During the 1980’s, a lifetime’s worth of wonderful live African music performances took place in Los Angeles. African music filled KCRW's airwaves and local print media, and it seemed like a group ...

In October, the world marked 30 years since the death of Africa’s most famous singer, Franco Luambo Makiadi. That is a coveted position for any living Kenyan artiste. Franco’s fame went beyond his ...

The African guitarist, singer and bandleader known as Franco was the first modern international pop-music superstar in the continent, a sensation not only in his native Republic of the Congo, but ...

A huge bronze statue of a smiling Franco Luambo Makiadi, a guitar strapped to his burly self, towers above Kinshasa; a fitting tribute to arguably the most significant cultural icons that Africa has ...

I love 21st-century music. Lil Wayne, Drive-By Truckers and TV on the Radio are all in my Top 10 albums of 2008. But I'm convinced that the very best music newly released in America in 2008 was ...

Shakara blogs about the Congolese musician, Franco Luambo: “It’s a known fact that Franco recorded various praise songs for Mobutu, openly supported Mobutu’s presidential campaigns and toured to ...

AFRICA moves to a Congolese beat, mainly in the form of pirated CDs and cassettes. In the vast Democratic Republic of Congo itself, ravaged by almost 50 years of war, economic collapse and ...

African music traveled to the New World with slavery, only to return to Africa in the 1930’s and 40’s via 78 rpm phonograph records, broadcast by Radio Congo Belge in Léopoldville (now Kinshasha), ...

Prologue: a mighty sound: Mobutu and the musicians, 1997 -- Difficult delivery: Bowane, Leopold II, Stanley, Brazza, Kamba, Feruzi, and Wendo, 1946 and before -- Why don't you make a record? Olympia, ...