's success rested upon the burgeoning radio stations and record industry of late colonial Leopoldville, which often piped music over loudspeakers into the African quarters, called the ""Cite"". A handful of African clubs (closing early with a 9:30PM curfew for non-Europeans) like ""Congo Bar"" provided venues, along with occasional gigs at the upscale white clubs of the European quarter, ""La ville"". The importation of European and American 78 rpm records into Africa in the 1930s and 1940s (called G.V. Series records) featured much Cuban music, a style that was enjoyed by cosmopolitan Europeans and Africans alike. One writer has argued that this music, sophisticated, based on Africa music, and not produced by white colonialists especially appealed to Africans in general, and newly urban Congolese in particular. Greek and Lebanese merchants, a fixture in colonial Francophone Africa were amongst the first to bring recording and record pressing equipment to tropical Africa. Jéronimidis' ""Ngoma"" company was one of the first and most successful, and Wendo was his star artist. Jéronimidis, Wendo, and other musicians, barnstormed around Belgian Congo in a brightly painted Ngoma van, performing and selling records. The music culture this created not only propelled Congolese rumba to fame, but began to develop a national culture for the first time. See also the review of the 1996 compilation ""Ngoma: the Early Years"" at Ntama: Journal of African Music and Popular Culture. African Music Archive at Mainz University (1996)</ref>