This archive report was first published on 18 December 2021.
On December 18, 2021, UNESCO added Congolese rumba music to its list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity, a move that has been met with great pride and emotion in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Unesco's Director-General Audrey Azoulay described the music as 'the history of slavery with this music leaving for America, for Cuba, and returning in the 1930s. This music became a vector of resistance. It accompanied African independence.'
East Africans love their rumba, though many of us don't understand its intricacies. We know it's what greats like Franco, Papa Wemba, and the active artistes like woman-beater Koffi Olomide play.
However, the story of rumba is more complex than just its popularity. It has a complex East African face, reflecting the successes and failures of our regional integration in surprising ways.
For instance, many of the most famous Lingala groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s, like Simba Wanyika, were formed in Tanzania, not the Democratic Republic of Congo. These bands played in a free-flowing cycle between integrated Tanzania and Kenya, until the first East African Community collapsed.
With Tanzania and Kenya locked in a cold war, movement became harder, so the musicians settled in Nairobi and span off groups like Simba Wanyika, and then Les Wanyika.
The majority of the music of the rumba greats, thus came out of Nairobi. One can read troubled integration, repression, and economic hardship in rumba.
But it was also the soundtrack of other social phenomena. It was a period when the East African airwaves were dominated by the international services of the Voice of Kenya and Radio Tanzania.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”.
