Papa Noel (whose stage name comes from the fact he was born Antoine Nedule Monswet on Christmas day 1940) is a veteran of the golden age of Congolese music. In the 1940s and 50s Congolese rumba, until then performed traditionally on lokole log drum and sanza thumb piano was modernised by a group of pioneers. They transformed it by playing it on electric guitar, Latin congas and brass instruments.
Kanda Bongo Man (born 1955), from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a prominent soukous musician. He is most famous for the structural changes he implemented to soukous music. The previous approach was to sing several verses and have one guitar solo at the end of the song. Kanda Bongo Man revolutionized soukous by encouraging guitar solos after every verse and even sometimes at the beginning of the song. His form of soukous gave birth to the kwassa kwassa dance rhythm where the hips move back and forth while the hands move to follow the hips.
True school rap group from Slovakia, Bratislava.
It's a reviewer cliché to claim that you never heard anything like it. For once, it's actually true (The Times, UK) …the sound of distortion zombies coming down the road to kill us all. It's relentless… wonderful… (Pop Matters, USA) Using a spectacular mixture of acoustic instruments, electric guitars, distortion-laden thumb pianos and soulful vocals, Kasai Allstars include musicians all based in Kinshasa, DR Congo, but originating from five different ethnic groups, each with their own language and musical tradition.
Staff Benda Bilili are a group of Congolese street musicians. They live around the grounds of the zoo in Kinshasa, and play music which is rooted in rumba, with elements of old-school rhythm'n'blues and reggae. The core of the band consists of four senior singers/guitarist, who all disabled (they suffered from poliomyelitis when they were young) and move around in spectacularly customized tricycles.
There are now at least two artists in this page. 1) François Luambo Makiadi (6 July 1938 - 12 October 1989) was a major figure in twentieth century Congolese music, and african music in general. He widely referred to as Franco Luambo or, simply, Franco. Known for his mastery of rumba and its later incarnation of soukous, he was nicknamed the "Sorcerer of the Guitar" for his seemingly effortlessly fluid playing. As a founder of the seminal group OK JAZZ, he is counted as one of the originators of the modern Congolese sound.
