Franco

He came from a part of Africa where people attribute a great deal of significance to names. At his birth he was given his paternal grandfather's name, Luambo. To that his mother appended Makiadi, a KiKongo word that means "subscriber to misfortune." He was christened François. Before he had reached the age of 20 he was recognized as Nkolo (Chief) of the band O.K. Jazz. Musicians under his leadership, and even his rivals, addressed him as Grand Maître (Grand Master). The many men, women and children who depended on his largesse called him Yorgho (Godfather). There were those who referred to him as "the Sorcerer" (some with admiration for his skill, others with suspicions about his success). Briefly converted to Islam, he renamed himself Aboubakar Sidiki, and then, to comply with Zairean "authenticity" laws, he became L'Okanga La Ndju Pene Luambo Makiadi. When he died in 1989, the President of Zaire posthumously dubbed him Commander of the Order of the Leopard. His biographer bestowed on him the epithet "Congo Colossus." But to everyone he was best known by a short, simple name: Franco.

Franco was born in 1938 in a small village not far from the lower cataracts of the Congo River but raised from infancy in Léopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo. A street urchin who spent more time at the market squares and docks than at school, he made himself his first guitar when he was seven years old and at the age of eleven joined a group called Watam (the Delinquents), which played at parties and in bars in the city's "native quarters." Though just a kebo band – a bunch of self-taught singers, guitarists and percussionists with little of the finesse of the local orchestres jazz – Watam came to the attention of the pioneering Congolese record company, Loningisa, which, in 1953, signed the fifteen-year-old Franco to a ten-year contract.

Given an electrified hollow-bodied guitar that was, as he later recounted, bigger than he was, Franco accompanied singers such as Ebengo Dewayon, Vicky Longomba and Rossignol Landot on a slew of Loningisa records. Before long he was writing songs and singing them himself, backed by the Loningisa house band. In 1956 he and five other members of that band – saxophonist Jean-Serge Essous, guitarist Lubelo de la Lune, bass fiddler Roitelet Munganya and drummers Pandi Saturnin and Bosuma Dessoin – formed Orchestre Kinois Jazz. When Omar Kashama, a local impresario, engaged them to play in his O.K. Bar they shortened their name to O.K. Jazz. Singers Rossignol Landot, Vicky Longomba and Edo Nganga joined them, and after a few weeks of performing nightly at the O.K. Bar, the band made its record debut with "On entre O.K., on sort K.O." – "You enter O.K., you leave knocked out."

O.K. Jazz was soon challenging Orchestre African Jazz as the top band in Léopoldville. Like African Jazz, O.K. Jazz played mostly rumba, the modern, Cuban-inspired style that Congolese musicians were reclaiming for their country, but O.K. Jazz was neither as polished as the older band nor as stylistically limited. As a guitarist, a singer, a songwriter and a showman, Franco exhibited a loose swagger that seemed to come as much from rock 'n' roll as from rumba, yet at the same time he was firmly grounded in tradition. He based some of his best songs on the music of his BaKongo ancestors and derived one of his favorite styles from a ritual healing rhythm that he called odemba. And he was not the only good songwriter in the band; most of the members contributed original material to the O.K. Jazz repertoire – which included a lot of hits over a long span of time.

While African Jazz fell apart and other bands emerged in the 1960s, O.K. Jazz expanded to a dozen members and more, and its audience grew exponentially. Some of its strongest competition came from former members, but Franco was a leader who recognized talent, encouraged creativity, and recruited the best musicians in Kinshasa (Léopoldville) and from across the river in Brazzaville and further. In those years when one African country after another was gaining independence and fostering relations with its neighbors, and records, radios and tours were spreading Congolese music throughout the continent, O.K. Jazz became a paradigm of the modern African band and Franco became one of the first pan-African stars.

As his mother had predicted, Franco did experience misfortune, and his career went through several low periods, but he and his band always came back stronger than before. When, in the late 60s, fans started calling the band T.P.O.K. Jazz – T.P. for tout puissant, "almighty" – Franco immodestly made the name official. It certainly was a powerhouse of a band. By the mid 70s the line-up on stage and in the studio included at least two drummers, a bass player, four guitarists, four trumpeters, four saxophonists, and as many as six singers switching between the chorus and the lead.

In the center stood Franco, his guitar across his ample waist, holding everyone together. He sang solos and duets in a husky baritone but often preferred to feature other singers, and he sometimes confined his vocal part to commentary or narrative spoken over the music in a stentorian voice. Above all he played his guitar, starting most numbers with a rumba flourish or odemba riff and leading the band from one section to the next and finally into the sebene, the instrumental climax, weaving his signature double-stop patterns among the other guitar parts while the drums pounded and the horns wailed away, tout puissant indeed. Franco led O.K. Jazz until his death, a total of 33 years. Among the band's nearly 100 alumni were Sam Mangwana, Verckys Kiamuangana, Mose Fan Fan, Youlou Mabiala, Papa Noel, Dizzy Mandjeku, Josky Kiambukuta and Madilu "System" Bialu. Whatever their impressive post-O.K. Jazz accomplishments, they were at their very best singing or playing alongside Franco.

He was big in every respect. He stood over six feet tall and boasted when his weight hit 300 pounds. He was a man of voracious appetites and consuming passions. He had several wives, countless girlfriends and many children (a legacy that now keeps his catalogue tied up in legal disputes over the rights). He composed around 1,000 songs and recorded three times that number with O.K. Jazz. No one will ever know the sales figures, but Franco was a wealthy man by Congolese standards. He was generous to his friends and fans and he rewarded his musicians well, most of the time, but with rivals he was ruthless. He had a huge personality, and he wasn't shy about showing its many sides through his music, even rage, grief and tenderness. But his songs were about much more than himself. He was an astute observer, champion and critic of Congolese society, and it was by matching provocative words to irresistible music that he became so influential in his country during the years when it was called Zaire.

Even the Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese-Seko, recognized Franco's power, feared it, tried constantly to control it and sometimes succeeded in using it to his advantage. Franco did not always avoid trouble, but he usually maneuvered his way out of it. He was clever at using metaphors, parables and satire to address controversial subjects. Was "Liberté" only about getting free of a domineering wife or about more fundamental liberty? Was "Tailleur" really about a tailor who has lost his needle or about Mobutu's toadying Prime Minister? Millions of listeners knew. When Franco came to the biggest crisis of his life, though, he dropped the metaphors and satire. In 1987 he recorded "Attention na SIDA," a somber, plain-spoken warning about AIDS. It was his last big hit. He died two years later at the age of 51 without acknowledging that he may have had the disease. —Ken Braun