Indépendance Cha Cha

The song was written in Brussels, not Kinshasa. In early 1960 Belgium hosted a Round Table Conference to decide the future of the Belgian Congo, and the sons of the delegate Daniel Kanza had the idea of bringing musicians along to keep the delegates entertained. Joseph Kabasele, known as Le Grand Kallé, assembled a band from his own African Jazz and borrowed two players from the rival OK Jazz, singer Victor Longomba and guitarist Armando Brazzos. Kabasele wrote Indépendance Cha Cha on 20 January 1960, drawing on Cuban rhythms, and the group first played it at the Hotel Plaza in Brussels on 1 February. The lyrics call for unity among the many factions of the independence movement, naming party acronyms such as ABAKO, CONAKAT and MNC, and politicians including Kasa-Vubu, Lumumba and Tshombe, while the refrain credits independence to the Congolese people themselves. The band recorded it during the conference, but the label that owned the studio was not interested, so Kabasele shopped the masters around until Fonior agreed to release them. It became what has been called the first Pan-African hit. Sung in Lingala with French loanwords, it crossed into the neighbouring French Congo and was broadcast across the continent in the year many African countries won independence. When Rwanda became independent in 1962, a youth group marched through Kigali singing it. The historian David Van Reybrouck argued that, whatever the official anthems, this is the only true Congolese national anthem, the tune that still gets Central Africa dancing.