The Voice of Lightness, Vol. 1: Congo Classics (1961-1977) [Album 1]

Besides Franco, Tabu Ley Rochereau is probably the most well-known Congolese musician of the 20th century-- a distinction that likely means as much to Western listeners as "preeminent Montenegrin fullback." That of course, isn't their fault, or anybody else's. But rather than theatrically bemoan the nature and economics of cross-cultural exchange, let's focus on what we do have, namely The Voice of Lightness, collecting 29 of the omnivorous tenor's sides spanning 1961-1977 (admittedly, only about half his career).

Rochereau was, primarily, a showman and politician. Groomed to be a preacher-- a happy irony and no coincidence, I don't think-- he started writing songs for Joseph Kabasele's African Jazz (then Congo's most popular band) when he was about 16, eventually joining as a backing vocalist. Fame came early and thick, in part because Rochereau wanted it: When he took a lead vocal on "Succès African Jazz", he bragged about their popularity in Cuba when Cuba didn't even carry their records; in his own career, he occasionally sang in a made-up language resembling Spanish (a tactical move, a move for the vote); he sang from a woman's perspective on "Mongali"; on "Mokolo Nakokufa", he assumes a series of characters musing on mortality, including a man wondering about who will weep for him when he dies, and, curiously, a woman who moans, "I'll miss African Fiesta." He recorded a song about how remarkably clean Omo laundry soap kept his shirts.

But Rochereau's impulse to boast and pander in his lyrics, however sweetly, didn't make him a philistine. When he left African Jazz to form African Fiesta, he took some of their best musicians with him (hooking the brilliant Nico, then one of three guitarists behind African Jazz, with the opportunity of a more central role). And with them-- and in his later 1960s and 70s bands, African Fiesta 66 and Afrisa-- he created an incredibly diverse catalog of pop music. The same impulse that made him make up a language probably inspired him to mix Congolese musics other than rumba into his style; his cautious interest in James Brown-- whom Franco once called a "monkey"-- half-inspired the evolution of soukous, where songs broke down partway into a frenzied dance; and "Aon Aon", named onomatopoetically for the wah-wah guitar, is the sound of African funk before Fela. There's almost never a limp moment or dull melody; the songs are as accommodating to dancing as they are to whistling; and when Rochereau makes radical little plays at genre-bending and stylistic experimentation, he does what few innovators bother to do-- puts the people first.

Mbilia Bel's story, like half the stories in the history of Congolese pop in the 20th century, involves Tabu Ley Rochereau (the other half, of course, involve Franco). Rochereau saw her on TV one day in 1981, performing as a backing vocalist for Abeti Masikini, and, in the way I imagine only famous pop musicians and royalty and law enforcement can do, sent for her presence. Within a couple years, she'd reached the front the stage with Afrisa International; she and Tabu Ley got married, and he started writing songs for her. Bel Canto is as much a retrospective of her as it is of Afrisa in the 80s, when soukous had fully flourished, when nary a guitar wound its way into a record without passing through a chorus pedal first, when increased production quality showed rhythms to bubble and crisp where before they'd only gently percolated.

Lingala, the Congolese language Bel sang in, has a naturally percussive inflection, but the traces of French and Portuguese make it sound fluid; as for Bel, she sings in it beautifully-- a smooth voice that flutters in upper ranges and croaks in lower, embodying its natural tensions. The grooves are somewhere between Rochereau's and Fela's in length-- usually between eight and 12 minutes, just enough time to cook, but not enough time to truly bore (as, I hold out heretically, Fela always ends up doing to me). With the 80s came better access to synthesizers, which explore the mix with charming clumsiness, sometimes trying to imitate guitars, sometimes horns, sometimes just squelching around just for the heck.

Having the lyrics help, too: Though written by Rochereau and probably not given the most attentive English translation, they're gems of self-conscious femininity that, if not exactly liberated, sound as compromised and intimate as couplets from Slits or Raincoats records. Mbilia talks about the beauty of her husband's mistress without envy and being in a bloodless marriage to a rich man, sure-- but then turns her nose up at a jealous lover with a dignity that probably makes him frustrated enough to scream and shamed enough to cry: "You act as though an insect has bitten you. Where did it bite you?" she chirps, gliding away. Rochereau's the man here, of course, and for however much she was beloved, Bel was first and foremost his protégé. He gave her lyrics and a band, but there was one thing she found on her own (though he had plenty of it in reserve): charm.