girl, and introduced her to the niceties of Kinshasa, only for the girl to ditch him. Mobutu is said to have operated this town like a personal house, whereby, when he was not in town, then electricity would be put off seemingly because the other common mortals in Gbadolite did not have use for such a luxury item only fit for their cockerel.
As irony would have it, Tabu Ley had personal differences with Franco, emanating from reasons that ranged from music rivalry to their support for different sides of the political divide, with Franco having stamped his support boldly for Mobutu. While in Kenya, the Tabu Ley who was not supportive of Franco’s support of Mobutu was to sing a classic number ‘Twende Nairobi’, in commemoration of Kenya’s twentieth anniversary of independence in 1983; and which turned out to be a platitude in praise of then president Moi, whose style of leadership and that of the man Tabu Ley so reviled to the extent of choosing exile was likeable to birds of a feather. The song is a rarity nowadays, but the lyrics are sticky:
‘ Shuhuda kali wananchi wa Kenya washangilia, (What a big celebration by Kenyans)
Miaka ishirini ya uhuru wa nchi ya Kenya (Commemorating twenty years of independence)
Popote ulipo mwananchi wa Kenya rudi aa (Wherever you are as a Kenyan please come back home)
Turudi nchi yetu tuungane wandugu pamoja (Come and let us join together)
Turudi nchi yetu tumuage mzee Kenyatta (Come let us say bye to Mzee Kenyatta)
Tumchezee Baba Moi na kumwimbia Harambee (Let’s dance for Baba Moi and sing Harambee for him)
Nairobi Mombasa, Nakuru Kisumu, miji yetu….. Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru Kisumu are our cities)
Harambee, harambee, harambee, Nyayo!
Twende Nairobi, tumchezee Baba Moi, (Let’s go to Nairobi, and dance for Baba Moi)
Twende Nairobi, tumwimbie Baba Moi… (Let’s to Nairobi, and sing for Baba Moi)….
The song won the Lingala music lovers’ fraternity a reprieve from the ban on Lingala music on Kenya radio then, but probably, someone counseled Tabu Ley that it was after all not a very wise decision to practice double standards. In the Lingala version of the song, only the melody remains. There is no rallying call to exiled Kenyas (just like Ley himself was) to come back home ‘to dance and sing to Baba Moi’. Rather, it is the story of Duni, a childhood lover with whom the persona of the song travelled widely in the Kenyan cities, and who is now stuck in Kenya. The persona would like to come back to Kenya and get Duni out of his tribulations here.
Whatever the case, Franco is one of the most influential personalities who lived in our times, and history presented him with great opportunities to make a more significant contribution to his society, but he failed to seize the opportunity by the collar and wrestle it to the ground. Franco was vitriolic in attacking small fry, but was not courageous enough to consistently face the powers that be. Franco discussed love from a superficial level. In a recent interview with the media, Femi Kuti, the Nigerian musician and son to the great Fella Anikulapo Kuti remarked that the greatest love song he feels like singing is that which talks about the realities that are being faced by his people. One would think what Femi is saying is: It is not much of ‘basi kitoko batondi awa nani akolinga nabala ye’ (there are lots of beautiful girls here, I wonder which one would love to marry me) as Franco laments in the song Mawe. It entails a real commitment to the people, sharing their heartbeat with them, and indeed using art as a tool for social transformation. Perhaps some commitment was devoted toward Attention na Sida, a number that aimed to raise awareness about AIDS, but it falls in the category of lamentations that were churned out in the 1980s when very little was known about HIV and AIDS, and that is why Franco even goes ahead to ask where this disease came from, and to further say that all the other diseases have been forgotten. ‘Today, (in the eighties and early nineties) if someone lost weight, then he/she got suspected of being infected with HIV/AIDS’, he says. Otherwise as a consistently committed artiste, Franco’s legacy could be judged harshly by those who believe that art is more than beautiful musical arrangement, singing, dancing and making merry. Indeed Francois Lukanga Luambo Makiadi Mpene La Dju (aka Abubakar Sidiki ‘Franco’), was a mega star. A great musician? Quite doubtful; if you were to look at him from the perspective of social realism.
(c) Edmond Lifwekelo 2014
Edmond Lifwekelo 