Mario

Franco had been circling the subject for years. In Mobutu's Zaire of the 1980s, a new bourgeois class was flaunting its wealth, and relationships built on money were becoming more visible: older men with younger women and, increasingly, older women supporting young men who were educated but out of work. Franco had touched on it sideways in an earlier song, Petit poussin. With Mario, recorded in 1985 at Studio Mademba during a TPOK Jazz trip to Libreville, he went straight at it. The song is a monologue by a woman who has had enough of her younger lover. Mario has five diplomas, the woman complains, yet he will not work, lives off her money, covets her Mercedes, clothes and furniture, and turns jealous and violent. Franco's spoken lines alternate with Madilu System's sung chorus, the woman's voice moving between scolding, mockery and lament as she repeats that she is tired of him. But the satire cuts both ways: she, too, is shown to have lived off another man's generosity, now spending it on a relationship that is wrecking her home. Zairean listeners recognised the type instantly. Mario was certified gold in Zaire after selling more than 200,000 copies, and TPOK Jazz followed it with sequels, including a reply in which Mario tells his side of the story. The French journalist François Bensignor called it arguably Franco's greatest masterpiece, and Jeune Afrique counted it among the five songs that made Congo dance. Covers by Africando and Fally Ipupa show the gigolo with five diplomas still has an audience.