The Congo Acoustic

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  Wat zullen we nu weer eens draaien......

  Pieter

  04-10-2024

  "The guitarist Mose ‘Fan Fan’ began playing with the late ‘Franco’ Luambo Makiadi in Zaire in the 1960s. During more than a decade alongside Franco in Kinshasa’s top dance band, OK Jazz, he played on some of the greatest Congolese rumba (later known as soukous) recordings ever made. Then in 1974 he left Kinshasa for East Africa to form the band Somo Somo and a decade later relocated to London, where the unstable politics of Zaire have kept him ever since. With OK Jazz he was noted for adding a rockier element to the mix, but here, as the title suggests, the approach is totally acoustic, stripping down the soukous sound to its essential core. The result is an unqualified delight, relaxed yet intricate as Fan Fan builds complex rhythmic patterns of subtly shifting rumba grooves with his interlocking guitars. His own melodic voice, singing in both Lingala and Swahili, is complemented by the sweet female lead of Deesse, and the rich tapestry is completed by melodica, accordion, understated saxophone and, on one track, a Zimbabwean mbira ‘thumb piano'.

  Many of the lyrics deal with the pain of exile and the problems of Zaire, while ‘Lwambo’ is a moving tribute to the great Franco, who died ten years ago this October. The production is ringingly sympathetic and the overall effect warm, mesmeric and irresistibly seductive." (Songlines Summer/Autumn 1999 Nigel Williamson)