This man is an African Guitar God without question. François Luambo Makiadi, known as Franco, is always spoken of by African guitar aficionados in reverential tones. No wonder, since his fantastically fluid guitar style epitomized Congolese rumba guitar. Not to mention that, in 1956, he co-founded the legendary African band, OK Jazz. (The nickname for Orchestra Kinois jazz, “Kinois” being a resident of Kinshasa.) Later the band became TPOK Jazz, the “TP” upping the stakes, as it stood for tout pouissant, or “all powerful."
But because Franco died in 1989, you may not be as familiar with his music as you are with the musicians in the first two installments of our African Guitar Gods series: Ali Farka Touré and Tinariwen.
So off the bat, listen to some of the music Franco helped popularize. There are so few videos of Franco playing live that, crazily bad audio quality and all, this is still a wonder to see and hear:
Changed the sound of a continent
Congolese rumba swept the African continent beginning sometime around the Second World War, but reached its full heady powers in the 1950s, and Franco was at the centre of that wave. It was all about swinging hips, tireless grooves, syncopated dancing and, of course, those lilting, intertwining guitars. Franco’s fluid playing earned him that moniker, “the Sorcerer of the Guitar.” He was also sometimes called “the James Brown of Africa," because, as the Village Voice put it, he and Brown were “paradigm shifters—so much so that their masses of admirers raised them into cynosures, demigods, animi.”
The heartthrob of Kinshasa
He started young — by the age of 15, Franco was already a popular recording artist. Even then he had notable good looks, which helped him in something of a parallel career modelling fancy clothes. It also helped Franco become the heartthrob of Kinshasa; women went nuts for the guy. And while he eventually became hugely wealthy, he also had street cred as he’d grown up in the streets, where his mother had a market stall. Franco's first guitar was the quintessential poor boy’s guitar — a tin can, and some strings made of electrical wire without the casing. But back to bespoke. This song is a praise song to Franco's tailor.
Truth teller
One of Franco’s biggest hits, “Mario,” was about what women should do when saddled with lazy men: dump them. Another, “Attention na Sida (Beware of AIDS),” was a warning that might have had more impact than a hundred news stories, given Franco’s popularity. And while he had a complex relationship with the governments of his day, he was jailed more than once for speaking his mind on social issues.
A combination of Shakespeare (or Mozart) with Muhammad Ali (or Pelé)
According to the Rough Guide to World Music (Africa and the Middle East), Franco was deemed “like a human god” by another great African musician, Tabu Ley Rochereau. And Sam Mangwana went one further, speaking of Franco as “a combination of Shakespeare or Mozart with Muhammad Ali or Pelé.”
When Franco died, Zaire had four days of national mourning, with some radio stations broadcasting all OK Jazz, all the time.
Recommended listening: The Rough Guide to Franco: Africa’s Legendary Guitar Maestro.
Who do you think should be included in CBC Music's African Guitar Gods pantheon? Let us know in the comments.
Related:
African Guitar Gods: Tinariwen, from guns to guitars
African Guitar Gods: Ali Farka Touré, the DNA of the blues