Various Artists - Roots of OK Jazz Review

This is a reissue of a 1993 album compiled by Vincent Kenis, the man behind the recent success of Konono No. 1, the Kasai Allstars, and Staff Benda Bilili. Roots of OK Jazz, now revamped as part of Crammed Discs’ “Congo Classics” series, is especially welcome in the wake of the two outstanding recent compilations put out by Sterns Africa of the work of Franco Luambo Makiadi (known to fans of African music simply as Franco) and his band, the Tout-Pouissant Orchestre Kinois de Jazz, or OK Jazz for short. Franco would be responsible, from the 1950s until his death in 1989, for some of the most influential popular music of the African continent, especially the Congolese rumba and soukous sounds that would dominate much modern African pop.


The collection gathers material from the period before the official formation of OK Jazz and features a number of the group’s future members, including Vicky, Rossignol, Essous, De La Lune, Dessoin, Roitelet, De Wayon, and Nganga. The records put out by these musicians, all of whom are credited as leaders on at least one cut, appeared on 78 RPM discs, many of which did not survive due to their continued use at dance events. As Kenis notes, recording technology had been used by European colonists in the Congo as an extension of “His Master’s Voice”, delivering orders for curfews among other “public services”; the HMV discs containing these Latin-inspired pop songs, by contrast, signaled an assertive sonic reclaiming of public space.


The Latin influence on Congolese music has been much discussed and has also been the focus of other compilations, such as last year’s Cubanismo from the Congo on the Honest Jon’s label. As would later happen with rock, funk, and hip hop, Congolese musicians in the metropolitan centers took the latest imports and made their own mark on them. And, as with those musics, the cosmopolitan was made more appealing by recognizing styles in which African music had played a defining role, which was clearly the case with the music of Cuba and other Latin American countries. Once the musicians were able to afford them, the horns that acted in such effective counterpoint to Franco’s liquid guitar runs would also parallel the sounds of classic rhythm and blues, that fascinating period where jazz gave way to rock and roll and the honking sax still retained a dominant role....full text The sound quality of these remastered 78s is excellent and the compilation bears eloquent witness to the development of Franco's guitar style, from brief blasts of sound to the more fluid lines that would become his signature.
This is a reissue of a 1993 album compiled by Vincent Kenis, the man behind the recent success of Konono No. 1, the Kasai Allstars, and Staff Benda Bilili. Roots of OK Jazz, now revamped as part of Crammed Discs' "Congo Classics" series, is especially welcome in the wake of the two outstanding recent compilations put out by Sterns Africa of the work of Franco Luambo Makiadi (known to fans of African music simply as…...full text This is a reissue of a 1993 album compiled by Vincent Kenis, the man behind the recent success of Konono No. 1, the Kasai Allstars, and Staff Benda Bilili. Roots of OK Jazz, now revamped as part of Crammed Discs’ “Congo Classics” series, is especially...full text