The Docteur Is In

In Congo, rumba music evolved in tandem with the nascent independence of the former Belgian colony, which had been subjected to decades extraction and violence under King Leopold II. Nicolas Kasana, a young guitar prodigy, was foundational to that musical evolution, a gentle stylist and innovator who, David Beal writes, “claimed that Europeans had devised amplifier effects based on techniques he had first introduced with his fingers.” A fuller account of the life of Docteur Nico, as he was known, remains evasive; still, Beal’s history is a moving, complex exploration of “an ambitious musician in a relentlessly plundered country.”

Around the time of independence, listeners in the Congo seemed to immediately understand the importance of Nico’s sound. After hearing “Indépendance Cha Cha” in a bar in Léopoldville, one listener was overheard saying, “It’s Nico’s revolution.” But Nico’s relationship to political events of the time is still unsettled, and Nico himself remains something of an enigma. Tracking his life through the many recordings he made with his three primary bands from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s—African Jazz, African Fiesta, and African Fiesta Sukisa—one senses the thrill of an artist attempting to radically expand African popular music, and the pain of someone on whom that attempt took a personal toll. His legacy lives chiefly in the sound of his instrument and its place in the music he pioneered, both of which seemed to allow a nation brutalized by colonial domination to access a richer and more joyous emotional life.