Franco

Franco's musical output over his career defies the imagination. He himself claimed to have put out 150 albums in thirty years. So a two-CD retrospective seems, well, amusingly thin. It's also glorious. Congolese rumba, aka soukous, is some of the most infectious dance music ever created, and Franco's prolific fingers never seemed to run out of ideas. Maybe that's what happens when African rhythms head to the Caribbean and then return home. These songs infused the Congo (and much of Europe) from the pre-independence era to the rise of Mbotu Sese Seko.