Kasongo Musanga

After Franco
From the 1950s until the 1980s, Franco Luambo Makiadi and his TPOK Jazz orchestra profoundly shaped the sound of African music across the continent, and subsequently the popular music of the world through artists such as Paul Simon and Talking Heads. Yet Franco is little known outside Africa and his 1,000 compositions are hardly represented on recordings. Now just over twenty years since Franco’s death in 1989, Kasongo Musanga tells the story of ‘The Sorcerer of the Guitar’, from whose shadow Congolese music is still emerging.