Chapter 5

“Made in Congo” -- Conceiving the Nation

"The Negro African music of the Congolese conception is the art of liberty: from 1945 to 1960 it actively took part, in a clandestine manner, in the struggle for independence, this common battle in which all oppressed peoples were engaged."¹⁶⁷ The songs of Rumba Lingala were something more than mere entertainment of a new variety. They were a distinct mode of cultural production. Rumba Lingala's creolization of musical genres celebrated the demographic metissage of Brazzaville and Léopoldville. It provided a way to break out of the identities imposed by the colonizers to occupy continental interstices, borderlands that had previously been with few exceptions the exclusive terrain of the colonizer. Through Rumba Lingala musicians created a means to represent their own ideological passage to far away destinations. The interculture of the ships, and later airplanes, was recreated in music.

This chapter will develop a theory of identification through Rumba Lingala. First I shall discuss performance sites and rites, some of the specific places and ways identification was acted out. Then I shall investigate the role technology played in aiding the process of expanding and reconfiguring the Congolese nation. Lastly, I will look at language and the speaking of nationhood.

Performance Sites and Performance Rites

From the variety of experiences of chamber music in different communities, Philip Bohlman theorized that:

Viewed from the performative perspective, the absence of specific meaning within the text allows meaning to accrue only upon performance, thus empowering any group -- for example, an ethnic community -- to shape what it will from absolute music.¹⁶⁸

To see how the performance of Rumba Lingala constructs meaning, a look at the topoi where performance takes place is needed. I have identified two common topoi: the body and the community. First I will analyze social clubs and bars, the loci of public interaction, to glimpse how the urban community performed identification.¹⁶⁹ Then I will discuss dance as the body's performance of identification, and propose specific meanings that dancing rumba revealed and reproduced.

Social Clubs

Through music, communities reconstructed themselves along different lines from the original kinship organization. The groups and social clubs that appeared in urban centers in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were attempts to regroup after the fissionary shock of large-scale rural exodus. Together they learned to cope with the cartographic rupture of pro-city migration. The new projection, engineered by the capitalist colonizers to maximize the profits of the metropole, reconfigured space in such a way that Africans, and among them the women especially, were "red-lined," or systematically denied access to resources. They comprised the labor pool, nothing more. Common backgrounds and interests provided opportunities for individuals to build communities and seek others out who could relate to their frustrations about life. Interpersonal relationships in the ethnically diverse urban centers, where members from different regions of the colony came into contact, enlarged people's images of the society in which they lived.

The urban environment brought people into contact with one another in ways different from the village environment. The reasons for gathering, the locales and the company at social events were re-invented in the cities. As stated above, one of the most musically salient features of urban life was the presence of West African "Coastmen" in the Congo. One impact the Coastmen had on the urban Congolese was in the formation of associations. One such association was CAM.DA.TO., a mutual assistance association for natives of Cameroun, Dahomey and Togo living in the French Congo. It served as a model for Congolese clubs, circles and societies that began appearing in 1939.¹⁷⁰ One of CAM.DA.TO.’s activities was music-making; the highlife and palm-wine attracted the attention of the Congolese and endeared the Coastmen to them. The “Doualamen,” an appellation for those coming from Cameroun, were known for their guitar-playing and may have passed on to the Congolese their renditions of the polka-piqué, learned from the Germans, who had colonized part of Cameroun prior to W.W. I.¹⁷¹ Social groups included the eating of food in their parties, and the Lingala phrase loso ya Ghana (“Ghana rice”) came from a unique variety of rice served at Ghanaian functions in the 1920s.¹⁷² Günter Gretz attributes the Ibo minstrel sound (of, for example, Three Night Wizards) of "Nabuyusaki yo kokota te na ndako na ngai," recorded by Camille Mokoko in 1950, to the influence of such West African associations.¹⁷³

In the 1930s Congolese social groups appeared, modeled to some extent on long-standing practices of organizing, and to some extent on the Coastmen's circles. By and large members grouped around a common interest, including sports, music, education, or particular concerns. Some were organized around a particular geographical region, drawing members with shared origins. Others were graduates of a particular school. Still others were based on political or religious beliefs. Others were only for women. In Léopoldville there were 116 circles with 5,600 members in 1948; in 1950 the number had risen to 528 circles with 28,000 members. In 1950 sport clubs were the most numerous, accounting for 259 circles and 14,000 members. Those dedicated to other recreation, including music, totaled 105 with about 10,000 members.¹⁷⁴

While all-male associations existed, such as "Univers," "Vénus," "Cascade," "Mai masanga te" ("Water is not beer"), "Bamba Nationale," "La Borne" ("Milestone"), "Oiseau vert" ("Green Bird"), "Surfs Suprêmes," and "Super Charmeurs," co-ed and all-women's groups existed, too.¹⁷⁵ The first female association formed in 1935. It was "La Mutuelle," a mutual aid organization, started by young women who had been members of the pupil's club in their convent. They had left to form their own club after the nun in charge of the pupil's club had prevented them from spending the subscription money to buy a wedding present for another member.¹⁷⁶ Women formed recreational societies, as well. Regarding women's associations, Comhaire-Sylvain writes:

There were in fact in 1945 several exceedingly prosperous women's recreational associations. This had begun in 1937 when the "Club Américain," created on the model of the "Club Excelsior" of the "Coastmen" (West Africans employed by the large companies for office jobs at a time when these were still too complicated for Congolese) had decided to take on a feminine Société Américaine, which brought together the wives of civil servants.¹⁷⁷

They were called "La Beauté," "Diamant," "La Rose," "Rosette," "La Fleur de Lys," "La Mode," La Boule de Soleil" ("The Sun Ball"), "La Beauté No. 2," and "Jeunesse Toilette."¹⁷⁸

These recreational associations played an enormous role in bringing the burgeoning musical scene to life. Many groups maintained a music ensemble that reduced entertainment expenditures for events such as weddings, baptisms, or the parties following a period of mourning.¹⁷⁹ Some of the first groups on this model were Odéon Kinois and L’Harmonie Kinoise, who had musical ensembles of the same name.¹⁸⁰ The latter, which began in 1940, "possessed the best ensemble in Kinshasa with a complete set of brass, woodwinds and strings."¹⁸¹ Bands increased their exposure and successes with female groupies:

All ensembles had female "supporters" who were attached to them as "girls of protocol" or "girls of honor." Only "O.K. Jazz," one of the largest, annexed a mixed club, whose committee comprised several young girls: Thérèse Liyala, vice-president; Marie Kisangani, assistant treasurer; Caroline Lonkunku, commissioner of parties; Hélène Kamunga, chief of protocol; Florence Ekwa, head of women's affairs.¹⁸²

In the Brazzaville neighborhood of Bacongo a vocal (i.e., not exclusively instrumental) ensemble called Mannequin formed in 1937, based on a mutual aid organization. A teacher named François Bamanabio and Lebel Massamba founded Jazz Bohème in 1939, and two years later, Jeunesse Dahoméenne and Liberia, also linked to associations, appeared. Bacongo and Poto-Poto rivaled each other for prestige and elegance. The dances at which these groups played were scenes in which the urban haute-couture was molded. A chief of protocol named “the president of the court” selected the couples to dance, choices based on not only who was best dressed, but who could best dance the European dances.¹⁸³

Comhaire-Sylvain’s recollection illustrates well the social activities of these groups:

I remember attending a festival given by ‘Odéon Kinois’ in which European dances were interrupted by contre-dances and folk dances executed by members directed by a choreographer. Some organizations had also included dramatic activities. For example ‘La Jeune Espérance,’ whose orchestra had only a few instruments, enjoyed a great reputation for its songs, recitations, and comedy.¹⁸⁴

The physical reorganization of personal and community space engendered by these social clubs significantly altered the process of identification. It concentrated in specific places large numbers of individuals who looked both outward to other countries, represented in music performance by record, musician, and dancer, and inward to the changing ethnoscape of the Congos. The existential probing that occurred in these social environments, manifested in the performances of variously syncretized Latin, European, local and other African arts, produced innumerable identity-images. As they surfaced on the bodies of the performers -- both the group on stage and those on the sidelines -- these images began to coalesce around commonalties in the projected desires of the individuals. This "clumping" of identity-images catalyzed the production of certain dominant definitions of community, paralleling the emergence of a dominant genre of music. Rumba Lingala became the voice of these ineffable yet palpable and binding new meanings of nation.

Bars

Bars were the premier location for Rumba Lingala ensembles to perform. Firstly, bar owners provided space, the instruments and equipment. Secondly, these venues were meeting places; they existed in every neighborhood, numbering approximately 100 in Kinshasa in 1945¹⁸⁵ for a population of approximately 100,000, and half again as many ten years later.¹⁸⁶ Brick walls surrounded the posher establishments, and glowing bulbs hung around the cement dance floor. They were called "Congo ya Sika" ("The New Congo"), "Astra," "Bosenge Bar," "Tahiti," "Air France" (where Franco and Watam played for a time), "Elysées Bar," "Indépendance Bar," "Quist Bar," "Au Record" and "Yaka Awa" ("Come Here" -- where Patrice Lumumba and his followers were known to meet¹⁸⁷). Some of Brazzaville's music joints were named "Chez Faignond," "Congo Zoba" (Crazy Congo), "Lumi-Congo," "Mouendo Koko," "Nouani Bar," and "Chez Hughes."¹⁸⁸

Many groups used the name of the bar in their title, for often it was the bar owner who acted as a kind of patron of the arts, providing instruments, a place to rehearse and perform, and advertising. Quist Bar's Le Groupe Quist and Franco's O.K. Jazz, named after Omar Kashama's O.K. Bar are examples. Bars also had turntables to spin the latest offerings from Ngoma, Opika, Loningisa, CEFA and Esengo, or a newly released Latin hit from HMV.

These bars were places where Africans could go to be with one another, hear their music, dance to their music and see their own people perform. Men and women met. They were also places people could work out their frustrations with the outside world, dance out their anger, regain the strength necessary to face another day. "The dancing bar is precisely the place of such a social truce, the space where all conflicts are put aside temporarily before resuming with greater acuity on the battlefield the struggle for existence."¹⁸⁹ Thus the music, one could argue, played a role in keeping people healthy.

During the colonial period ensembles were segregated. Generally, Africans could not even perform before a European audience. One notable anecdote is that Jean Lopongo, respected by Belgian musician and instructor Pilaeïs, was permitted to play with Pilaeïs and two other Belgians in a European music ensemble at a hotel for Belgians. To preserve the purity of the Belgian æsthetic, a screen was placed between Lopongo and the audience. In January 1950 Lopongo was granted formal permission to be seen by whites.¹⁹⁰

The following excerpt from a 1950 Congopresse article paints an excellent picture of the bar scene.

Night on the native town in Léopoldville. Except for the central avenue, lined by tall sodium street lamps, the countless alleyways that criss-cross this city of more than 130,000 inhabitants open like canals of shadow. . . . But here is a fragment of a sort of dance music, suddenly illuminating the area. Not the beating of a tam-tam or the deep sound of a balafon, but the sentimentally nasal sounds of a saxophone, the clear din of a trumpet, the sharp cry of a clarinet.

We push open a door jealously guarded by a doorman -- and we are in a bar. It is a large enclosure, surrounded by white walls, the open sky, decorated with garlands and lanterns. Loaded with glasses and bottles of beer, the tables are surrounded by many clients. In the center, the dance floor and, on a stage, the band. . . .

They total a good dozen musicians, armed with gleaming instruments. Like their colleagues in European bands they are uniformly dressed and before their attentive eyes the leader, concerned with the sound. . . .

At the moment, the group is playing a tango. Men and women, embracing, glide lithely on the dance floor with an easy grace, accentuated by their hips. . . .

All of a sudden everything changes! The tango ends, and in the brief silence that follows, a drum begins, lively and tense, the muffled beating of a rhythm dry and rapid, like the pattering of small hailstones on a roof, the sound of countless seeds shaken rhythmically in the hollow of a gourd. The rumba is beginning.

Before long the horns join in, launching the melody. Once more they will not vary by even an eighth-note. This will be the same song, tirelessly repeated until the last burst of the drum.

But the song never sounds disagreeable. Quite the contrary, because it is original, because its sonority is unexpected. The Congolese musicians have, in effect, succeeded in transplanting melodies they like onto the rumba, conga and samba, and if the dances they execute are no longer entirely African, the music is no longer altogether South American. . . .¹⁹¹

Dance

The public consumption of dance music was a convenient and powerful way to write the Congolese nation. All of the Congolese popular music I know of from 1948 until today with the exception of one artist (who has not enjoyed a mass following) has been dance music. A current superstar, Papa Wemba, has said that dance styles change every six months.¹⁹²

Why Latin musics, and the name rumba in particular, became so influential is a question that must be explored in order to fully understand Rumba Lingala's role in shaping the Congolese nation. I believe that part of the answer lies in rumba's significance in Cuba, a significance that, I argue, was communicated to Congolese audiences through listening and, more powerfully, through dancing.

Rumba in Cuba emerged after slavery was abolished in 1886, when large portions of the freed population shifted to the cities in search of work. The migrants joined the urban poor in slums and shanty towns, and together they created a "collective lay festivity," that was named rumba, tumba, macumba, tamba and other words derived from African languages.¹⁹³ "Rumba" became the most widely used term for this festivity and even a synonym for dancing, celebrating, partying, etc. "From the very beginning the places where rumbas were held became the meeting place of the most diverse African peoples and ethnic groups who had been brought over as slaves. The poor white population also joined in. . . ."¹⁹⁴ As rumba developed, its main musical feature became the polyrhythmic interaction and improvisation of the instruments occupying the lower frequencies, originally packing crates or drawers of a wardrobe, and later membranophones. Ngoma-type drums of the Bakongo and other Bantu-speaking peoples are the organological predecessor of the membranophones that came to be part of the rumba ensemble, whose names bear witness to that link: conga, bombo, tumbadora.¹⁹⁵ The clavé maintained a steady, foundational rhythm in the upper frequencies. This particular distribution of musical function by registers is a common trait in many West African musical traditions, where a bell or other high-pitched idiophone stabilizes the polyrhythmic and polyphonic interaction of the other instruments, most often membranophones. On the contrary, in European music the lower registers most often serve as the unchanging base for improvisation in the upper registers.¹⁹⁶

Cuban rumba was created in conditions strikingly similar to Rumba Lingala. The displacement of populations, exodus from rural, agricultural lifestyles to urban, industrial lifestyles, the heterogeneous mingling of diverse, multilinguistic populations, and the choice to use music to express life's complexities: this human history is carried by the music. I find especially relevant the manifested euphoria of slavery's abolition in the music, articulated in the collective lay festivities of rumba. What an inspiration to a people struggling for independence! Polyrhythms, I propose, are powerful because they refuse to reduce to a single rhythm. They open spaces for richer interaction and the cooperative input of distinct ideas. They establish a base for broad communication between differing voices, all of equal value. The polyrhythms of rumba make it especially capable of expressing the needs of people from different origins, etc. -- like a conversation between speakers of different languages.

Yvonne Daniel argued that Cuban rumba carried many deeply resonant meanings.¹⁹⁷ Castro's government, which took power in 1959, realized that dance conveys a message and chose rumba as a medium for promoting its ideas of national identity and social equality.¹⁹⁸ Among rumba's meanings I believe the most relevant to the Congolese situation are: pride in history and national identity, respect for the worker, egalitarianism, and community proliferation. African and Latin heredity, the two factors most important in promoting the Cuban government's revolutionary program, is played out in rumba unlike any other Cuban dance, the basis for its status as that country's national dance.¹⁹⁹ Rumba's heritage imbues its practice with the strength to champion the elements that contributed to its formation. "The repeated display of rumba signifies the desire of the Cuban government to publicize its affinity with the working masses as well as its African heritage from Spain through Moorish contact and its African heritage from West and Central Africa through the Analeptic slave trade."²⁰⁰ This official recognition not only directly affirms the value of the African component, but diminishes the importance of European heritage and influence through the choice of rumba over ballet or another more European dance form. Beyond its familiarity as a relative of current Congolese dances, I propose that rumba's positive embodiment of African heritage made it an affirmation of self to a population in desperate need of weaponry to counter European domination and denigration.

Rumba is performed primarily by dark-skinned Cubans, the same Cubans relegated to the lower strata of Cuba's pre-revolutionary society.²⁰¹ That they historically practiced rumba identifies the dance with the oppressed, a signification that carried over ideals of pride and struggle to the Congo. Promotion of the worker represented the ideal of egalitarianism, likewise a concern for the Congolese population forced to conform to a class system that put them at the bottom of the ladder. With the welfare of the Congolese community thus challenged, rumba was a life symbol: "Rumba's style and organization of energy focuses on sensual qualities that analytically reference sexual activity."²⁰² The interaction of the couple brought individuals together in a context that implied the survival of the Congolese community in multiple ways. Firstly, it kept them in touch, literally -- the extending of the arm to ask another to dance, couples' bodies pressed against one another -- and figuratively -- the dance site was a recognized meeting place where members of the community could catch up on the latest news. This kind of contact was capable of achieving two levels of self-affirmation. Secondly, the recreational atmosphere of a dance provided a space for the procreational innuendoes of the choreography. In a basic way, sexually suggestive behavior stimulates participation in activities. Thirdly, the enactment of such charged images could lead to the Act itself and a possible numerical strengthening of the community.

The power of dance, as with music, is its tug on the sublogical levels of self. Dance is visceral persuasion; its power resides in the voluntary nature of participation, where bodies are coaxed into conforming to the pulse. They become conduits for the energy, as ions in water conduct lightning. Once struck by this energy they are transformed from mere conduits into generators that build, rise, burn, writhe, and create more energy than they initially absorbed. In the group each body potentiates the others.

Maurice Bloch called dance's particular power "illocutionary," and I believe that is also where music derives its unique force.²⁰³ We cannot contest its meanings, because they are transmitted non-verbally, sublogically. This manner of communicating is residual, in that repetition is necessary for meaning to register. As a performance of community, social dance, like rumba, is unintentional memory work.²⁰⁴ It has qualities which could make it a special category of ritual: It is not merely expressive; it is formalized, stereotypic, repeatable, its effect is not limited to the ritual occasion, and interference is not tolerated. It is formalized, in that each dance has a special set of canonized steps, postures, gestures and body movements. It is stereotypic, in that a large number of people consider the particular dance’s form and pattern to be correct and hold to it for a period of time. Its repeatability is demonstrated in dance halls and living rooms: thirty years later it is possible to dance a soukous. It is an incorporating practice, one in which bodily interaction transmits the information encoded into the formalized language. When performed the dance utters the “cognitive content of group memory;” when dance is a frequently enacted communal ceremony, as it is in the Congos, that content is able to “exercise persuasive and persistent force.”²⁰⁵ In order to unpack its meaning, we need to observe dance repeatedly with all of our senses. The images of a particular dance, that is the physical shaping of the body during enactment, are one of the carriers of meaning.

As a performance of community, social dance, like rumba, intentionally reaffirms identity. New Congolese dances frequently imitate earlier ones, offering a way to recuperate, to reconnect with, the past. Likewise, especially during the period approaching independence, traditional tunes were often re-recorded over a new rhythm.²⁰⁶ In the case of a society that has experienced a disjuncture like colonialism, exhuming signs from earlier eras may serve as a way to heal the rupture. As a frequently repeated mass ceremony, dance may give individuals confidence that they are participating with actual and imagined others. The changeability of dances, as Papa Wemba attested to, requires continual involvement in this community, promoting a “deep, horizontal comradeship.” Furthermore, in their social and political content, songs played a part analogous to that of the novel and newspaper in the growth of nationalism elsewhere.²⁰⁷

Technology

The ways in which a musical style and the technoscape interact will have determinant consequences for that music. One such consequence regards the audience -- its size, demographic composition, location, etc. Another regards its performance -- how particular songs are recorded and how they are performed in vivo have reciprocal impact on each other. The technoscape is a vast playing field for competing and co-operating agendas of ideologies and methodologies, as well as the numerous accidental outcomes of planned actions that can have substantial impacts on policy.

In the case of Rumba Lingala the technoscape was in its formative stages. In the 1930s the first broadcasting stations were being built, and the first radios for home use were becoming widely available. Later, the first recording studios were opened, and the first phonographs made their debut appearances. Electric instruments, synthesizers and loudspeakers were likewise being experimented with for the first time. The commercial enterprises attempting to profit from these innovations were in the hands of the dominant classes.

Radio

The first radio stations in Congo-Kinshasa were privately owned and run. La Voix de la Concorde ("The Voice of Harmony") a.k.a. Radio-Léo initiated broadcast in 1937, installed in the Collège Albert in Léopoldville. It was a Jesuit station with an evangelical mission, targeting both Europeans and Africans within transmission range (first 400 km, then 1,000 km). It ceased operating in 1967.²⁰⁸

In 1939 the secular Radio Congolia was established, also in Léopoldville. Its objective was to communicate with amateur operators in the country and to promote the founders' commercial establishment. Congolia began to target the African population in 1945.²⁰⁹ Pauwels-Boon writes

Seen in the context of that distant time period, the greatest merit of Radio Congolia was that of being the first in the Congo to broadcast programs for the black population, distinguishing itself from five other private stations which hardly, if ever, thought of a black public.²¹⁰

Approximately thirty minutes of Radio Congolia's total daily air time, between sixty and ninety minutes per day (the longest of any station), was devoted to Congolese programming, including the music “the population desired, modern Congolese dance music with South American rhythms rather than traditional African music.”²¹¹ Loudspeakers were erected in public places in Léopoldville to amplify its programs. Broadcasts were primarily in French, but also in the four principal Congolese languages (Lingala, Kiswahili, Kikongo and Ciluba), with a preference for Lingala. Congolia left the air for good when the government's Radio Congo Belge took charge of broadcasting to the African population in 1948.²¹²

Radio Congo Belge (RCB) was the first government station, installed in Léopoldville in 1940. RCB's main objective was to keep the European population apprised of the latest developments in the War.²¹³ In 1942 the 20-kilowatt station began broadcasting music, news and educational talk shows each Friday to Congolese soldiers stationed in Nigeria. It was, however, too weak to reach the troops stationed in Egypt.²¹⁴ It played both Cuban and Congolese records.²¹⁵ Five other privately owned stations began operating in the Belgian Congo during this period.²¹⁶ Radio Brazzaville, a 30-kilowatt station set up by the French government-in-exile for long-range diffusion of anti-Axis/pro-Allied propaganda, began operating around the same time. After W.W. II it began broadcasting both Congolese pop and traditional musics.²¹⁷

In January 1949 RCB initiated programming specifically for the local population. Called Radio Congo Belge pour les Indigènes (RCBI) and Radio Congo Belge – Émissions Africaines, it took over Radio Congolia's post-1945 activities, when the latter lost its government subsidy. This change in policy followed a 1948 governement ban on transmissions in African languages by private stations.²¹⁸ Each evening between 17.30 and 18.30 GMT a program comprising news, editorials and music, both "indigène" and European, was broadcast in French and each of the four major languages, depending on the day of the week.²¹⁹ RCB’s provincial stations, whose range was limited by weak signals (from three to ten kilowatts),²²⁰ also broadcast certain programs in local languages.²²¹ The range of topics covered was broad and included items on hygiene and agriculture.²²²

Colonial administrators believed that the new urban music was less educational than traditional African music and European classical music.²²³ From the beginning RCBI reserved a portion of air time for traditional Congolese music. Ensembles playing such music were invited into the studio for live broadcasts. Later, two musicologists were sent on recording expeditions.²²⁴ These programs never received as much air time as those featuring new urban musics, however. By 1954 RCBI had a weekly segment featuring music from other African countries, entitled "L'Afrique chante pour vous" ("Africa Sings For You") and later "Le Monde chante pour vous" ("The World Sings For You"), when music from the Antilles was broadcast.²²⁵

After independence RCB changed its name to Radio Nationale Congolaise (RNC). Through the programming of Radio Congolia, RCBI and RNC, Rumba Lingala was transmitted throughout the Congos and across much of the continent to Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Dakar (Senegal), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Lusaka (Zambia), Kampala (Uganda), and Nairobi (Kenya).²²⁶

When radios first became available in the Congo does not appear to be documented, but by the forties the medium was well established. Pauwels-Boon provides the only figures on radios and listenership available, but she questions their reliability. The lowest figure offered for the total number of radios in the colony in 1958, including those of Europeans, is 28,879. From another source she reports 100,000 radios and five times as many listeners in 1959.²²⁷ There was no way, she says, to accurately measure such quantities. We have to rely on non-empirical evidence to fill in this part of the picture.

The presence of radios in Congolese homes is recorded in the pages of Nos Images, a weekly magazine printed in French and the four major languages of Congo Belge. Photographs showing the family gathered around the radio abound. One from 1952 shows a well dressed family enjoying a program on their modern radio, on top of which sits a modern electric fan. The man of the house sits in a sofa chair in the foreground reading the radio publication, La Voix du Congolais.²²⁸ In another issue, a photo montage celebrating Congolese women's fashions shows a well dressed young woman and man smiling and looking at their state-of-the-art radio, as the man adjusts a dial.²²⁹

In 1954 Nos Images featured a two-page photo spread celebrating five years of the African Program on RCBI. Photographs show a crowd gathered around a loudspeaker erected outside; a man and woman at home enjoying their radio; the inside of RCBI's music library, where some 3,000 discs were stored; a wall of photographs sent in by listeners along with letters, of which 17,000 were received in 1953; and several studio shots, including one with the first female voice on RCBI, Mlle. Pauline Lisanga (a.k.a. Lisanga Pauline -- see audio ex. A6), a famous singer of the new Congolese music. The photo shows her reading a list over the air, and the caption indicates she was charged with handling music requests.²³⁰

Further evidence of the availability of radios is contained in the advertisements. A frequently run ad in the pages of Nos Images was for Philips, a cartoon which depicted two African school boys hearing "beautiful music" from the distance. They realize it is coming from the house of their friend, who tells them, "It's mine, and I am so proud of it. It's a Philips radio. It's so beautiful and it wasn't expensive. But only a Philips is a Philips . . . and so beautiful!" The ad tells readers that Philips-Congo has offices in Léopoldville, Elisabethville and Usumbura.²³¹

An informational cartoon series published in Nos Images entitled "The Adventures of Mbumbulu," the tone of which is patronizing and whose drawings resemble Sambo of the American South, devoted an episode to radio. In it villagers install a loudspeaker and diffusion center in the main square. Music begins to play, and Mbumbulu says to his wife, "Listen well, Maria. This music you hear here is at this moment being played in Léopoldville, hundreds of kilometers from here. The radio is truly a wonderful thing!" From then on the villagers assemble every evening to listen to the interesting programming, including world news, talk, music, songs, etc. The cartoon concludes, "This entertainment will make them very happy, and they will quickly profit from it!"²³²

To take advantage of the profitable music market, Radio Bush, marketed by a British firm, advertised on Ngoma record sleeves, promoting radio throughout Central Africa wherever records were bought. Shortwave transmitters in Léopoldville and Brazzaville diffused their signal around the continent. In this way radio stations also provided Ngoma with major advertising. Ngoma sent complimentary copies to most Central African stations, and as far away as Sierra Leone.²³³

I would like to examine the specific broadcasts of one of the above stations. A weekly schedule of the "Émissions Africaines" of RCBI from 1954 gives a clue to the popularity of Congolese urban music, as well as other types. The African programs began daily at 11:30 a.m (11:00 a.m. on Sundays) and continued until 1:00 p.m., then resumed at 5:30 and ended at 8:00. The format was different from that of American radio today, in that music was largely interspersed with talk. For example, 10 minutes of music could be followed by 10 minutes of news, letters from listeners, educational information, or a communiqué from the capital.²³⁴ Therefore, the total time allotted to music is important, not the length of the individual segments. On average just over two hours out of four were devoted to music Mondays through Thursdays and Saturdays. On Sundays 3 3/4 hours out of 4 1/2 were for music. The morning program on Friday followed the normal schedule, whereby 1 1/4 hours out of 1 1/2 were for music, while all save 30 minutes of the evening program was reserved for special broadcasts from the Force Publique.²³⁵

The schedule gives an idea of what kinds of music were played at what times. For example, "Guitaristes congolais," a category that would have included Rumba Lingala artists, were featured 11:30-11:45 Monday through Saturday, 5:30-5:40 and 6:40-6:45 Monday through Thursday, as well as 6:35-6:40 on Thursday (25-30 total mins/day). "Musique folklorique" was broadcast 5:50-6:00, 6:25-6:35 and 6:55-7:00 Monday to Thursday (25 total mins/day). Requests were an important part of the programs, as a way of involving listeners and increasing audience size. Fifteen minutes every morning and evening (unless pre-empted by the Force Publique), more than an hour Saturdays and almost all of Sunday were reserved for requests. Sundays also featured a record of the month competition. Other segments were devoted to "Musique congolaise variée", the African montage "L'Afrique chante pour vous", and a variety of specifically named musics, such as South American music, Hawaiian music, accordion music, French songs, and marches. Monday through Thursday from 7:30-7:45 was reserved for "serious" music, such as musettes, operettas and French songs, and any requests from other "serious" music genres. ²³⁶

The table below compares the named music segments and the amount of air time they received in August of 1954.

Type Segment Length Days/Week Mins/Week

Guitaristes congolais 25-30 mins. 6 155

Musique folklorique 25 mins. 4 100

Musique congolaise variée 10 " 4 40

French songs 15 " 3 45

Mixed African 15 " 1 30

South American music 15 " 1 15

Hawaiian music 15 " 1 15

Accordion music 15 " 1 15

Marches 15 " 1 15

Musettes 15 " 1 15

Operettas 15 " 1 15

(Request music 15-90 " 7 565)

________________________________________________________________________

Totals²³⁷ 7 370

The amount of play each type of music received is important, as it indicates what people were hearing. The schedule shows that Congolese guitar music was by far the most often heard type, though the content of the request slots could have altered the ratios. This type of music would have included the solo and ensemble music of the first star guitarists of the Katanga style and Rumba Lingala, including Jean Bosco Mwenda wa Bayeke, Losta Abelo, Paul Mwanga, Henri Bowane, Wendo, Jhimmy, Adou Elenga, Léon Bukasa, Tino Baroza, Nedule alias Papa Noël, Honoré Liengo, Adikwa, Antoine Brazzos, Dewayon, Nicholas Kasanda wa Mikalayi alias Dr. Nico and, a few years later, Luambo Makiadi alias Franco. The relative importance of their type of music to the radio station signals three things: the popularity of this music among listeners; the acceptability and even support of the genre by the colonial government; and the availability of recorded examples of the music of this genre.

The first conclusion is self-evident; no radio station thrives on playing music no one cares to hear. Furthermore, the numerous commercials of the day utilizing the music of the early guitarists -- to promote Fina brand margarine, for example -- speak to the commercial viability and hence the popularity of the music. RCBI's Congolese programming was controlled by the department of Indigenous Affairs of the Gouvernment General.²³⁸ The official approval necessary to support the broadcasting of this music on the colony's flagship radio station is also clear.

The constant availability of recordings, possible only with a prospering recording industry, is essential for a station to play music week after week, unless it relies primarily on the broadcast of live performances. This would be an unusual policy, and there is no evidence to support the conclusion that RCBI followed such a policy.

RCBI's schedule suggests the popularity of Rumba Lingala. It likewise points to the popularity of several other genres that help to demonstrate the musical environment of the era. "Musique congolaise variée" most likely refers to the number of popular, largely urban genres, such as fanfare, discussed in chapter four. One might have heard tubist/pianist Kalima Pierre's rumba "Na Mokili Moko Te" (audio ex. A10) on this program. Another genre that may have been played on this show was the new lamellophone music of artists like Antoine Mundanda. With groups such as Antoine Mundanda et Ses Likembes Geantes ("A. M. and His Giant Likembes") and Antoine Mundanda na Baninga Banei ("A. M. and Four Friends"), Mundanda directly interfaced the rural with the urban, adding guitar, bass and "tam-tam" to two or more lamellaphones. His composition "Njila ya Ndolo" ("The Road to Prison" -- audio ex. B1), about trouble with colonial authorities, and an earlier lament for Paul Kamba, "Mabele ya Paul" (lit. "The Soil of Paul"), won Hugh Tracey's African Music Society's Osborne Awards.²³⁹

The popularity of "Musique folklorique" is not clear, for, as mentioned above, RCBI promoted it as a matter of principle. The agenda behind this policy is not clear; it may be as stated – to preserve “an artistic patrimony of real value, which, alas, is not renewable.”²⁴⁰ Another possible motive for the “revaluation of traditional music”²⁴¹ may have been to counter change by this sector of the Congolese population -- a move to regroup and re-merge with diasporic communities, for this motion was taking place outside of colonial control.

Of the other genres played on RCBI, the one most significant to this study is South American music. This category likely covered all available Latin musics, from Cuban rumba, bolero, mambo, son montuno and cha-cha, to Argentine tango and Dominican merengue.

Phonographs, Gramophones and Recording Studios

"[T]he ship remained perhaps the most important conduit of Pan-African communication before the appearance of the long-playing record."²⁴²

Recordings played a major role in the dissemination of first the Latin sounds and later maringa and Rumba Lingala. In the latter 1920s phonographs became available, but were affordable only to the élite.²⁴³ In the 1950s the Papadimitriou brothers' Loningisa label distributed their 78s together with wind-up phonographs throughout the Belgian Congo, to be exchanged on the barter market alongside other appliances, such as sewing machines.²⁴⁴ Like motor scooters and automobiles (especially large American cars, like Cadillacs), phonographs became a status symbol. They were, however, superior to other examples of wealth and worldliness, in that they could be kept in the house, while proof of possession -- in the form of music blaring from the windows -- could be displayed far and wide. In the pages of Nos Images images of phonographs reveal their symbolism clearly: At a fair of sorts where outstanding vegetables and crafts are displayed, a dense crowd has gathered around a large piece of wood furniture, designed to display and store items such as "a phonograph, discs, bottles, books, etc."²⁴⁵ My favorite image is of two men who submitted their photograph for inclusion in the section of Nos Images devoted to subscribers. Whereas most photographs show a man alone or with his family in front of his house, this one shows two men shaking hands over a phonograph. They are facing the camera, and each has a leg up on a rung of the chair between them used to elevate the phonograph.²⁴⁶

After 1927 British-owned Zonophone was selling its West African highlife records in the Belgian Congo and French Equatorial Africa. But the most influential recordings were the Cuban gramophones played by Antillean civil servants living in the African quarters.²⁴⁷ Guajiro groups such as Trio Matamoros, conjuntos like Sonora Mantancera, charangas like Orquesta América and the ensemble of Johnny Pacheco were favorites. Cuban pianist Moises Simons' 1929 "El Manisero" was a popular composition during this period. Musicians learned the 78s by rote and often imitated the Spanish lyrics.²⁴⁸

His Master's Voice, Vaya, and Fania were among the many labels exporting their recordings to Léopoldville and Brazzaville.²⁴⁹ Phonographs made by HMV, sold at the store of the British-owned “Société de Kwilu-Niari” were the most popular brand in Brazzaville.²⁵⁰ The brand was so popular in the Belgian Congo that when Nico and Alexandros Jéronimidis, the owners of the Ngoma label, had phonographs fabricated in France to sell to the locals, they collected dust.²⁵¹ In the early 1950s the British company EMI re-released a series of Cuban records, mostly sones, on the GV label. Encouraged by the popularity of the GV sides, the local labels released a deluge of recordings of local rumbas alongside traditional music releases - over 4,000 by the end of the decade.²⁵² Latin tunes learned from these 78s remained part of many Congolese bands' repertoires until the late 1960s.

Various sources recount the early history of recording studios in the Congo differently. According to Kazadi, Olympia Editions was the first recording company in Kinshasa, established in 1939.²⁵³ Alexandros Jéronimidis, who with his brother Nico established the Ngoma studio and record label, claims that Olympia opened in 1946 and folded two years later.²⁵⁴ What is uncontested is that Ngoma, opened in 1948, was the first successful studio and had an unquantifiable effect on urban Congolese music. A UNESCO representative had this to say to Ngoma's founders around 1950:

Thanks to you, the whole musical wealth of the Belgian Congo will not be lost and you have contributed in enlarging the area of human knowledge. The large collection of popular melodies and traditional songs you have put together are a treasure that will catch the interest of the musicians of the whole world.²⁵⁵

Following Ngoma (meaning "drum") came Opika in 1950, Loningisa (from "to shake") in 1950, CEFA in 1953, and Esengo ("happiness") in 1957. They were all Greek-owned, though CEFA was set up and run by the Belgian guitarist, musical mentor and instrument importer Bill Alexandre.²⁵⁶ Initially, however, Rumba Lingala was nearly synonymous with Ngoma. Opika studios possibly chose its name from the Lingala phrase "opika mpende" ("you should resist/oppose"), a signal of its competition with Ngoma. Dr. Wolfgang Bender, who maintains the African Music Archive, notes, "Of interest too, the congolese [sic] OPIKA label had Nigerian and Ghanaian bands in its programm [sic] and one wants to know, for whom they were intended to be sold for [sic]. Were they for the export to Nigeria, or was there a market for Nigerian or Ghanain [sic] music in the Congo? Among their artists were such eminent market leaders as Bobby Benson from Nigeria."²⁵⁷

Typically each studio gathered a pool of talented musicians and kept a house band to accompany different singers. They owned the instruments and often hired European musicians as teachers. Ngoma's main house band was "Groupe Rhythmique Ngoma," later renamed "Beguen Band."²⁵⁸ Opika studios formed "La Joie Kinoise" ("The Delight of Kinshasa"). Loningisa housed "Bana Loningisa" ("Loningisa Boys"). Often these bands gained enough notoriety that they performed in bars and eventually broke free of their home studio to record wherever the money was best. The Opika house band, for instance, became in 1953 African Jazz, while many of the members of Bana Loningisa went on to form O.K. Jazz.²⁵⁹

An article in Congopresse from 1951 described a couple of recording sessions. I include this excerpt to sharpen our image of what was happening at this time. The author reports, "In a modern studio, before a battery of microphones, crouched a Bakongo 'dance band.'" He lists their instruments, which include two likembes, an aerophone (not specified), a cow horn, rattles made from metal containers, an adjustable wrench struck with a metal rod, the rear axle of an automobile struck with a beater, and a double bell. The writer reveals that he was at first skeptical, but quickly forgot about the strange collection of instruments, once he was taken in by "the black soul that sang its lament." A Bapende vocal ensemble followed, presenting funerary songs. These "tore at his soul," and he concludes that both ensembles were worthy of recording.²⁶⁰

Technology: Conclusion

The importance of technology in promoting Rumba Lingala could hardly be overstated. As an industrial interculture, in Slobin's terminology, it provided crucial linkages. Firstly, the records and radios brought populations across the Congo colonies into contact with diasporic communities in Cuba. The trade in musics recalled the previous diasporic intercultural movement, namely, the middle passage and more recent labor migrations. Secondly, the technology promoted intercultures of affinity between musicians and audiences across national boundaries. Subcultural Rumba Lingala was thus linked with innovations in rumba, palm-wine, highlife and other musics. Thirdly, the Greek community that operated the technology acted as an interculture between Rumba Lingala and the European financial and media supercultures. It rewarded musicians with material gain, which in turn drew audience attention to Rumba Lingala.

The print excerpts and radio programming I have included show how technology gave Rumba Lingala entrée into a spreading mediascape, enabling it to bring various peoples into its sphere. Different bands tended to reflect (and construct) particular populations more than others, based on the specific experiences and origins of the band leaders. Within the Congolese umbrella Léon Bukasa and Kabasele expressed the sentiments of the Baluba region, Wendo and Roger Izeidi those of Bandundu, Lucie Eyenga, Vicky and Dewayon of Équateur region, and Franco Bas-Congo.²⁶¹ Rather than divide the movement into fissiparous branches, I argue this plurality determined its success as national signifier. Rumba Lingala, with its international roots, was not the domain of any single group or region; it encouraged participation and diversification, yet managed through repetition to become standardized. As a pansophy it embraced the ideologies of these diverse populations, thereby uniting them. It was in this way that Rumba Lingala became a chief expresser of the nation's hopes and frustrations.

Technology vastly increased Rumba Lingala's audience. Through the distribution of recordings to radio stations and directly to consumers, every village of Equatorial Africa had, in theory, access to the music. This distribution was pivotal in Rumba Lingala’s writing of the nation. The media vaulted the musicians into the limelight, and they were Congolese figures, whose faces, voices, names and styles became easily recognized. Their wide popularity was evidence of inter-ethnic affiliation: you could be Tetela and adore a Kongo singer, for instance. The relationship was through the music, not other former, more narrowly conceived affiliations, such as place of birth, mother tongue, etc.

Language

Pius Ngandu Nkashama interprets modern Congolese music -- "modern" signifying from the rise of the orchestres -- as an attempt to heal the rupture of colonialism. He sees the song as a site where social crisis is voiced and collective redemption is sought, through the coordination of the various segments of historical conscience. Language plays a critical role in this effort:

In so far as these songs are performed almost exclusively in the four principal languages established as national languages (Lingala of the capital Kinshasa, but also Kiswahili spoken all over the east, Ciluba in the center, and Kikongo in the south) for an immense country with more than 350 different languages, the song should be considered like a privileged space where an historic conscience is affirmed.²⁶²

A discussion of nation-building must include an analysis of language, for it both creates and results from national affiliation. Playwright, poet and essayist Femi Osofisan argued that the nation is defined by language and arts. In his discussion of language and arts in Nigeria, he asserted language and nation were coterminous, but that nations overlapped one another. He stated that in Nigeria there was one English nation that overlapped 300 other nations, including Ibo, Hausa, Yoruba, Ibibio, Efik, Ogoni, etc. Artists like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka sought to resolve the language dilemma by developing an English different from the British language; its idioms, intonation, inflections, imagery and patterns were taken from other Nigerian languages. Likewise, the arts themselves merged European and local formats.²⁶³

One of the ways that Rumba Lingala pulled together the Congolese people was through the importation and resignification of rumba. Above I demonstrated Rumba Lingala's merging of local and foreign music traditions by combining instruments, rhythms, melodies, harmonies, song structure, and lyrical themes. Another way Rumba Lingala constructed the new nation was by using Lingala. This linguistic choice was crucial in the spread of the music, for it would not have achieved such mass appeal had it also been sung in the other languages as well. There were numerous compositions sung entirely or in part in other languages, especially Kiswahili and Kikongo, but these made up only a tiny fraction of the entire output of musicians. Lingala's significance as the language of revolution becomes clearer after independence, when it is chosen as the first language of the press, and when Mobutu chooses it as his mode for addressing the new country. The history of Lingala adds potency to its use as the means for bringing people together; it was created precisely for that purpose.

As I have shown, economic interests created ethnic agglomerations, much like the slave populations of the New World. Belgian officials did not employ the strategic separation of workers of the same ethnic origin to the same degree as was enforced in the southern U.S.A., but in the polyglot colonial army they made certain that no single ethnic group could dominate; members from many language groups were strategically mixed to prevent solidarities and resistance. The policy of divide and rule disrupted communication due to language barriers, which in turn stimulated the spread of a sort of “no-man’s” language. Lingala became the military lingua franca, as it drew from other major tongues, including Lobobangi, Kikongo, and Kiswahili. Its usage spread with soldiers’ deployment throughout the country.²⁶⁴

Language policies differed in the two colonies, but Lingala continued to pervade. In the French Congo, where the state was decidedly anti-clerical (but too poor to refuse the assistance of missions), a 1929 decree prohibited instruction in any vernacular except for religious purposes. This mandate was prompted by the state’s fear of anti-French propaganda and its inability to control a population it could not understand.²⁶⁵ Eventually the missions found ways around the law. The Holy Ghost Fathers, for example, used Lingala, Kikongo and Munukutuba with a broad, multi-linguistic population.²⁶⁶ Masses were given in French, Munukutuba and Lingala.²⁶⁷ These practices foisted a new lingua franca on those with other mother tongues.

In the Belgian Congo the missions also provided the only form of education available to the local Africans. Because of Belgium’s own bilingualism, the colonial educational system was fraught with more wrangling than on the Congo River's “left bank.” Among administrators in the Belgian Congo, speakers of French by and large held higher positions than did the Flemish and felt themselves to be superior. For a time both languages were considered official. Colonial agents were entitled to use just about any language in administrative duties, even Arabic, but English, considered a threat to Franco-Dutch culture, was conspicuously omitted from the list of suggestions.²⁶⁸ Eventually, however, Flemish lost out to a “French-plus-four” formula that is the standard still, with Lingala, Ciluba, Kiswahili and Kikongo regarded as the dominant African tongues.²⁶⁹ Mission educators privileged certain languages through their policies of proselytism. Between 1900 and 1910, the first Lingala and Kikongo translations of the Bible were distributed. In the 1920s Ciluba and Kiswahili translations were printed.²⁷⁰

The invention and subsequent widespread acceptance of Lingala gave individuals a way to communicate in theory with any other member of the growing, imagined nation. In multi-lingual societies such as the Congos, language choice is a highly contested site of political, economic and ideological consequence. The language-nation of Lingala was not coterminous with political or ethnic entities. The decision of musicians to make it their vehicle for communication locates Lingala as a powerful tool for generating community and configuring particular solidarities.²⁷¹ But the contours of these solidarities are complex and uncharted.

Anderson’s theories on the role of language and print-media in the ascendancy of nationalism as the “most universally legitimate value” in politics has parallels in the way in which music and the recording industry shape the imaginings of community.²⁷²

What, in a positive sense, made the new communities imaginable was a half-fortuitous, but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity.²⁷³

The requirements of capitalism in the fledgling recording industry encouraged the growth of a narrow band of musical styles. The appearance and accumulation of records in whose grooves specifically chosen performances were preserved indirectly promoted a particular sound, what we might call in retrospect a classic sound, to the detriment of alternative styles.²⁷⁴ Its hegemonic thrust (as evinced by the failure of other styles) consolidated the movement, whose implicit mandate of community-fortification thereby gained velocity. The practice of selectively promoting Rumba Lingala established a more or less unified field of music circulation. The same records were now able to be played anywhere in the country, enabling music enthusiasts everywhere to relate to each other via vinyl. The analogy becomes clear when Anderson writes:

In the process, [speakers of the new print-languages] gradually became aware of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language-field, and at the same time that only those hundreds of thousands, or millions, so belonged. These fellow-readers, to whom they were connected through print, formed, in their secular, particular, visible invisibility, the embryo of the nationally imagined community.²⁷⁵

The same process occurred through recorded media: listeners to the Lingala-language records and radio programs gradually became aware of the countless others who shared their ability to understand Lingala. Rumba Lingala, the first widely disseminated genre of music in the Congo to use an African language, formed the basis for the imagined Congolese nation. Furthermore, the predominance of this one musical form engraved it into the mediascape of the expanding nation. Its ubiquity made it mesh with its environment, thus programming it into the Congolese framework of daily existence. Rumba Lingala became "our music" -- the new, enlarged "our" -- like no other music before.²⁷⁶

The choice of the new urban musicians living in Léopoldville and Brazzaville to sing in Lingala both capitalized on its status as a major vehicular language and confirmed their commitment to a Congolese agenda. While the artists in Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) sang in Kiswahili, their impact on the contested site of language was not substantial, as their style of music was overwhelmed by the sound coming from the Lower Congo region. In its section on Zaïre, the Library of Congress Area Handbook Series notes:

In some cities, Lingala's expansion has been quantified. Kisangani, for example, which is in Haut-Zaïre, sitting astride the east-west dividing line between Lingala- and Kiswahili-speaking areas . . . has seen two communities shift from Kiswahili-speaking majority to Lingala-speaking majority since independence. More significant is the fact that Lingala in Lingala-speaking areas has become . . . the first language of the children of urban interethnic marriages. This development has occurred despite the fact that [it] was never the first language of any historical prenineteenth-century Zairian community.²⁷⁷

Anderson has asserted that “The nation was conceived in language, not in blood, [so] that one could be ‘invited into’ the imagined community.”²⁷⁸ In places where Lingala is not spoken it is nevertheless common for people to know it -- bringing them into the imagined community -- due to its use by news media (and musicians).²⁷⁹ The LOC Area Handbook continues:

The postindependence expansion of Lingala can be attributed to several additional factors. One is the enormous popularity of Zairian popular music, whose lyrics are mostly in Lingala. Lingala songs can be heard playing from radios in even the most remote villages throughout Zaire. Zairian music has reached an extremely wide area throughout sub-Saharan Africa and has established itself as one of the continent's most prestigious musical traditions. . . . President Mobutu's deliberate use of Lingala in his public addresses, even speaking to Kiswahili-speaking crowds in Bukavu and elsewhere, has given political expression to his reported rejection of Kiswahili as an acceptable Zaire-wide trade language because of its association with Arab slavers. Lingala is, in fact, the only African language Mobutu uses in public.²⁸⁰

Indoubil

Within the interculture of urban social formations, another subculture appeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s alongside Rumba Lingala. "Billism" and its signature language Indoubil sprang from the youth of Léopoldville and quickly found expression in the Rumba Lingala of the O.K. Jazz variety.²⁸¹ Its speakers dubbed their mix of Lingala, other local languages, French, Spanish, English and Flemish "Indoubil" (also Hindoubil, Hindubill, and Indoubile) because it embodied two of their favorite activities: Hindi films and American Westerns, such as those that featured Buffalo Bill.

Indoubil was chic; it defined what was new, the cutting edge of Léopoldville's African culture. Billism marked its social space through the creation of its own fashion and language. The dress code required high-heeled ankle boots with pointed toes, a fitted shirt with checks or stripes and high collar, a colorful silk scarf around the neck, flares, hair teased out with a pick, a mustache and sideburns. The phenomenon of Indoubil sums up the syncretism of the city in a concrete way. It became a patois often heard in songs of that period and later. Some examples are given below.²⁸²

English/French	Lingala	Indoubil
To die	Kokufa	Kodayé
De manger	Biloko ya kolia	Damage
Mademoiselle	Elenge mwasi	Nzéle
La mer	Ebale	Laméle
Cooperer	Koyokana	Kokoperé

Indoubil commands grammatical rules, too. Kodayé, for instance, takes the Lingala pronoun prefix, so that “S/he is dead” is expressed “adayé,” similar to the true Lingala “akufí.” It does not, however, strictly adhere to the rule governing suffix tense markers, which in this case would call for an -í to be affixed to the stem to express the recent past or a stative condition.

"Cha cha cha bay," a 1959 Ngoma record by Camille Feruzi and L'Orchestre Mysterieux Jazz, is an example of a song sung in Indoubil (audio ex. B8).²⁸³ Camille Feruzi was born in Stanleyville (Kisangani) in 1912 and learned accordion from his father. He moved to Léopoldville in 1927 to become a professional musician and started recording in 1953.²⁸⁴ That he would sing in Indoubil at the age of 47 demonstrates its media capital. Its currency as communication of chic is reinforced by the use of the cha-cha, which was in vogue in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Electric guitar and bass, drum and "jazz" support Feruzi's accordion on "Cha cha cha bay." Below I have transcribed it to the best of my ability. Aside from what sound like Spanish words, I cannot translate the lyrics.

“Cha cha cha bay”

Eh, 'elló, ahorá, ericó.

Mi quieró para que para ya.

Que quera misó misó

Mista Mariola is far again [para que?]

Batumá, naketé (x2)

A shadow para ya

Esó mi corazón’ (x8)

"Banzanza," recorded by Roitelet and Bana Loningisa 1955-56, is another example (audio ex. B9).²⁸⁵ It is sung in Lingala and Indoubil to a rhythm known as "Saba-Keta." They sing, "BaYankee nyonso baini, sungani na baplan. BaHindu nyonso baboyi, sungani na mawa." I cannot translate this fully, but I believe that Hindus and Yankees have been competing, and it appears the Yankees have succeeded in their plans ("baplan"), while the Hindus are experiencing disappointment ("mawa").

I consider these songs part of the Rumba Lingala genre though they contain Indoubil, just as some compositions were sung in part or entirely in Kikongo and other languages. Within the greater genre there were stylistic sub-currents, which enabled the numerous bands to create individual spaces, while simultaneously identifying themselves with the genre. Commercial success required both.

Indoubil worked its way into mainstream usage in part through Rumba Lingala and can still be heard today. An example is the word from above “nzéle.” Though derived in part from “mademoiselle,” its meaning in Indoubil is “girlfriend.” I was taught this word by my Lingala tutor with the explanation that it was “a real Kinshasa word,” beyond which I had no idea of its origin (or, at the time, what Indoubil was). His reaction to my use of “nzéle” has always been to giggle, indicating to me he is aware he has taught me something unofficial, incongruous with his role.

When used in song, I suggest it was a sign that musicians were "keeping street," in touch with the neighborhoods they came from and the friends they grew up with. African Jazz, popular especially with the educated élite, used little if any Indoubil, whereas groups like Bana Loningisa, who had for the most part less schooling and had a strong fan base in the working class would use Indoubil frequently. On another level it sought to define a subculture within the diversifying urban Congolese community. Indoubil prevented the élite, whom the Bills resented, from travelling within their highly fashionable subculture, in which music played a part. Rumba Lingala was already well established as the music of modernity. Singing in Indoubil effectively appropriated a portion of this power for the "watama" class (see p. 70). The relative paucity of Indoubil songs on record raises the question of whether the recording companies discriminated against those songs. It could be that they simply did not see a market among the speakers of Indoubil, whom they viewed as impecunious. Or, it could indicate a concession by the companies to the colonial government's fear of the youth, whom they may have viewed as a proverbial powder keg. Spreading Indoubil may have subverted Belgium's efforts at keeping the Congolese in servitude.

The “Bill” or “Yankee” movement was the expression of irreconcilable conflicts brought on by urbanization: industrialization’s inevitable unemployment vs. the rise of the Congolese élite; the promulgated ideals of European education vs. the inaccessibility of the best schools to the vast majority; the arrival of an extreme materialism vs. the concentration of capital in the smallest sector of society; traditional ethics vs. the crookery and promiscuity of the city. It represented the efforts of those in the nexus of nation-building to cope with the heat of ground-zero politics: Christian morality, academic abstractions, urban existence, civil laws, diverse customs, race-based social confinement, etc. The need to rebel against a society so rigid demanded the remodeling of local spaces based on images culled from just about anywhere, as long as the result could be called their own. This movement appropriated its outer visage from the popular Hindi and American cinema of the day, which the colonial administration actively promoted amongst the African population, as these movies seemed best suited for the “native mentality.”²⁸⁶ Westerns were far and away the most popular, with heroes like Buffalo Bill, Hopalong Cassidy, Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, etc.: models of bravery who conquered all odds. Quarters of the city were dubbed “Quartier Far West” and the like. They were fought for, defended and dominated by Hindu, Bill and Yankee gangs.²⁸⁷

Indoubil was an attempt to resignify the rejection felt by the youth who had grown up in the later years of urban colonialism. As they became acculturated to a Euro-African urban life, the moral and social values of Congolese tradition were challenged and distorted by, and forced to adapt to, both the demands of the cash economy and colonialism's institutionalized degradation of Congolese self-esteem. Urbanism developed in direct proportion to the waning of a sense of belonging among many Congolese. While the evolués and immatriculés aspired to and sometimes achieved a respectable social position (for an African under colonialism), for many more modernity meant alienation. While children of the élite finished school and entered jobs in offices or education, the working class majority went to vocational schools and found manual labor jobs if fortunate. Those who did not make it, who could not join the supposed universal ascendancy of the good, material life, rejoined the street and faced a problem: How were they to integrate into a progressively urbanizing, European-constructed society, whose access point was open only to those with a carte d’immatriculation? On the other hand, how were they to fit into their own times, whose new symbols proclaimed revolt against the society created to keep them powerless? In his history of Congolese society, Manda Tchebwa stated:

In this decade, 1950-1960, a part of this youth gave the illusion of escaping from its social origins to yield itself to a mythic universe founded on a riskier vision of society, one that masked the other side of the picture.²⁸⁸

Language as Power

Ngugi exposed the politics of language in his rhetorical question, "What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism, and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?"²⁸⁹ Given the ennobled status and politico-economic power of English, his stated refusal to write in English, except in translation, and his concomitant elevation of the "vernaculars," Gikuyu and Kiswahili, into official/academic discourse was tantamount to a coup d'état in Africans' continuing struggle to liberate their economies, politics and cultures from the neo-colonial Euro-American stranglehold. Though, arguably, literature has greater status than commercial music in European ideology, the choice of musicians to sing in a particular language has arguably more penetrating ramifications. Firstly, music reaches a larger audience. It requires fewer resources than print-based media to disseminate, especially in rural areas where the radio is the primary link to the metropolis, and music's reception is less dependent on external factors, like literacy. Secondly, its ability to subvert or support an ideology is more insidious. The ambiguity of music makes it harder to oppose and provides it with the power to conceal as well as reveal meaning (recall the censorship of Adou Elenga’s confrontationally literal “Ata Ndele”). Its greater efficacy across linguistic boundaries, due both to the messages inherent in the musical choices and the comparative simplicity of the lyrics, may shore up support for a cause.

Margaret Thompson Drewal has written that, "The central problem of ethnography is translation. Each language comes impregnated with its own peculiar past, loaded with its own ontology and epistemology."²⁹⁰ Thus different conceptual systems, constructed and carried in language, necessarily inflect communications and representations differently. The choice of language is always a fiercely contested site of political struggle. Rarely does a debated issue command the loyalty that language does. Congolese musicians were able to choose from Lingala, Kikongo, Ciluba, Kiswahili, French, and any of 350 other languages. Their choice to sing the overwhelming majority of their songs in Lingala utilized and promoted a conceptual system founded on a group ontology and an inter-ethnic epitemology.

Viewed from another angle, languages operate in an economy, in which their usage constitutes their value. In his study of violence in Northern Ireland Allen Feldman writes about political power as a function of one's control over the movement of bodies in time within politically marked spaces.²⁹¹ Language becomes a unit of power and sites of domination are constructed as its use is governed in time and space. The decision to sing in Lingala made it iconic and imbued the songs with an authority.