franco

I just put this feature up today, and wanted to share it with everyone, because it’s wonderfully written…Richard Gehr, our regular columnist for all things world music-related, has just penned a killer retrospective on the fascinating, complex Congolese musician Franco. Reading and editing this kind of stuff on a daily basis is my favorite part of my job. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

Francophilia

By Richard Gehr

One figure stands off to the side and slightly obscured amid the pantheon of African bandleaders. The Congolese superstar Franco — christened François Luambo Makiadi in 1938, dead of AIDS in 1989 — is the least internationally-acclaimed among afropop giants such as Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and Youssou N’Dour. With a biography at least as tragically complex as Fela’s, Franco lived large, died sadly, and left hundreds of hours of some of the world’s most beautiful and profound music behind.

Franco’s story is inextricably entwined with that of the Congo, in whose westernmost hinterland he was born. Franco made his first guitar at age seven, joined his first band (Watam, meaning Delinquents) at 11, and recorded his first tracks at 15. “Esongo Ya Mokili” (Pleasure in This World), from his first day in the studio, kicks off Stern’s indispensible double-disc retrospective, Francophonic — Vol. 1 1953-1980. Savor its prophetic Lingala chorus: “What a pleasure in this world to be famous!” (Franco’s career highlights can also be sampled on two other slightly less well-curated compilations: Classic Titles — Very Best of Franco and 20ème Anniversaire (6 Juin 1956 – 6 Juin 1976) volumes one and two.)

Franco established himself as a prolific and talented songwriter and guitarist over the next few years, and in 1956 he co-founded the first version of OK Jazz, the group he would front in various configurations for the rest of his life. Named after Kinshasa’s OK Bar, the group’s regular venue, OK Jazz specialized in the Congolese pop style called rumba, a confusingly named, guitar-heavy local version of Cuban son. The group recorded prolifically, and you can cha-cha-cha in many of the Latin-flavored three-minute 78s they recorded between 1957 and 1959, including “Tcha Tcha Tcha de Mi Amor,” via Originalité. This smoothly remastered compilation kicks off with the band’s brilliant theme song, “On Entre OK, On Sort KO”: “You enter OK, you leave knocked out.”

Franco’s fame exploded nearly as abruptly as Belgium’s decision to grant the Congo independence in 1960. Although undereducated, he represented a new spirit of cosmopolitanism, becoming a spokesman for a growing labor force that had abandoned rural villages for the big city. His lyrics reflected working-class blues and addressed the plight of prostitutes and other urban victims. OK Jazz were among several fine Congolese groups that somehow flourished even as the nation plunged into a civil war that ended in 1965 when General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized power.

Much of Franco’s career revolves around his complex love-hate relationship with the dictator Mobutu, whose policies and expertise he would often praise musically when not subtly criticizing him in the allegorical distractions of the lyrical form known as mbwakela. In “Liberté,” for example, Franco sings “Since you’ve confiscated my passport I’m determined to regain my liberty” in the voice of a beleaguered husband eager for a divorce. But Franco was always something of a whore himself, and would sing about beer, soap, cigarettes or anything else for which he was paid well. I number among the many Franco fans who didn’t know, until I read Ken Braun’s excellent Francophonic liner notes, that Franco’s most internationally popular song, the addictively seductive “AZDA,” was recorded in 1973 to celebrate a regional chain of Volkswagen dealerships. Payment consisted of 24 cars — one for each bandmember.

But has it taken me this far to simply rave about how hard Franco jammed? While his more refined competitors preferred a pick, Franco famously soloed, once the group hit the extended instrumental bridge known as the sebene, in long, elegant parallel lines plucked with two fingers. By the 80s, he was recording bounteous tracks like “Trés Impoli,” and “Mario” that gave his equally expanding lineup of singers and guitarists plenty of space to strut their stuff. Not of course to disparage the more economical guitar brilliance heard in track like “Liberté,” “Minuit Eleki Lezi” (It’s After Midnight, Lezi), “Infidelitè Mado,” “Melou, Etc., Etc.,” or the Bo Diddletc., etc., etc. “Marie Naboyi” (Mary, I Reject You) sounds like a premonition of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain” and “Nabala Ata Mbwa,” whatever its lyrical content, extends Bo Diddley a dirty global reach-around.

20 years after his death, Franco remains the African bandleader ripest for reappreciation. And serious homage is paid throughout Congolese guitarist Syran Mbenza’s glowing Immortal Franco: Africa’s Unrivalled Guitar Legend. With the help of some former OK Jazz bandmembers, Mbenza more than does justice to Franco’s legacy in luminous covers of some of the maestro’s greatest tunes, including “Infidelité Mado,” “Cherie Bondowé,” and “Salina.” Mbenza, the former leader of Afro-Parisian groups Kekele and Quatre Etoiles, has delivered the rare tribute worthy of the effort.