Franco remains the most musically & politically influential artist in Africa, despite dead. Congolese rhumba was not his creation, but he redefined and popularised the genre until, transformed into the galvanising style known as soukous, it dominated Africa’s airwaves for decades. Till now.
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Maybe not but even if we ďid the media and artist management companies don’t do enough to distribute their music and brand.
Not many musicians’ deaths are met by continent-wide grief, hundreds of thousands thronging the streets of their hometown, and four days of state-decreed mourning. But this was the case for François Luambo Makiadi when he died in 1989. Sobriquets stuck to him throughout his career – ‘the Sorcerer of the Guitar’, ‘Yorgho’ (godfather), and, as he liked to be addressed, ‘Grand Maître’. But he was best known throughout Africa simply as Franco.