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At long last, Zaiko Langa Langa has arrived in the United States!

This great Congolese band has often been rumored to be coming, but this time it really is happening.  Zaiko is already in this country and has performed to thrilled audiences in Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and Washington.  It will appear at the popular New York City club Le Poisson Rouge on Tuesday, November 27th.

And it’s the real Zaiko Langa Langa, not an offshoot of an offshoot or a bunch of pretenders.  This is the band led by Jossart N’Yoka Longo, a key member, singer and songwriter since the late 1960s and its leader for more than 30 years.

Originally formed by students in Kinshasa, this group soon distinguished itself from the famous Congolese bands of the time – Franco and his OK Jazz, Rochereau and his Afrisa International, and Docteur Nico and his African Fiesta Sukisa.  Those musicians had been prominent for a decade or two, and although the Zaiko kids had grown up listening to their many hits and admiring their gifts, these teenagers and young adults (who included Papa Wemba, Bimi Ombale, Evoloko Jocker and Manuaku Waku as well as N’Yoka Longo and others) were in the vanguard of a new generation, determined to reinvigorate the popular music of their country with their youthful sound and energy.

They replaced conga drums and maracas with trap sets and drove their beats hard and tirelessly on snare drums.  They dispensed with the saxophones and trumpets of the older bands and turned up the volume on their electric guitars.  In front they featured four singers who took turns with leads and harmonies and calls and responses, plus animateurs who shouted greetings and slogans from the stage.  When the song shifted into the instrumental section called soukous the singers and animateurs danced.  Of course Congolese pop singers had moved their feet and swayed their hips before Zaiko Langa Langa appeared, but not with the fresh style and choreography of these talented showmen.  The dances they invented, such as cavacha and zékété-zékété, quickly became popular in Kinshasa and then throughout Central Africa.

Zaiko Langa Langa traveled too, and beyond Central Africa to East Africa, West Africa, and eventually Europe.  The band’s most successful album of the 1980s was Live in Japan.  By that time several of the original members had left to form new bands while newcomers such as Bozi Boziana, Malage de Lugendo and Dindo Yogo joined.  Over the years Zaiko Langa Langa parented so many bands – Isifi Lokole, Grand Zaiko Wawa, Langa Langa Stars, Choc Stars, Anti-Choc, Viva la Musica, Familia Dei and Nkolo Mboka (to name only the most famous) – that fans referred to them collectively as Clan Langa Langa.

But it is the patriarch that has finally come to the U.S.  It’s taken a long time to get this far. Don’t miss it! Who knows when the next time will be?