franco and mobutu

mms

sometimes
is it true the congolese musician franco was a supporter for the mobutu regime and had a kind of ruler/vetter position in the music scene, someone me the other day and it was against everything i heard about the fellow.

anyone knoe?
 
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sufi

lala
Legends of Franco

Just been chatting about this to a couple of people who knew Franco & the scene in Kinshasa, they characterise that relationship as deep, inevitably, as Franco & Mobutu were the 2 kings of Zaïre and were inextricably linked in a long love/hate relationship. This article tells the same story: http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/28/Lutumba+Simaro,+2002

Apparently, whenever Mobutu used to do an event, he would need to have the most prestigious musicians to back him up - & for many years this was Franco, so all the heads of state would be invited: Senghor, Gadhaffi and so on, bands would be playing from the airport onwards, probably Rochereau would play at dinner time (cos he’s a bit more mellow) and then finally Franco would come on, and of course the President and first lady would have the first dance…. the tendency in this situation was for Franco to sing something inflammatory or humiliating e.g. to call out to the other guests ‘why are you sitting around while the president is standing – who’s the boss round here’ or suchlike – he was also prone to composing songs about particular figures in the political establishment, where he would not go so far as to name the subject, but when he sings about ugly women, everyone knows it’s about one particular industrialist’s mistress….

Franco had a club in which the political class of Zaïre used to enjoy one another’s company – it was a paradise of bling in Kinshasa by all accounts and attendance was almost mandatory for the Mobutu coterie, who would set up disappearances and poisonings in the club, sometimes Mobutu - 'The cock who leaves no hen untouched' and 'the all-powerful warrior who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake' would even sing…
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One song that sums up this relationship is ‘La Vérité de Franco’…
 
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