Franklin Boukaka

Franklin Boukaka (October 10, 1940 - about February 23–24, 1972) was a Congolese baritone singer, guitarist, and songwriter who is recognized as a pioneer of Congolese popular music. He performed in bands based in each of "the two Congos," i.e., the countries now named the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; toured worldwide; achieved broad popularity; took outspoken political stances; and is widely believed to have been the victim of an extrajudicial execution during an attempted coup in the Republic of the Congo. Franklin Boukaka was born François Boukaka on October 10, 1940, in Brazzaville (the capital of present-day Congo-Brazzavile). His parents were both musicians; his father, Aubin Boukaka, was with the musical ensemble “La Gaieté,” while his mother, Yvonne Ntsatouabaka, was a singer and hostess of funeral vigils and popular celebrations. He was the oldest of eight children, five boys and three girls, and he attended schools in Brazzaville. After finishing school Boukaka joined a series of bands, moving between each of the two capital cities across the Congo River from one another: Brazzaville, and Leopoldville (later Kinshasa), capital of what was then the Belgian Congo and after independence became the Republic of the Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This progression of bands started in 1955, when at age 14 or 15 he joined the group Sexy Jazz, founded by Miguel Samba, Siscala Mouanga, and Aubert Nganga. In 1957, when Miguel Samba and Siscala Mouanga departed to join a group called Cercul Jazz, Boukaka joined the group Sympathic Jazz, of Alphonse Marie Toukas, and toured Kabinda and Leopoldville. In November 1958, with a number of other musicians mostly from Brazzaville, including his friend Michel Boyibanda who had been in Sympathic Jazz with him, Boukaka founded Negro Band. According to some sources, Negro Band was founded and always based in Brazzaville, while according to others it was based in Leopoldville during Boukaka's tenure with it, and in 1960 moved across the river to Brazzaville. In either event, Boukaka was certainly working in Leopoldville in 1960, when he joined musicians from African Jazz, including Tabu Ley Rochereau, to perform as "Jazz African" while the band's leader Joseph Kabasele (Le Grand Kallé) was in Brussels for the Round Table Conference on the Belgian Congo's independence. Subsequently, still in Leopoldville, with Jeannot Bombenga and Casino Mutshipule from African Jazz, he founded the band Vox Africa; other members of its first lineup included Papa Noël and Djeskain Massengo. In 1962, his place of employment returned from Leopoldville to Brazzaville where he joined the band Cercul Jazz, which two colleagues from Sexy Jazz had joined five years earlier. Cercul Jazz was founded in 1954 and named after a youth organization with which it was affiliated, Cercule Culturel de Bacongo. Boukaka became a leader of the group, and developed a substantial following. Cercul Jazz under Boukaka developed a distinctive style that, while considered ahead of its time, remained faithful to the style of the ensemble of Congo ("restée fidèle au style de l’orchestre de Bacongo"); its music was described as one of the most beautiful in rumba ("l’un des plus beaux de la Rumba"). In addition to touring their own country, in 1963-64, Cercul Jazz embarked on an African tour, playing in Gabon, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria. In 1965-66, they spent eight months in Cameroon. At the same time, Boukaka expanded his songwriting topics beyond "love and nature" to include social issues and politics, or "to analyze and criticize the human soul." His politics were socialist, and he particularly emphasized anti-colonialism and African unity. At the same time, he was willing to criticize post-independence African governments for corruption and nepotism. In 1967, Cercul Jazz recorded his composition "Pont sur le Congo" (Bridge on the Congo), suggesting that, with colonialism finished, the two Congos ought to unite. Its lyrics included (translated): Accept this day my prayer For a united Congo. If we accept the teachings of Lumumba Kinshasa and Brazza will get on well together. Brothers and sisters of the two banks, Let's join hands and forge the glory Of our Congo. "Pont Sur le Congo" became one of Cercul Jazz's best-known songs, but its recommendation was unwelcome to, and went unheeded by, the leaders of the two nations, which had opposing geopolitical alignments, with each leader seeking to undermine the other. Later in 1967, Boukaka left Cercul Jazz to begin performing and recording under his own name. He organized an ensemble of sanza (thumb piano) players as part of a Congolese folklore troupe that traveled to Paris under French governmental auspices. Boukaka would sing and play guitar, accompanied by two or three sanza players. In Paris Boukaka recorded for French musician Gilles Sala's production company, accompanied by two sanza players and Congolese saxophonist Jean Serge Essous of Les Bantous de la Capital, several songs including "Les Brazzavilloises," about the women of Brazzaville. These recordings were re-issued in the 1980s as the album Survivance. Subsequently, with his sanza troupe in Brazzaville, Boukaka introduced a new song, "Les Immortels," in which he sings of an old man telling him (translated) "young man, every man must die one day, but not all deaths have the same meaning," and the refrain names sixteen martyrs killed for their beliefs, including Patrice Lumumba, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Simon Kimbangu, Albert Luthuli, and Andre Matswa. This song has been called prophetic, given that Boukaka was apparently killed for his own convictions a few years later. It may also be seen as an implicit criticism of the political leadership of the two Congos at that time, for failing to live up to the heroic standards of their predecessors. In 1969, Boukaka performed with his sanza troupe at the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers. His performance of "Les Immortels" was considered a highlight of that major event. In 1970, Boukaka recorded several songs in Paris, arranged and accompanied on saxophone and piano by Manu Dibango. These sessions have been described as the "artistic zenith" of Boukaka's career. Under the direction of the Cameroonian maestro and with different instrumentation including violins and piano rather than guitars, the music from these sessions radically differed in style from the Congolese popular music, Congolese rumba or soukous, that Boukaka had previously made. The twelve-song album from these sessions, packaged after his death as Franklin Boukaka à Paris, has been called "a work of such power and beauty that it cannot go unremarked." Remarkable tracks on the à Paris album include different, stripped-down arrangements of "Pont sur la Congo" and "Les Immortels," as well as a new rumba called "Likambo Oyo" (this problem). But Boukaka's song that achieved the greatest success, and the one for which he is most remembered and listened to fifty years later, is "Le Bucheron" (the woodcutter; the Kenyan version of the single was titled "Le Bucheron (Africa)"), a complaint about the state of Africa and its poor, the refrain lamenting (translated) "Oh, Africa, where is your independence? ... where is your liberty?" In 1970, he toured Guinea, backed by a leading local band, Keletigui Traoré's Keletigui et ses Tambourinis. They performed together at the 1970 version of the Quinzaine Artistique et Culturelle Nationale, the annual Guinean national festival. The Guinean record label Syliphone released three records of him with that band. In one, captioned "Unité Africaine," a live performance most likely from the national festival, Boukaka called for "Africa united and strong" in his Congolese language, Lingala; named African states and leaders in a call-and-response; and then spoke to the crowd in Susu, a language of Guinea that he had learned for the occasion. In