Music of the Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo is an African nation with close musical
ties to its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Democratic
Republic of the Congo's homegrown pop music, soukous, is popular
across the border, and musicians from both countries have fluidly
travelled throughout the region playing similarly styled music, including Nino
Malapet and Jean Serge Essous. Brazzaville had a major music scene until
unrest in the late 1990s, and produced popular bands like Bantous de la Capitale
that played an integral role in the development of soukous and other
styles of Congolese popular music. The Hip-Hop group "Bisso na Bisso"
also hails from Congo-Brazzaville.
National music
The national anthem of the Republic of the Congo is La Congolaise.
It was adopted upon independence in 1959, replaced in 1969
by Les Trois Glorieuses but reinstated in 1991. The words were written
by Jacques Tondra and Georges Kibanghi, the music was composed
by Jean Royer and Joseph Spadilière.
Traditional music
The Republic is home to the Sub-Saharan African music traditions of the Kongo (48%),
Sangha (20%), M'Bochi (12%) and Teke (17%) people, as well as 3% Europeans and others,
in a population of about 4,492,689 (July 2013 est.).
Folk instruments in the Republic of the Congo include the xylophone and mvet.
The mvet is a kind of zither-harp, similar to styles found elsewhere in both
Africa and Asia. The mvet is made of a long tube with one or two gourds
acting as resonators.
Soukous
Though soukous has become much more closely associated with the popular
music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, early in the style's evolution
both the local scenes of Kinshasa and Brazzaville played a very important role.
In these cities, American style orchestras (called soukous, or kirikiri or kasongo)
played rumba (a kind of Cuban music) influenced by traditional music and jazz.
Soukous arose from this fusion of styles, popularized as dance music
by a number of different orchestras in the 1950s and 60s.
