Congolese rumba
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, Congolese rumba originated from a fusion of various musical influences, including Cuban rumba, traditional African rhythms, and Congolese folk music. The genre's roots can be traced back to the 1930s, when African musicians, particularly those from the Congo basin, were exposed to Cuban musical styles such as son and rumba.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 Franco Luambo Makiadi, Wendo Kolosoy, Le Grand Kallé, Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley Rochereau, Papa Noel Nedule, Vicky Longomba, and Papa Wemba have made significant contributions to the genre, pushing its boundaries and incorporating modern musical elements.

History
In the 1930s and 1940s, the music of Afro-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, 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 formed 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 inspired by rock and roll. 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, quickly 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. About this same time, the Nairobi-based Congolese vocalist Samba Mapangala and his band, Orchestra Virunga, released 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.
Congolese rumba is a musical genre and a dance used in formal and informal spaces for celebration and mourning. It is primarily an urban practice danced by a male-female couple. Performed by professional and amateur artists, the practice is passed down to younger generations through neighbourhood clubs, formal training schools and community organisations. The rumba is considered an integral part of Congolese identity and a means of promoting intergenerational cohesion and solidarity.

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.

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

References
Bibliography
Gary Stewart (2000). Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-368-9.
Wheeler, Jesse Samba (March 2005). "Rumba Lingala as Colonial Resistance". Image & Narrative (10).

External links
Congolese rumba at Curlie
The Sound of Sunshine: How soukous saved my life