Franklin Boukaka

In 1975, Cameroonian singer Dicky Ndoumbé issued a single titled "Regrette Franklin Boukaka." In 2016, the French publisher La Doxa Éditions published in his memory Franklin, l’insoumis: d'après une idée de Marien Fauney Ngombé (Franklin, the rebellious: based on an idea by Marien Fauney Ngombé). It is a book of fourteen short stories by fourteen authors including Ndèye Fatou Kane, each inspired by a song by Boukaka. In 2019, when a physical bridge over the Congo River was planned, that would connect the long-separated twin capital cities of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, a journalist described it as the delayed fruition of Boukaka's 1967 song "Pont sur le Congo." In Brazzaville, a commemoration of what would have been his 80th birthday was planned for October 10, 2020.

Following his death, his music was banned on the radio in Brazzaville. But nearly fifty years later, Boukaka continues to be remembered. More recordings of his music have been issued after his death than while he was alive. Recent newspaper columns, blog posts and other essays from, for example, India, the Netherlands, the United States, and Kenya recall his life and highlight his music, particularly the "timeless" song "Le Bucheron." While at least one Western expert on Congolese music disdains it," perhaps because it is played so much, the song has been the subject of numerous covers and remakes, for example, by John Kazadi of Zimbabwe in 1985, the Nairobi City Ensemble in 2005, Manu Dibango, Aïcha Koné (fr), and Bisso Na Bisso with Passi. That this list includes artists from Southern, East, West, and Central Africa, and both Anglophone and Francophone countries, indicates that musicians have heeded Boukaka's Pan-African message, even if politicians have not.

On February 22, 1972, a group attempted a coup against the People's Republic of the Congo's avowedly Marxist-Leninist government led by Marien Ngouabi, who had taken power himself in a 1968 coup, and was later assassinated in a 1977 coup. Boukaka was involved, and afterward was among the two or three persons listed as deceased in the failed coup. The circumstances of his death were never explained. Congolese-music historian Gary Stewart reports that "many Congolese suspect he was executed - all the more so because his name had originally turned up on a list of those who had been arrested." Given the lack of information, his exact date of death is unknown; some sources state it as probably February 22, while others say he was killed on the night of 23–24 February.

In 1971, he served as a "animateur culturel" at UNESCO in Paris, and was praised by its Director-General.

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.

Boukaka was a key early figure in the development of Congolese popular music, a pioneer of the rumba and soukous that dominated Africa from the 1970s to the 1990s. He was also, metaphorically, a "Pont sur le Congo", working in each of the two politically opposed countries whose capital cities were across that river from each other, and a major participant, in both directions, in the cultural cross-pollenization of that time between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

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 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):

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.

Boukaka has been lauded for his "exceptional musical talent," and specifically "his appealing stage presence, mellow baritone, and increasingly incisive compositions." Gilles Sala, who recorded him in Paris in 1967, said "I liked Franklin Boukaka's voice enormously. He had a beautiful timbre, a very pleasing voice. And then as a composer . . . just like Joseph Kabasele, like Nico, like Franco, they had a very developed sense of popular music."

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.

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 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 Noel and Djeskain Massengo.

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.

Numerous recordings of Boukaka's 1955-67 performances with groups including Negro Band, Vox Africa, Cercul Jazz, and possibly others have been issued under the names of those groups, and are not included here. Some of those have been collected on albums issued under his name:

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.

He was born as François Boukaka on October 10, 1940, in Brazzaville. That city is the capital of what was then the French Congo, and after independence in 1960 became the Republic of the Congo, and from 1969 to 1991 was the People's Republic of the Congo. His parents were both musical; 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.