A handful of us ventured out into town for lunch, yesterday, and found a swanky Rwandan joint called Soleil (Rwandan cosmopolitanism vs. Congolese hickdom is a frequent topic of debate; I won’t get into it, here.) On the veranda, a band was practicing, with a bunch of their dancers going at it out front. I was fascinated, so I took some video. This was pieced together from screenshots:

The movement is difficult to describe or to see from the montage, above. The closest thing to it that I’ve seen is krumping. The music itself was tame, in comparison, a variant of N’Dombolo:

Another notable feature in Congo culture is its sui generis music. The DROC has blended its ethnic musical sources with Cuban rumba, and meringue to give birth to soukous. Influential figures of soukous and its offshoots (n’dombolo, rumba rock…) are Franco Luambo, Tabu Ley, Lutumba Simaro, Papa Wemba, Koffi Olomide, Kanda Bongo, Ray Lema, Mpongo Love, Abeti Masikini, Reddy Amisi, Pepe Kalle and Nyoka Longo.

I’ll try to post something on YouTube, when I get home.

I would love to go see some live bands while I’m in Goma, but I would have to find safe (boring) places like this one. I’ve been warned several times by expats not to go to Congolese-only clubs at night. They say that I’d be looted upon entry. True or not, I’ll take their word for it until someone tells me otherwise.

UPDATE: Uploaded!

Related Posts:

• Feingold on the D.R. Congo (October, 2007)
• Contributing to Wikipedia: My Drop in the Bucket (December, 2007)
• Hutus vs Tutsis: an Op-Ed (November, 2007)
• Congolese Music on Muxtape (April, 2008)
• i feel a news fugue coming on (May, 2006)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 3:39 am and is filed under art, goma, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.