Congolese Guitar Evolution: A Journey Through Sebene Heaven

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The Congolese guitar has carried joy, resistance, and cultural pride across generations, from the bustling dancehalls of Kinshasa to global festival stages. Its hypnotic rhythms, sparkling melodies, and iconic sebene lines have defined entire genres and inspired countless musicians.

In this new video, Niwel Tsumbu, one of the greatest modern Congolese guitarists explores the evolution of Congolese guitar, breaking down the styles of legendary players like Franco Luambo, Popolipo Beniko, Roxy Tshimpaka, and Alain Makaba.

To give you a taste of this journey, here’s an excerpt from our book Sebene Heaven, which accompanies the Congolese Guitar Evolution course. You can test out the first 4 lessons of this course free.

Sebene Heaven

Fed by ever greater numbers of migrants from the interior who came looking for work and advancement, Leopoldville was booming, with new African cités sprouting to the south, west and east of the white centre ville. Rumbas played on guitars, double basses, congas and maracas, as well as traditional
instruments like the lokolé slit drum of the Mongo people, or the likembé thumb piano, began to be released in increasing numbers by Ngoma and its competitors, taking the place of the violin and accordion based tunes that had serenaded the previous generation.

A Belgian guitarist by the name of Bill Alexandre, who learned his craft in the jazz dives of Brussels during Nazi occupation and had played with the best, including Django Reinhardt, settled in Leopoldville and set up CEFA (The African Folk Recordings Company). Alexandre is credited with introducing the electric guitar to the Congo and local musicians grew transfixed by his shiny Gibson guitar and especially his plectrum. Alexandre would tour the cités with his musicians in a van equipped with loudspeakers, blasting out the latest CEFA releases. Jeronimidis and Wendo Kolosoyi went even further, touring the entire country in the blue Ngoma van, with its roof-mounted speakers, now immortalised on the cover of the marvellous CD Ngoma, the early years, 1948-1960 (Popular African Music).

Two Jewish entrepreneurs from the island of Rhodes, Gabriel Moussa Benatar and Joseph Benatar, founded Opika (‘Hold Steady’ in Lingala), in 1949. They signed Zacharie Elenga, aka ‘Jhimmy the Hawaiian’ (thanks to the subtle Hawaiian tinge of his guitar style). Jhimmy formed a duo with singer Paul Mwanga and together they recorded songs like ‘Henriette’ and ‘Ondruwe’ that sold in huge numbers, not only Congo, but throughout the region. If Jhimmy was educated and smart, his music was wild and combustible. He became a youth hero, a musical revolutionary who helped to define a blueprint for Congolese rumba that still applies. But after falling out with Mwanga in 1954 over some copyright payments, he returned to his native Brazzaville and his former profession of typist-secretary, never to be heard of again in Kinshasa music circles.

Opika became the home of Joseph Kabasele, ‘Le Grand Kallé’, the cardinal’s nephew with the velveteen voice. In 1953, Kabasele brought together some young Opika regulars – guitarist Charles ‘Déchaud’ (‘The hot one’) Mwamba, Déchaud’s cousin Balozi ‘Tino’ Baroza, his little brother Dr Nico Kasanda and others – to form African Jazz, one of the first Congolese rumba orchestras to have an identity all of their own, separate from that of the label, studio, bar, radio station that sponsored them. Fame came quickly, setting Le Grand Kalle and his band on the road to their apotheosis at the Table Ronde in Brussels 1960.

Meanwhile, in 1954, the Papadimitriou brothers from Macedonia, Basile and Athanase, set up the Loningisa label and studio. Both spoke fluent Lingala and were popular with the Congolese. Basile used to sing in the shop where he sold pagnes, or African cloth, and was married to Marie Kitoko, a Congolese singer. An early Loningisa protégé was a young, good looking, sharply dressed street kid by the name of François Luambo Makiadi. He had started out by building his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire at the age of seven (most Congolese guitar greats began their journey to virtuosity in the same way) and had gradually learned to play thanks to his mentor Paul ‘Dewayon’ Ebengo. Luambo, better known as ‘Franco’, spent most of his time in the market, hanging out with the yankees and bandits (‘hustlers’ and ‘petty crooks’) near his mother’s fried fritter stall, when he wasn’t singing or writing songs. Lots of songs. Almost three a week and over 1,000 by the end of his career over thirty years later.

Some of the Bana Loningisa (children of Loningisa), as the Loningisa session players were known, played regularly at a local joint called the OK Bar, named after its owner Oscar Kashama. In early 1956, at Kashama’s suggestion, they dubbed themselves ‘OK Jazz’, in homage to their new employer and in
recognition of their love of Americana, especially westerns. They were young, they were hip, they were A OK, and their star soon began to rise, exponentially.

The battle lines were drawn: African Jazz specialised in a sugared, sophisticated, ‘civilised’ sound firmly anchored in the rhythm bedrock of Cuba and the Caribbean, while OK Jazz developed a rawer aesthetic rooted in the everyday cares and woes of Leopoldville’s burgeoning African population, with stronger echoes of Congo’s myriad traditional rhythms. The former tendency became known as rumba fiesta, and the latter as rumba odemba. Franco spent hours roaming the cités, talking to traders, washerwomen, hairdressers, taxi-drivers, shop keepers, dandies, prostitutes and hustlers, prospecting for stories, phrases and attitudes that might become the basis of a new song. It was on these foundations that his future reputation as ‘the African Balzac’ was built. Kabasele and his cohort made music that whispered love and romance, guiding the hand that yearns to rove, igniting thrills and restraining them with suave discretion. OK Jazz was street music, of the people, for the people. African Jazz was music for the educated, the
cosmopolitan, the ‘evolved’.

“…In order to make something beautiful and lasting, the artist must always continue to go deep and impregnate himself with what’s real,” Franco told the French magazine Vibrations in 1986. “I’m…a careful observer of our social mores.” His lyrical weapon was Lingala, a language that had been invented by soldiers and traders at the dawn of the 20th century to cut through the babel of Congo’s tribal tongues and bind the vast territory together. It was a new and therefore supple medium, a creole tongue that delighted in word play, double meanings, humour and irony, and it became one of the pillars on which the new Congo was built. It also explains why Congolese rumba was able to spread far and wide with such speed.

Outro

The Congolese guitar is more than an instrument, it’s a living, breathing voice of a culture that has influenced music worldwide. Whether you’re drawn to the hypnotic sebene, the intricate interplay of rhythm guitars, or the soulful leads that define this sound, there’s no better way to dive in than to learn directly from the masters.

Start your journey today with the Congolese Guitar Evolution course. Get your free trial of the first 4 lessons here.